Prince Harry Details King Charles' Distant Behavior In The Aftermath Of Princess Diana's Death
It seems pretty obvious at this point that Prince Harry and King Charles don't exactly have the warmest father-son relationship, but if you were looking for details, you can find them in how the Duke of Sussex describes the king's distant behavior in the aftermath of Princess Diana's death in his memoir "Spare."
In the book, which is not yet released, Harry apparently gets even more candid about his relationships with his family than he did in the Netflix docuseries "Harry & Meghan." In one section, per The Guardian, the prince claims that his brother Prince William physically assaulted him following a fight about Meghan Markle. In another excerpt published by Page Six, Harry writes that his father used to joke that he wasn't his biological parent. "He'd laugh and laugh, though it was a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumor circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy's former lovers: Major James Hewitt," Harry writes. "One cause of this rumor was Major Hewitt's flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism."
You can probably guess that King Charles wasn't a huge source of comfort to Harry after his mother's death.
Prince Harry says King Charles didn't hug him
Indeed, according to a separate excerpt from "Spare" obtained by Page Six, King Charles didn't even give his son a hug after relaying the news that his mother, Princess Diana, had died. "Pa didn't hug me," Prince Harry wrote. "He wasn't great at showing emotions under normal circumstances, how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?" Still, according to Harry, he seemed to be doing the best he could. "His hand did fall once more on my knee and he said, 'It's going to be OK.' That was quite a lot for him. Fatherly, hopeful, kind. And so very untrue."
This appears to be one area where Prince Harry is willing to give his dad a little bit of a pass. In a BBC documentary "Diana, 7 Days," Harry said of King Charles, "But you know, he was there for us, He was the one out of two left, and he tried to do his best and to make sure that we were protected and looked after" (via Today). He added, "But ... he was going through the same grieving process as well."