Harry and Meghan #299 Spare The book that makes Twilight look like Tolstoy

Anna2020 said:

MEG AND I MOVED our office into Buckingham Palace. We also moved into a new home. Frogmore was ready. We loved that place. From the first minute. It felt as if we were destined to live there.
We couldn’t wait to wake up in the morning, go for a long walk in the gardens, check in with the swans. Especially grumpy Steve. We met the Queen’s gardeners, got to know their names and the names of all the flowers. They thrilled at how much we appreciated, and praised, their artistry.
Towards the end of April 2019, days before Meg was due to give birth, Willy rang.
Something had happened between him and Pa and Camilla. I couldn’t get the whole story, he was talking too fast, and was way too upset.
He was seething actually. I gathered that Pa and Camilla’s people had planted a story or stories about him and Kate, and the kids, and he wasn’t going to take it anymore. Give Pa and Camilla an inch, he said, they take a mile.
They’ve done this to me for the last time.
I got it. They’d done the same to me and Meg as well.
But it wasn’t them, technically, it was the most gung-ho member of Pa’s comms team, a true believer who’d devised and launched a new campaign of getting good press for Pa and Camilla at the expense of bad press for us. For some time this person had been peddling unflattering stories, fake stories, about the Heir and Spare, to all the papers
I suspected that this person had been the lone source for stories about a hunting trip I’d made to Germany in 2017, stories that made me out
to be some fat-bottomed seventeenth-century baron who craved blood and trophies, when in reality I was working with German farmers to cull wild boar and save their crops.
I believed the story had been offered as a straight swap, in exchange for greater access to Pa, and also as a reward for the suppression of stories about Camilla’s son, who’d been gadding around London, generating tawdry rumors. I was displeased about being used like this, and livid about it being done to Meg, but I had to admit it was happening much more often lately to Willy.
And he was justifiably incandescent. He’d already confronted Pa once about this woman, face-to-face. I’d gone along for moral support. The scene took place at Clarence House, in Pa’s study. I remember the windows being wide open, the white curtains blowing in and out, so it must’ve been a warm night.
Willy put it to Pa: How can you be letting a stranger do this to your sons?
Pa instantly got upset.
He began shouting that Willy was paranoid. We both were. Just because we were getting bad press, and he was getting good, that didn’t mean his staff was behind it.
But we had proof. Reporters, inside actual newsrooms, assuring us that this woman was selling us out.
Pa refused to listen. His response was churlish, pathetic. Granny has her person, why can’t I have mine? By Granny’s person he meant Angela. Among the many services she performed for Granny, she was said to be skilled at planting stories.
What a rubbish comparison, Willy said. Why would anyone in their right mind, let alone a grown man, want their own Angela?
But Pa just kept saying it. Granny had her person, Granny had her person. High time he had a person too.
I was glad that Willy felt he could still come to me about Pa and Camilla, even after all we’d been through recently. Seeing an opportunity to address our recent tensions, I tried to connect what Pa and Camilla had done to him with what the press had done to Meg.
Willy snapped: I’ve got different issues with you two!
In a blink he shifted all his rage onto me. I can’t recall his exact words, because I was beyond tired from all our fighting, to say nothing of the recent move into Frogmore, and into new offices—and I was focused on the imminent birth of our first child. But I recall every physical detail of the scene. The daffodils out, the new grass sprouting, a jet taking off from Heathrow, heading west, unusually low, its engines making my chest vibrate. I remember thinking how remarkable that I could still hear Willy above that jet.
I couldn’t imagine how he had that much anger left after the confrontation in Nott Cott. He was going on and on and I lost the thread. I couldn’t understand and I stopped trying. I fell silent, waiting for him to subside.
Then I looked back. Meg was coming from the house, directly towards me. I quickly took the phone off speaker, but she’d already heard. And Willy was being so loud, even with the speaker off, she could still hear. The tears in her eyes glistened in the spring sunshine. I started to say something, but she stopped, shook her head. Holding her stomach, she turned and walked back to the house.

Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.

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horseybox1982 said:

Fucking hell, that’s some real tea from him, isn’t it?

I’ll wait with bated breath to see when other journalists pick this story up…then what will Hazza do?

