Prince Harry claims Prince William refused to go with on a pre-wedding walkabout

Prince Harry has claimed that the Prince of Wales cancelled plans made to spend the night together ahead of his 2018 wedding – leaving him feeling low. 

The Duke of Sussex, 38, claimed in his explosive memoirs Spare, officially published on Tuesday, that Prince William, 40, was meant to spend the night with him and friends at the Coworth Park Hotel on the eve of his wedding to Meghan Markle on 19 May 2018. 

But he claims now that his older brother cancelled at the last minute, citing that he needed to stay with the Princess of Wales and their children instead. After Harry tried to persuade him further, he eventually agreed to come and have dinner with him, but still refused to stay the night, the memoir recounts.  

Harry also wrote that William was originally reluctant to take part in a public walkabout ahead of the wedding, although he eventually obliged and the pair met with members of the public by King Edward Gate in Windsor. 

The Duke of Sussex said that the alleged Prince of Wales’ cancellation was among a series of factors that made him feel ‘low’ in the days leading to his wedding day. 

He said he was feeling particularly gloomy on the eve of his wedding, in part due to the row that is alleged to have happened between Kate and Meghan about bridesmaids’ dresses. 

The royal added that the friends who were with him at the luxury hotel asked ‘where Prince William was’. 

He claimed the brothers had planned to spend the night together and to go on  a public walkabout, just like they had done for William’s wedding to the Princess of Wales in 2011. 

Prince Harry said a series of factors contributed to making him feel low in the run-up to his wedding, pictured  

The Duke of Sussex said he wondered what had made his brother change his mind, and whether it was the row over the dresses or the fact he was going to get married while sporting a beard, which had been another point of tension in the run-up to the wedding. 

He also said he wondered whether William was unhappy that he had made his childhood best-friend, Charlie van Straubenzee, his best man over his brother. 

‘Was he resentful that he wasn’t my best man? That I’d asked my old friend Charlie? (The Palace had published that Willy was my best man like I had been when Kate ans he got married),’ he wrote in the memoirs. 

Prince Harry suggested in the memoirs that Prince William was not his real best-man and refused to spend the night with him before his wedding (pictured on the day)

He also added that his brother had been reluctant to take part in a walkabout, allegedly telling him: ‘you don’t have to do everything [the press office] tells you to.’ 

Harry claimed he realised at the time that he had been mistaken to believe that the bond he shared with his brother would survive any type of row. 

However, he noted in the book that William eventually changed his mind after a meeting with the late Queen Elizabeth and agreed to go on a walkabout outside of King Edward Gate. 

During their outing, Harry claimed he invited his brother to spend the evening with him again, and that William agreed to come to dinner, but said he would have to go back home to Kate and the children.  

At this point, the Duke claims, he realised he was mistaken to think that his bond with his brother was more important than any rows.

 It comes as Prince Harry has detailed several altercations opposing him and his brother in Spare, including one heated discussion on Meghan Markle at Nottingham Cottege where he claimed the Prince of Wales grabbed him by the collar and made him fall on the floor. 

At another point, he claimed his brother ‘lunged’ at him and ‘grabbed his shirt twice’ in front of their father during a row over his interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021. 

Harry, in his bombshell memoir, detailed how Prince William was ‘shouting’ and ‘really steaming’ when he grasped at him during the dispute in front of then-Prince Charles following the funeral of their grandfather, Prince Philip.

After the row, Prince Harry alleges that William used a secret code phrase about the late Princess Diana the two brother share. 

Read more: 

The upper-crust pugilist and the hard-partying pal: James Meade and Thomas Van Straubenzee were the ‘REAL best men’ at Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding, says Prince Harry (who wore THAT Nazi outfit to one of their birthday bashes) 

Prince Harry confirms he and Meghan DID announce the Duchess’ pregnancy at Princess Eugenie’s wedding – and he ‘delivered’ Lilibet so his was the ‘first face she saw’ 

Did Harry have a secret best man too? Friends of the warring brothers hint Duke of Sussex’s ‘favoured usher’ Jack Mann had the top job at his wedding… after he claimed role by William’s side was ‘all for show’ in memoir ‘Spare’