11 Surprising Secrets We Learned From Prince Harry's Controversial Book, Now Available

Prince Harry's tell-all, Spare, is finally here. On Tuesday, the highly anticipated autobiography of the estranged Royal hit bookshelves and it is filled with so many surprising secrets about members of the Royal Family, including his brother, Prince William, sister-in-law, Kate Middleton, father, King Charles, stepmother, Queen Camilla, and even Queen Elizabeth.

The Duke of Sussex also gets up close and personal about his relationship with his wife, Meghan Markle, reveals how he lost his virginity (and hints to who he lost it to), and makes some pretty hefty claims about his time in the military. Here are the 11 most surprising secrets we learned from reading Prince Harry's controversial book. 

Harry reveals that he lost his virginity at the age of 17 in 2001 to an older woman who "liked macho horses." It all went down in a "field behind a very busy pub," he writes. After the whole thing, "she sent me away," he claims. One of my many mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a very busy pub. No doubt someone had seen us," Harry writes.

Charles introduced Harry and William to his mistress-turned-wife after the death of his mother, comparing the meeting to "an injection. "This is nothing. Close your eyes and you won't even feel it," he writes. He noted that Camilla appeared "bored," meeting him for the first time and saying it was "pure formality" as he was not the heir.

"I recall wondering, right before the tea, if she'd be mean to me. If she'd be like all the wicked stepmothers in storybooks. But she wasn't. Like Willy, I did feel real gratitude for that," he wrote. Both William and Harry called her the "other woman," according to the book.

Harry also reveals the heartbreaking moment his father informed him that his mother had died. "Darling boy, Mummy's been in a car crash," Charles told him. "There were complications. Mummy was quite badly injured and taken to hospital, darling boy. He always called me "darling boy," but he was saying it quite a lot now. His voice was soft. He was in shock, it seemed."

Harry continued: "With a head injury. They tried, darling boy. I'm afraid she didn't make it." Throughout the conversation his father "didn't hug" him, but put his hand on his knee and said "It's going to be OK."

In the book, he explains that he met with a psychic, a "woman who claimed to have powers" recommended by friends in 2019. Upon their first meeting, he "felt an energy around her," and she connected him with Diana. "Your mother is with you," she told him. "I know, I've felt that of late," he responded. The woman specified that Diana was with him "right now," which made him cry. "You're living the life she couldn't. You're living the life she wanted for you," he recalls about what the woman said to him.

Harry, rumored to be a party boy, finally opens up about his relationship with drugs and alcohol, admitting he used substances to "feel different." He admits he had "taken cocaine" during the summer of 2002 when he was 17, having "a few more lines" on other occasions over the years, maintaining it was not "fun and it did not make me feel as happy as it seemed to make others," but got the job done. "It did make me feel different and that was my main goal. To feel. To be different." 

Harry also addresses the paternity rumors, confirming that Charles is his real father, and laughed off the chatter that Major James Hewitt was. "Who knows if I'm really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I'm even your real father?" Charles would joke to him. "He'd laugh and laugh, though it was a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumour circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy's former lovers: Major James Hewitt." While Harry notes that Mr Hewitt has similar "flaming ginger hair," he slams the tabloid "sadism" rumor. "My mother didn't meet Major Hewitt until long after I was born," he notes.

Per an excerpt from The Telegraph, Harry claims he killed 25 Taliban fighters on his second tour of duty in the country. "So, my number: Twenty-five. It wasn't a number that gave me any satisfaction. But neither was it a number that made me feel ashamed," he writes, adding that he "didn't think of those twenty-five as people. You can't kill people if you think of them as people. You can't really harm people if you think of them as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Bads taken away before they could kill Goods. I'd been trained to 'other-ize' them, trained well. On some level I recognized this learned detachment as problematic. But I also saw it as an unavoidable part of soldiering," he continued. 

One of the biggest bombshells Prince Harry drops in the book, is accusing his brother, the future King of England, Prince William, of physical assault. He claims that in 2019, William arrived at the Kensington Palace home he shared with Meghan, calling the Suits star "difficult", "rude" and "abrasive." William "grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and … knocked me to the floor," writes Harry. After William left Nottingham Cottage, he returned "looking regretful, and apologized."

Then, he told Harry not to tell Meghan what happened. "You mean that you attacked me?" said Harry. "I didn't attack you, Harold," Harry says to his brother. Later on Meghan saw the "scrapes and bruises," but "wasn't that surprised, and wasn't all that angry. She was terribly sad."

In 2005, Harry was photographed wearing a German Afrika Korps uniform outfit featuring a swastika on his left arm, a stunt he never lived down. In his book, claims that Will and Kate encouraged him to wear it and that they "howled with laughter" when he told them about it. "I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said. They both howled. Worse than Willy's leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point," he reportedly writes. 

After getting in an argument over flower girl dresses, Meghan made a comment to Kate, who was pregnant with her third child at the time, brushing off the incident due to her "baby brain. According to the book, the future Queen told the Suits star, "we're not close enough for you to talk about my hormones!" According to Harry, that's just how Meghan spoke with her friends.

However, his brother pointed his finger at Meghan calling her "rude" and saying "it's not what's done here in Britain." Meghan then said to him "Kindly take your finger out of my face." Harry continued: "Meg said she'd never intentionally do anything to hurt Kate, and if she ever did, she asked Kate to please just let her know so it wouldn't happen again," Harry writes. "We all hugged. Kind of."

According to Harry, at the April 2021 funeral of Prince Philip, King Charles begged his sons to reconcile. Charles reportedly "stood between" Harry and William, "looking up at our flushed faces," Harry writes. "Please boys," he quotes his father as saying, "Don't make my final years a misery."