There have been a lot of secrets revealed in Prince Harry's autobiography Spare which hit bookshelves on January 10. The royal family was said to be worried about what the book may discuss. In one of the many surprising disclosures, Prince Harry accuses Buckingham Palace of spreading a "bare-faced lie" about Prince William's wedding.
And the lie was all because the royal family wanted to save face.
According to Harry, Buckingham Palace lied about him being the best man at William's 2011 wedding to Kate Middleton.
"The public had been told that I was to be best man, but that was a bare-faced lie," Harry wrote in his book.
Harry was never going to be the best man, but the family felt it couldn't let the public know.
"The public expected me to be best man, and thus the Palace saw no choice but to say that I was," Harry shares.
"In truth, Willy didn't want me giving a best-man speech. He didn't think it safe to hand me a live mic and put me in a position to go off script. I might say something wildly inappropriate. He wasn't wrong," Harry writes.
Instead, the best man role was given to two other people, Harry explains.
"The lie gave cover to James and Thomas, two civilians, two innocents," Harry writes, speaking of the two men who served as William's best men, James Meade and Thomas van Straubenzee.
"Had they been outed as Willy's best men, the rabid press would've chased them, tracked them, hacked them, investigated them, ruined their families' lives. Both chaps were shy, quiet. They couldn't handle such an onslaught, and shouldn't be expected to," he adds.
"Willy explained all this to me and I didn't blink. I understood. We even had a laugh about it, speculating about the inappropriate things I might've said in my speech."
The royal family did the same thing again when it was time for Harry to get married.
For his 2018 wedding to Meghan Markle, the royals shared William would be Harry's best man, but he wasn't.
"Was he feeling bad about not being my best man?" Harry writes in the book that William refused to go out with him the night before his wedding. "Was he upset that I'd asked my old mate Charlie?"
Harry shares many secrets about his family, but he says he's not trying to hurt his family.
The royal family doesn't generally share details of what happens behind the scenes, but during the press tour ahead of the release of his book, Harry explained that his speaking isn't meant to hurt his family.
"None of anything that I've written, anything I've included is ever intended to hurt my family," Harry said in his interview with 60 Minutes.
"But it does give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up, and also squashes this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers."
Spare is available in bookstores and as a digital audiobook now.
Check out our Meghan Markle page for all the latest news about Meghan, Prince Harry, and their growing family.
