Prince Harry Elaborates on ‘Cutting’ Comments About Brother William

Prince Harry is out promoting his new memoir Spare this week, and he has given some fresh insight on his comments about his older brother, Prince William. In an interview for 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper said that Prince Harry’s comments about Prince William in one excerpt were “pretty cutting.” Prince Harry disagreed, saying he felt he was portraying his situation as best he could without intending to hurt his family.

Cooper read the excerpt in question on the air, where Prince Harry wrote: “I looked at Willy, really looked at him maybe for the first time since we were boys. I took it all in, his familiar scowl, which had always been his default in dealings with me, his alarming baldness, more advanced than my own, his famous resemblance to Mummy which was fading with time, with age.” When Cooper called these remarks “cutting,” Prince Harry tried to explain.

“I don’t see it as cutting at all,” he said. “You know, my brother and I love each other. I love him deeply. There has been a lot of pain between the two of us, especially the last six years. None of anything I’ve written, anything that I’ve included is ever intended to hurt my family. But it does give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up, and also squashes this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers.”

Cooper pointed out that these comments may seem particularly shocking because public perception of the two princes has been skewed over the last three decades. Both he and Prince Harry agreed that the media portrayed the young royals as “inseparable,” while Prince Harry’s new book paints a picture of “separate lives.” Prince Harry chalked this up to “sibling rivalry.”

“Yes, you’re absolutely right, you hit the nail on the head. Like, we had a very similar traumatic experience, and then we dealt with it two very different ways,” Prince Harry said, referring to the death of his mother Princess Diana. He felt that this event had shaped both of them and put them on increasingly divergent paths in life.

Throughout his book, Prince Harry reportedly draws connections between that early experience of grief and his more recent decision to separate himself and his wife Meghan Markle from Buckingham Palace. The prince does not seem to be holding back much when it comes to his family, but he also hopes that they’ll forgive him for what he divulges. Spare will be available on Tuesday, Jan. 10 in print, digital and audiobook formats.