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Anna2020 said:

MEG AND I ATTENDED the WellChild Awards, an annual event that honored children suffering from serious illnesses.
October 2019.
I’d attended many times through the years, having been a royal patron of the organization since 2007, and it was always gutting. The children were so brave, their parents so proud—and tortured. Various awards were given that night for inspiration, fortitude, and I was presenting one to an especially resilient preschooler.
I walked onstage, began my brief remarks, and caught sight of Meg’s face. I thought back to a year ago, when she and I attended this event just weeks after taking that home pregnancy test. We’d been filled with hope, and worry, like all expectant parents, and now we had a healthy little boy at home. But these parents and children hadn’t been so lucky.
Gratitude and sympathy converged in my heart, and I choked up. Unable to get the words out, I held the lectern tight and leaned forward. The presenter, who’d been a friend of my mother, stepped over and gave my shoulder a rub. It helped, as did the burst of applause, which gave me a moment to restart my vocal cords.
Soon after, I got a text from Willy. He was in Pakistan on tour. He said I was clearly struggling, and he was worried about me.
I thanked him for his concern, assured him I was fine. I’d become emotional in front of a roomful of sick kids and their folks just after becoming a father myself—nothing abnormal in that.
He said I wasn’t well. He said again that I needed help.
I reminded him that I was doing therapy. In fact, he’d recently told me he wanted to accompany me to a session because he suspected I was being “brainwashed.”
Then come, I said. It will be good for you. Good for us.
He never came.
His strategy was patently obvious: I was unwell, which meant I was unwise.
As if all my behavior needed to be called into question. I worked hard at keeping my texts to him civil.
Nonetheless, the exchange turned into an argument, which stretched over seventy-two hours. Back and forth we went, all day, late into the night—we’d never had a fight like that over text before.
Angry, but also miles apart, as if we were speaking different languages.
Now and then I realized that my worst fear was coming true: after months of therapy, after working hard to become more aware, more independent, I was a stranger to my older brother. He could no longer relate to me—tolerate me.
Or maybe it was just the stress of the last few years, the last few decades, finally pouring out.
I saved the texts. I have them still. I read them sometimes, with sadness, with confusion, thinking: How did we ever get there?
In his final texts, Willy wrote that he loved me. That he cared for me deeply. That he would do whatever is needed to help me. He told me to never feel any other way.

Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.

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Anna2020 said:

I WAS SUMMONED TO Buckingham Palace. A lunch with Granny and Pa.
The invitation was contained in a terse email from the Bee, and the tone wasn’t: Would you mind popping around? It was more: Get your arse over here. I threw on a suit, jumped into the car.
The Bee and the Wasp were the first faces I saw when I walked into the room. An ambush. I thought this was to be a family lunch. Apparently not. Alone, without my staff, without Meg, I was confronted directly about my legal action.
My father said it was massively damaging to the reputation of the family.
How so?
It makes our relationship with the media complicated.
Complicated. There’s a word.
Anything you do affects the whole family.
One could say the same about all your actions and decisions. They affect us as well.
Like, for instance, wining and dining the same editors and journalists who’ve been attacking me and my wife…
The Bee or the Wasp jumped in to remind me: One has to have a relationship with the press…Sir, we’ve talked about this before!
A relationship yes. But not a sordid affair. I tried a new tack.
Everyone in this family has sued the press, including Granny. Why’s this any different?
Chirping crickets. Silence. There was some more wrangling, and then I said:
We had no other option. And we wouldn’t have had to do it if you’d all protected us. And protected the monarchy in the process. You’re doing a
disservice to yourselves by not protecting my wife.
I looked around the table. Stony faces.
Was it incomprehension? Cognitive dissonance? A long-term mission at play? Or…did they really not know? Were they so deep inside a bubble inside a bubble that they really hadn’t fully appreciated how bad things were?
-For instance, Tatler magazine quoting an old Etonian saying I’d married Meg because “foreigners” like her are “easier” than girls “with the right background.”
-Or the Daily Mail saying Meg was “upwardly mobile,” because she’d gone from “slaves to royalty” in just 150 years.
-Or the social media posts about her being a “yacht girl” and an “escort,” or calling her a “gold-digger,” and “a whore,” and “a bitch,” and “a slut,” and the N-word—repeatedly.
Some of those posts were in the comments section on the pages of all three Palaces’ social media accounts—and still hadn’t been expunged.
-Or the tweet that said: “Dear Duchess, I’m not saying that I hate you but I hope your next period happens in a shark tank.”
- Or the revelation of racist texts from Jo Marney, girlfriend of UKIP leader Henry Bolton, including one saying that my “black American” fiancée would “taint” the Royal Family, setting the stage for “a black king,” and another averring that Ms. Marney would never have sex with “a Negro.” “This is Britain, not Africa.”
-Or the Mail complaining that Meg couldn’t keep her hands off her baby bump, that she was rubbing it and rubbing it as if she were a succubus.
Things had got so out of hand, seventy-two women in Parliament, from both main parties, had condemned the “colonial undertones” of all newspaper coverage of The Duchess of Sussex.
None of these things had merited one comment, public or private, from my family.
I knew how they rationalized it all, saying it was no different from what Camilla got. Or Kate.
But it was different.
One study looked closely at four hundred vile tweets about Meg. Employing a team of data specialists and computer analysts the study found that this avalanche of hate was wildly atypical, light-years from anything directed at Camilla or Kate. A tweet calling Meg “the queen of monkey island” had no historical precedent or equivalent. And this wasn’t about hurt feelings or bruised egos. Hate had physical effects. There was a ton of science showing how unhealthy it is to be publicly hated and mocked. Meanwhile, the wider societal effects were even scarier.
Certain kinds of people are more susceptible to such hate, and incited by it. Hence the package of suspicious white powder that had been sent to our office, with a disgusting racist note attached.
I looked at Granny, looked around the room, reminded them that Meg and I had been coping with a wholly unique situation, and doing it all by ourselves.
Our dedicated staff was too small, too young, grossly underfunded.
The Bee and the Wasp harrumphed and said we should’ve let it be known that we were under-resourced. Let it be known?
I said I’d begged them repeatedly, all of them, and one of our top aides had sent in pleas as well—multiple times.
Granny looked directly at the Bee and the Wasp: Is this true?
The Bee looked her right in the eye, and, with the Wasp nodding vigorously in assent, said: Your Majesty, we never received any of these requests for support.

Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex

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triesherbest said:

I'm at the Chelsy Davy bit now. I'd be so weirded out if one of my exes put me in a book tbh, like why do you remember all those details you weirdo

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Fliss122 said:

If it’s true (and if not where the hell was Doria all that time?) how did TW get it wiped from the net? This must’ve been done before or as soon as she met Harry but she was a nothing at that point so where did she get the power you’d need to get that to happen? Confused.

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RatherBeRiding said:

I have managed to leave a scathing review on Amazon despite not having bought the pile of rubbish! I got a message saying my review would be reviewed which might take several days - so will be interesting to see if it makes it onto the website!!

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Kezzle1 said:

He seems to make extremely wild assumptions of what people really mean, particularly William, when they try to offer advice! For example

"Among all the different, riotous emotions coursing through my brother that afternoon, one really jumped out at me. He seemed aggrieved. He seemed put upon that I wasn’t meekly obeying him, that I was being so impertinent as to deny him, or defy him, to refute his knowledge, which came from his trusted aides."

His mind is definitely not right.

He seems quite bouncy in the Colbert interview after the seriousness of the other 3 interviews!

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Milliemoo99 said:

So so much rubbish to unpick.

I have spent months on the fence about the whole idea of the surrogate. As it seemed almost too impossible to be true.

This extract, is so.....wrong about childbirth, in every since facet, that I get the impression Harold hasnt been anywhere near a baby actually being delivered in a maternity suite.
Its the kind of 50s imagery of the dad pacing downstairs eagerly waiting for the birth of his child, then being allowed into the room to meet his clean and tidy baby and mother sitting neatly in bed. After all the hard work and messy nature of childbirth is done.

I had an easyish birth, fairly quick. But even so, it was painful and messy.

The account is full of mistakes, It isnt laughing gas, its entinox, something very different. You cant have an epidural towards the end, on both my pregnancies, I was too far dilated to be offered an epidural.
I dont know a single first time mum, who is calm for the birth, particularly if it is overdue and you are needing to be induced.

What on earth is the point of the hand mirror? If you are pushing down or heavy breathing, how are you going to be at the correct angle to look at your vagina, and if the doctors or midwives and husband are there....how do you get enough space?

And as for the sense of humour failure about Danny Baker, a bbc sports presenter/comedian! The BBC sacked him immediately, It was a stupid photo ..but it was meant to be a joke.
It's been two years since the Danny Baker Meghan and Harry tweet | British GQ (gq-magazine.co.uk) in this quote he explains what the joke was meant to be: “what a nightmare. A goofy picture intended to gently ridicule privilege goes boom and how. If you’d put a gun to my head before all this and asked, ‘What royal princess has had a baby?’ I'd have had to take a punt. Well, I know now, don't I? Only a poisonous loon would have gone for the 'joke' as it became interpreted. Obviously once alerted to what royal baby it was, I was appalled. I immediately deleted the picture, flagged my shocking error and apologised. Beyond that, what on earth can you do?”

