King Charles III and his heir William remained unmoved on Thursday in their first public appearances since the publication of Harry’s memoir, a scathing exposé of the British monarchy, which has had a tumultuous start in bookstores, AFP reported.

A reporter asked William if he would ever comment on Harry’s book when he arrived for a tour of the hospital in Liverpool, northwest England.

The Prince of Wales did not react as he greeted the crowd with a smile alongside his wife Kate.

True to Britain’s famous Second World War slogan, “Keep Calm and Carry On,” Charles III ignored the scandal when he met the public outside Balmoral.

It was in this Scottish castle that Elizabeth II died in September, and where in 1997 she informed her children William and Harry of their mother Diana’s death in Paris, a scene described in a great deal of uncompromising detail in Spare.

“Beloved Brother and Enemy”

In this memoir, Prince Harry, who has been self-exiled in California since 2020, spares no one, although he claims that he does not want to offend anyone and wants reconciliation: neither himself, whose youth was marked by drugs and alcohol, nor his father. , King Charles III, nor his brother William, nor his stepmother Camilla, nor his sister-in-law Kate.

The most criticized is “his beloved brother and best enemy.” William, who has been described as hot-tempered, is said to have never loved his wife Meghan, whom he considered “ill-mannered and aggressive”, and during an argument in 2019 he knocked Harry to the ground with a dog dish.

Buckingham Palace is keeping quiet about the revelations, which is not good news ahead of Charles III’s coronation on May 6.

But the press reported, citing anonymous sources, that the Windsors were unhappy, and several tabloids said on Thursday that Harry and Meghan were no longer welcome at the global event, already marred by controversy.

“The family expects Harry and Meghan to find an excuse not to come,” a source told the Daily Mail.

I trust Harry less and less

In Britain, the prince is often portrayed as a spoiled child, with only 24% of Britons now having a favorable opinion of the Duke of Sussex, according to a YouGov poll conducted after the memoirs were published.

He and his wife Meghan are now even more unpopular than Prince Andrew, brother of Charles III, who was removed from the monarchy after a sex scandal.

Only 21% of Britons believe Harry’s main motivation for presenting his version is, as he claims, while 41% believe money is the issue.

“It seems a bit like a way to make money and keep the press on them (Harry and Meghan),” Shannon Simons, a staff member at the Liverpool hospital William and Kate visited, told AFP in an interview.

Instead, her co-star Stacey Oates expressed her sympathy for the Californian couple: “They seem more normal for the young, whereas the royals seem a little dated.”

“It’s very sad what they went through. I got the impression that Harry still hasn’t recovered from what happened to his mother,” continued the 35-year-old nurse.

Despite hostility from much of the public, the memoir sold more than 1.4 million copies in English on its first day in the UK, US and Canada, according to publisher Penguin Random House.

This is unprecedented for a publishing giant.

The French translation, which had a print run of 210,000 copies, will be reprinted in 130,000 copies, Fayard told AFP.

The publisher reports that demand from booksellers is about 20% higher than for the first volume of Barack Obama’s 2020 presidential memoir, The Promised Land.

“Spare” sold like hotcakes in Romania. The Nemira publishing house announced that it had sold out the entire 15,000 print run of Prince Harry’s memoirs, Spare (Spare), which caused a loud scandal in Great Britain, and would urgently print a second print run in honor of the memory. demand.

Incendiary revelations were made by Prince Harry in his book

Harry’s feeling of being a ‘stance’ is the theme of his book, with chapters describing his childhood, school years, his career in the British Army, his relationship with his parents and brother and life with Meghan at court, his wedding and marriage. to their own experience as parents.

Early on, Harry talks about how his father, now King Charles, said to his wife, Princess Diana, on Harry’s birthday: “Great! Now you have given me an heir and a reserve, my work is done.”

Elsewhere in his book, Harry blames the entire royal family from afar. He talks about the scandalous photos of him in a Nazi officer’s suit when he was 20, insisting that William and his wife Kate Middleton encouraged him to choose the suit.

He also tells how he learned of his mother Lady Diana’s death, how he objected to his father’s remarriage to Camilla, whom he saw as an “evil stepmother”, and claims to have killed 25 Taliban fighters while a Royal Air Force helicopter pilot in Afghanistan.