Damn. This is brutal.
Apparently it wasn’t just Prince William and Princess Catherine who were jealous of Meghan Markle‘s popularity — King Charles III was, too! As Prince Harry puts it in his upcoming memoir Spare (via an excerpt released by Us Weekly on Thursday), the new monarch once claimed there wasn’t “enough money” to fund the American actress in the royal family!
Related: Prince William Was A Huge Fan Of Suits Before Harry Met Meghan Markle
In the pages of his tell-all, the Duke of Sussex argues the 74-year-old told him “there’s not enough money to go around” because he was “already having to pay” for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. This, of course, wasn’t a comment Harry was going to take lightly, he wrote:
“Pa didn’t financially support Willy and me, and our families, out of any largesse. That was his job. That was the whole deal. We agreed to serve the monarch, go wherever we were sent, do whatever we were told, surrender our autonomy, keep our hands and feet inside the gilded cage at all times, and in exchange the keepers of the cage agreed to feed and clothe us.”
What a depressing description of what it’s like to be a royal…
Considering all this, though, it really shouldn’t have been a surprise to Queen Camilla‘s husband that when his youngest son eventually married, he was going to have another mouth to feed. And he certainly had the money for it, judging by recent reports of what William inherited! This is why Harry doesn’t think this “wasn’t about money” at all, he furthered:
“Pa might have dreaded the rising cost of maintaining us, but what he really couldn’t stomach was someone new dominating the monarchy, grabbing the limelight, someone shiny and new coming in and overshadowing him. He’d lived through that before, and had no interest in living through it again.”
Jeez! Seems like a reference to Charles’ time with Princess Diana, who certainly captivated the world more than he anticipated before her tragic death.
Related: Prince Harry Claims William Physically ATTACKED Him!
All that said, when Harry and the Suits alum stepped down as senior working royals in 2020, Charles DID continue to support them using his private funds. In June 2021, a spokesperson for the king confirmed he had set aside “a substantial sum” of money for his son and daughter-in-law to use as they transitioned into a new chapter of their lives. The rep told Vanity Fair:
“That funding ceased in the summer of [2020]. The couple are now financially independent.”
This (somewhat) lines up with what the Archewell founder told Oprah Winfrey during the couple’s March 2021 CBS special, in which the 38-year-old revealed:
“My family literally cut me off financially, and I had to afford security for us. [I was cut off] in the first quarter of 2020. But I’ve got what my mom left me and without that, we would not have been able to do this.”
It also helps that very quickly after the exit, Harry and Meg landed two huge deals — one for their Netflix docuseries and the other for his memoir! So, now they get to profit off of spilling all their family’s dirty laundry! We bet Charles is wishing he’d just kept them in The Firm. It would have saved him lots of trouble. Reactions, Perezcious readers?!
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