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ToodliePips said:

Previous offenders can apply to have their convictions wiped from publicly accessible records (at least in the UK they can). I presume the USA must have something similar.

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Anna2020 said:

MEG AND I DISCUSSED getting away, but this time we weren’t talking about a day at Wimbledon or a weekend with Elton.
We were talking about escape. A friend knew someone who had a house we could borrow on Vancouver Island. Quiet, green—seemingly remote. Only reachable by ferry or plane, the friend said.
November 2019.
We arrived with Archie, Guy, Pula, and our nanny, under cover of darkness, on a stormy night, and spent the next few days trying to unwind. It wasn’t hard. From morning to night we didn’t have to give a thought to being ambushed. The house was right on the edge of a sparkling green forest, with big gardens where Archie and the dogs could play, and it was nearly surrounded by the clean, cold sea. I could take a bracing swim in the morning.
Best of all, no one knew we were there. We hiked, we kayaked, we played—in peace.
After a few days we needed supplies.
We ventured out timidly, drove down the road into the nearest village, walked along the pavement like people in a horror movie. Where will the attack come from? Which direction? But it didn’t happen. People didn’t freak. They didn’t stare. They didn’t reach for their iPhones. Everyone knew, or sensed, that we were going through something. They gave us space, while also managing to make us feel welcome, with a kind smile, a wave.
They made us feel like part of a community. They made us feel normal. For six weeks. Then the Daily Mail printed our address.

Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.

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Lilykins said:

Struggling to keep up but enjoying reading everything you are all saying. This book really is all because the family, the ‘institution’ and the media didn’t think Meghan was as amazing or as likeable as Harry thinks she is. Sorry that people were made to feel uncomfortable by crass comments she probably made or pointed, inappropriate questions she may have asked across the dinner table, god forbid some don’t see her as the Oscar winner clearly Harry thinks she should be. Also sounds like the fakest birth story I’ve ever heard!!
I was watching the Kardashian documentary and they legitimately have paps hounding them, Britney did… but I’ve never seen pap pics of Megan other than those clearly staged ones and mainly in America. There is a desperate need on Harry’s part to blame everything and anything on the ‘press’ and anyone else. It’s getting so old now- fed up of reading all this moaning. Kate and wills come across as 19th century villains in a melodrama with all this ‘Harold’ and ‘willy’.

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Milliemoo99 said:

So so much rubbish to unpick.

I have spent months on the fence about the whole idea of the surrogate. As it seemed almost too impossible to be true.

This extract, is so.....wrong about childbirth, in every since facet, that I get the impression Harold hasnt been anywhere near a baby actually being delivered in a maternity suite.
Its the kind of 50s imagery of the dad pacing downstairs eagerly waiting for the birth of his child, then being allowed into the room to meet his clean and tidy baby and mother sitting neatly in bed. After all the hard work and messy nature of childbirth is done.

I had an easyish birth, fairly quick. But even so, it was painful and messy.

The account is full of mistakes, It isnt laughing gas, its entinox, something very different. You cant have an epidural towards the end, on both my pregnancies, I was too far dilated to be offered an epidural.
I dont know a single first time mum, who is calm for the birth, particularly if it is overdue and you are needing to be induced.

What on earth is the point of the hand mirror? If you are pushing down or heavy breathing, how are you going to be at the correct angle to look at your vagina, and if the doctors or midwives and husband are there....how do you get enough space?

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Anna2020 said:

For some reason i cant post anymore on royal family thread, does anyone know what could be the reason?

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Anna2020 said:

Within hours the boats arrived.
An invasion by sea. Each boat bristled with telephoto lenses, arrayed like guns along the decks, and every lens was aimed at our windows. At our boy. So much for playing in the gardens.
We grabbed Archie, pulled him into the house.
They shot through the kitchen windows during his feeds.
We pulled down the blinds.
The next time we drove into town, there were forty paps along the route. Forty. We counted. Some gave chase. At our favorite little general store, a plaintive sign now hung in the window: No Media. We hurried back to the house, pulled the blinds even tighter, returned to a kind of permanent twilight. Meg said she’d officially come full circle. Back in Canada, afraid to raise the blinds.

Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.

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vp79 said:

Bloody hell, I went to bed a woke up to another new thread! Apologies for my unintentional 'gravygate' comment in the last thread no offence meant to either Australian or Welsh gravy I am a lover of all gravy (except bistro, that's not gravy imo!)

Anyway, another meme just to lift the mood a little

View attachment 1873590

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