King Charles and the royals are determined to avoid the publication of another "rage-filled" memoir from a family member after Prince Harry's tell-all "Spare," according to royal expert Christopher Andersen.
"The King" author told Fox News Digital that the book, which was released in January and contained bombshell revelations about the royals, may have permanently damaged the 38-year-old Duke of Sussex's relationship with his family.
"There's no question that Harry's tell-all memoir was a bitter pill for the royal family to swallow, especially for Charles and William," Andersen said.
He continued, "Harry's takedown of his brother, who comes off in the book as something of a bully, was not only personally wounding but also threatened to tarnish William and Kate [Middleton's] pristine image."
"Fortunately for the new Prince and Princess of Wales, polls show they're more popular than ever. But that doesn't mean William isn't holding a profound grudge against Harry. As things stands now, the rift looks permanent."
For most of their lives, William and Harry appeared to share a close relationship after enduring a number of hardships at a young age, including their parents' highly-publicized divorce and the death of their mother, Princess Diana. William was 15 and Harry was 12 when Diana died in a car crash at the age of 36 in August 1997.
In "Spare," Harry referred to William as his "beloved brother and arch-nemesis" and described their relationship as more complicated than it had appeared on the surface. Harry recounted instances of jealousy and explosive arguments between the two and recalled that William was cold and distant to him when they attended Eton together. He recalled feeling slighted and diminished as the "spare" to William's "heir."
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"One of the important things the publication of Spare did was to shine a light on the fact that no one likes to feel ignored or shunted aside — not even royals who are just two or three steps from the crown," Andersen explained. "Growing up, Harry was third in line to the throne and yet felt ignored, dismissed, irrelevant — and in the end abused as a scapegoat."
Harry also wrote in "Spare" that William wasn't very encouraging of his relationship with his now-wife Meghan Markle, who he married in 2018. The pair, who share son Archie, 3, and daughter Lilibet, 1, announced that they were stepping down from their roles as official royals and moving to the United States in 2020.
In addition, Harry recounted a fight between Markle and William's wife Kate Middleton over bridesmaid dresses, after which he claimed that he found his wife in tears "on the floor."
Among the book's many other claims, Harry accused William of physically attacking him during a 2019 fight over Markle.
"This is really sibling rivalry on steroids — a situation that King Charles does not want to see repeated in the future," Andersen said.
Andersen also noted that William's son and heir Prince George, 10, is now the age that the Duke of Cambridge was when his parents' separation was announced.
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William and Kate, who married in 2011, share George, daughter Princess Charlotte, 8 and son Prince Louis, 5.
"George is old enough now to realize what lies ahead for him," Andersen added. "William and Kate don't want him crushed by that, and they don't want Charlotte and Louis to feel sidelined or ignored either."
He continued, "So, to take some of the pressure off George, his brother and sister will be carted out more and more as they get older. The last thing anyone wants to see in 20 years is Charlotte and Louis letting fly with rage-filled memoirs of their own."
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"George is the first future monarch being raised in the era of social media," Andersen observed. "Will he — or any of the Cambridge children — have their own websites, their own Twitter and Instagram accounts? And how do they retain their privacy as they enter adolescence? The paparazzi are one thing, but anyone with a cellphone can take a potentially embarrassing picture — so this younger group of royals will have to cope with that."
