Prince Harry has revealed his father King Charles told him he didn’t have “enough money” to financially support his wife Meghan Markle.
The bombshell claim was made in his explosive memoir Spare, in which he makes a series of allegations against the Royal Family.
According to the Duke, Charles said he was “already having to pay” a lot for himself, his older brother Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton.
“Pa didn’t financially support Willy and me, and our families, out of any largesse. That was his job. That was the whole deal,” Harry wrote.
The 38-year-old said he and William “agreed to serve the monarch” and stay “inside the gilded cage at all times” in order to receive monetary support.
The California-based prince said he soon realized his father wasn’t concerned about money and suggested he was jealous of Meghan’s growing popularity.
“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 writes.
He said the King had faced a similar situation with his former wife – Harry’s late mother – Princess Diana and did not want to go through it again with Meghan.
“He’d lived through that before and had no interest in living through it again,” Harry said in the book.
The extract in the memoir follows a series of allegations against Charles and other members of the Royal Family.
In another part of the book, Harry claimed growing up he felt like a literal “spare part” to his older brother in case he ever needed new organs, reiterating that “Willy was the Heir, whereas I was the Spare”.
“I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy,” he wrote.
Harry said his father could never be on a plane with William “because there must be no chance of the first and second in line to the throne being wiped out.”
“But no one gave a damn whom I travelled with; the Spare could always be spared,” Harry writes.
“This was all made explicitly clear to me from the start of life’s journey and regularly reinforced thereafter.”
Harry took another swipe at the King by explaining how his father greeted him when he was born, a story that was told to him when he was 20 years old.
Charles allegedly said at Harry’s birth, “Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an Heir and a Spare — my work is done,” the Duke of Sussex claims.
“A joke. Presumably,” he added.
