Early next week will see the release of Prince Harry's new memoir, Spare, which many believe is set to rock the Royal Family with explosive allegations and bombshell claims.
Among them is Harry's assertion that his brother Prince William reportedly attacked him physically.
The memoir's name comes from the old saying: "An heir and a spare," and refers to the aristocratic tradition of producing an heir to ensure succession, and a "spare" to take over should the heir not survive or be unfit for rule.
King Charles III's younger, brother Prince Andrew, was long known as the spare until the births of Princes William and Harry, which pushed Andrew from second-in-line to fourth-in-line to the throne.
Despite being under stringent security ahead of its public release on January 10, The Guardian was reportedly able to obtain an exclusive copy of Harry's latest memoir prior to its public release. According to the outlet, the 38-year-old's retelling of several alleged events is damning.
One incident, in particular, was one that allegedly occurred at Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, where Harry and his wife Meghan Markle were living in 2019.
Harry described how his relationship with William, now 40, had fallen apart following his marriage to US-born Meghan, now 41.
As detailed in Harry and Meghan's Netflix docuseries, Meghan suffered intense scrutiny at the hands of the British press, who Harry claimed spun a false narrative that painted her as a difficult diva who was only after Harry for his status and fame.
In his memoir, Harry writes that William had reportedly wanted to talk over "the whole rolling catastrophe" of the brothers' strained relationship and how it had been played out in the press, but had arrived to Harry's home already "piping hot."
Per Harry's version of events in the memoir, he had accused his brother of repeating the press narrative, while William accused Harry of being irrational. Eventually, writes Harry, the two men had begun engaging in a screaming match.
Harry then hit out at his brother for acting like an heir who was incapable of grasping why his younger brother was not content being just a spare. William then allegedly told his brother he was only trying to ameliorate the situation.
The younger brother apparently responded: "Are you serious? Help me? Sorry - is that what you call this? Helping me?"
When he tried to calm his brother down by offering him a glass of water, Harry writes that William became irate. "He set down the water, called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor.
"I landed on the dog's bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out."
William then allegedly told his brother to hit him back, which Harry refused to do.
According to Harry, his older brother then promptly left, but returned to apologize, before telling Harry that he needn't tell Meghan about the incident.
At first, Harry apparently only told his therapist, before eventually revealing what had happened to Meghan, who saw the "scrapes and bruises" on his back. She "wasn't that surprised, and wasn't all that angry [...] She was terribly sad," he writes.
According to The Guardian, the unifying theme of Harry's memoir is his discontentment with being simply the spare - something that King Charles III's had allegedly told Princess Diana upon his birth.
"Wonderful! Now you've given me an heir and a spare - my work is done," Charles reportedly had told his then-wife, per the Daily Mail.
