Princess Kate and Prince Harry. James Whatling/MEGA; Tim Rooke/Shutterstock
An unpleasant surprise. Princess Kate is not happy about how she was portrayed in Prince Harry‘s memoir, Spare.
“Kate feels that Harry’s actions are atrocious,” a source exclusively tells Us Weekly. “She is appalled at him for dragging her name through the dirt and is finding it hard to forgive.”
The Duke of Sussex, 38, makes it clear that he has always been fond of Prince William‘s wife. He recalled attending a costume party with the couple shortly after being introduced to the future Princess of Wales, now 40.
“She was carefree, sweet, kind. She’d done a gap year in Florence, knew about photography, art. And clothes. She loved clothes. Her name was Kate,” Harry wrote in Spare, which will hit bookshelves on Tuesday, January 10. “I forget what native or colonial thing she was wearing to the party, but with her help Willy had chosen for himself some kind of … feline outfit.”
He recalled having “a great time” as he and Kate laughed at William. The theme of the party was to wear “ridiculous” costumes, and Harry hoped to make the future Duchess of Cambridge giggle.
“I liked seeing Kate laugh. Better yet, I liked making her laugh. And I was quite good at it. My transparently silly side connected with her heavily disguised silly side,” he explained in the memoir. “Whenever I worried that Kate was going to be the one to take Willy from me, I consoled myself with thoughts of all our future laughing fits together, and I told myself how great everything would be when I had a serious girlfriend who could laugh along with us.”
So Harry went to the costume shop and came up with either a British pilot’s uniform or a Nazi uniform. “I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said. I rented it, plus a silly mustache, and went back to the house. I tried it all on. They both howled,” Harry recalled.
Dressing in a Nazi costume would become one of his biggest scandals. The Invictus Games founder, who was 20 at the time, apologized for his “poor choice of costume” after photos from the party were leaked. “I am very sorry if I caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone,” he said in a January 2005 statement.
Since excerpts of Spare started being published days ahead of the book’s release date, the royal family has been rocked by all of Harry’s allegations, including Kate’s arguments with Meghan Markle and his physical fight with William in 2019.
William and Kate are “very upset about Harry’s revelations,” an insider exclusively told Us on Friday, January 6, adding that the details have “hit them very hard. They’re both confiding in each other right now.”
According to the source, the Cambridges would have rather “handled these issues behind closed doors” and “wished Harry wasn’t so public and cutting” with his accusations about the royal family.
With reporting by Natalie Posner and Travis Cronin