The Most Unhinged, TMI Revelations From Prince Harry’s Tell-All

Multiple details about his royal penis; shade at William; some extremely low-stakes lip gloss drama—what more could you ask for, besides none of it at all?

By Kylie Cheung | January 6, 2023 | 5:53pm

Celebrities Royal Tea

Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images, Penguin Random House

For years, the goings on of the British royals have been the subject of much speculation and a fair bit of secrecy, with tidbits of information usually only leaking out when it was convenient for the palace—or when something in their militant PR plan spun wildly out of control. But that’s all changed. You’ve heard of a charm offensive? Well, Prince Harry andMeghan Markle have introduced us to its cousin, the TMI offensive. Harry’s memoir, Spare, comes out on Tuesday, and the leaks from it have whipped the internet’s gossipers into a frenzy (including us!).

Frankly, I’ve been relatively disinterested in everything pertaining to this debacle; I’m just not a “royal tea” person—though I fully respect those who are. I am, however, something of a petty gossip enthusiast, so Spare has really given me a lot to think about.

However, there are only so many stories we have the stomach for here at Jezebel, so we decided to round up everything we’ve learned—in many cases, against our will—from the Spare leaks so far. We’ve got Harry’s observations about his brother Prince William’s hairline (meow!), multiple revelations about his own penis (truly, no one asked), and some details about how he lost his virginity.

For better or worse, the man really dishes. To that end, I say to Harry what I say to most people who over-share: You’re brave for this—arguably too brave.

Harry’s frostbitten penis

At William and Kate Middleton’s storybook 2011 wedding, Harry had a frostbitten penis. In Spare, according to Page Six, the prince reveals that in April 2011, he had just come home from a 200-mile charity walk in the Arctic and was “horrified to discover that my nether regions were frost nipped.” The penile frostbite persisted throughout William and Kate’s nuptials. Truly not something I had on my bingo card for this book.

Shade at William’s hair (or lack thereof)

Is Prince Harry reading our tweets?? Page Six reports that Harry comes for his older brother’s substantially receding hairline in his memoir.

“I looked at Willy, really looked at him, perhaps for the first time since we were little,” Harry writes, recalling their grandfather, Prince Philip’s, funeral in 2021. He claims he could barely recognize his brother’s resemblance to their mother and calls William’s balding “alarming” and “more advanced than mine.”

My sisters and I don’t always have the kindest things to say to or about one another, but woof. I would probably only stoop this low (at least publicly) if, say, my sibling disrespected the person I love and once physically attacked me over them... More on that shortly.

More about Harry’s dick

Another thing I could have gone my whole life happily not knowing.

He writes in Spare, “There were countless stories in books, and papers (even The New York Times) about Willy and me not being circumcised. … Mummy [Princess Diana] had forbidden it, they all said, and while it’s absolutely true that the chance of getting penile frostbite is much greater if you’re not circumcised, all the stories were false. I was snipped as a baby.”

Harry’s deflowering

The story of how Prince Harry lost his virginity—finally, something I was curious about—turns out to be short and simple. In Spare, he describes losing his virginity to an older woman. “She liked horses, quite a lot, and treated me not unlike a young stallion,” he writes, specifying that it was a “quick ride, after which she’d smacked my rump and sent me to grace.” It all took place in “a grassy field behind a busy pub.” How romantic. Harry doesn’t name the “older woman,” but that’s no match for the internet.

Willy? Seriously??

After all this dick talk, I must quickly pause here to reflect on Harry referring to his older brother as Willy like, constantly. Sure, maybe I need to grow up, but “willy” is British slang for penis, it’s not even my weirdly perverse American brain!!!

Harry & William’s fight

This was one of the first big bombshells to leak: Harry claims in Spare that William at one point physically attacked and knocked him to the floor during a fight about Meghan Markle. “It all happened so fast. So very fast,” Harry writes. “He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.”

According to Harry, William had called Markle “difficult,” “rude,” and “abrasive.” In response, Harry compared William to the racist tabloids covering his wife. Harry ended up getting scraped and bruised from the altercation, which William told him not to tell Meghan about. Messy, messy, messy…

Harry’s personal death toll

Overall, Harry’s memoir seems to deal more with interpersonal family drama, rather than the fog of war. But alongside the spats and rifts he details, he gets a lot darker, writing about how many people he killed during his time in the British military, for which he served six tours in Afghanistan as the pilot of an attack helicopter.

“My number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me,” he writes, calling the people he killed “enemies of humanity” and saying he did it as vengeance for 9/11.

I don’t know, man.

Blame game over the infamous Nazi costume

In 2005, Harry, William, and Kate attended a “colonial and Native” themed party—a bit too on the nose for a party for British aristocracy. In Spare, Harry recalls that he was choosing between a pilot costume and a Nazi costume, and, well, we all know which he eventually landed on. Now, he claims (and blames) the choice on his brother and future sister-in-law. He writes that “they both howled” when he tried on the costume for him. This doesn’t make them look great—but a grown man blaming his most offensive choices on his brother doesn’t make Harry look good either.

The lip gloss incident™

Harry claims that when Markle asked to borrow some of Kate’s lip gloss at a 2018 Royal Foundation Forum event, the future princess of Wales was not into it. Kate, “taken aback, went into her handbag and reluctantly pulled out a small tube.” He continued, “Meg squeezed some onto her finger and applied it to her lips. Kate grimaced.” The horror! A grimace!

Harry says they should have “been able to laugh about” the moment, but then realized it was “something bigger.” It seems like a pile of absolute nothing to me.

Crucial details on Meg’s jeans

Another style and beauty story! Harry writes that at the 2017 Invictus Games in Toronto, which he attended with Meghan, her ripped jeans had to be “approved” by the crown. The couple’s entire appearance at the games was aggressively vetted and planned, he says, calling it “the most controlled and predictable” setting for their public debut. Finally, finally, I can relate to the royals, as someone who grew up with strict parents who wanted to “approve” my outfits.

There were Suits fans in the palace

This was honestly one of the biggest bombshells to me. Harry writes that William and Kate were “religious fans” of Suits, the show Meghan starred in from 2011 to 2018. Did you know that Suits had superfans??? In any case, they were shocked when he told them he and Markle were dating: “Their mouths fell open,” Harry says, according to Page Six. “They turned to each other. Then Willy turned to me and said, ‘Fuck off?’”

Harry himself made “the mistake of Googling and watching some of her love scenes online.” Now that is some relatable, self-destructive behavior. “[Witnessing] her and a castmate mauling each other in some sort of office or conference room” would require “electric shock therapy” to make him forget it, he writes. The man is really down bad for Markle.

The Camilla of it all

Look, I have little to no opinion on mistress-turned-princess-turned-Queen Consort Camilla, but I really enjoyed this tidbit from Spare. Harry writes that he and William worried that she would be a “wicked stepmother” and didn’t want their father, then-Prince Charles, to marry her. However, Charles (famously) did.

She also apparently converted Harry’s bedroom at Clarence House in London to be her personal dressing room. “I tried not to care. But especially the first time I saw it, I cared,” Harry wrote. A cold but commendably alpha move from Ms. Camilla.