‘Spare’: Prince Harry went to Scotland Yard over the palace leaks & sabotage

In Spare, I was surprised to see Prince Harry detailed some of what happened at the Sandringham Summit in 2020. The summit was to negotiate the terms of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s exit from the UK, following weeks and months of leaking, abuse, threats and harassment. Of course Meghan wasn’t invited – the summit was only agreed to after Meghan left the UK to return to Canada, where Archie had stayed behind. A good chunk of this chapter was devoted to “the Bee,” aka Edward Young (QEII’s private secretary) lying to Harry about the options on the table, about how there were five options to be discussed but it turned out that Young had only printed out the agreement for Option 5 – the Sussexes walk away completely. Young told Harry that his printer was on the fritz so that’s why the copies for Option 5 were the only ones available. Harry went to Young’s office and found out that wasn’t the case, his printer was fine. Soon after that discovery – that Young had lied to him in front of witnesses – Harry stepped away to get some air. He and William ended up talking:

We went up and down the yew hedges. The day was freezing. I was wearing only a light jacket, and Willy was in a jumper, so both of us were shivering. I was struck again by the beauty of it all. As in the state room, I felt as if I’d never seen a palace before. These gardens, I thought, they’re paradise. Why can’t we just enjoy them?

I was braced for a lecture. It didn’t come. Willy was subdued. He wanted to listen. For the first time in a long time my brother heard me out, and I was so grateful.

I told him about one past staff member sabotaging Meg. Plotting against her. I told him about one current staff member, whose close friend was taking payments for leaking private stuff to the press about Meg and me. My sources on this were above reproach, including several journalists and barristers. Plus, I’d made a visit to New Scotland Yard.

Willy frowned. He and Kate had their own suspicions. He’d look into it. We agreed to keep talking.

[From Spare, by Prince Harry]

I haven’t seen the British media pick this up? They are so busy trying to make it sound like Harry didn’t break any news or that he spent the whole book talking about his “todger,” when really, Harry left some breadcrumbs for some very big, important issues. He actually went to Scotland Yard about what was happening within Kensington Palace. He knew who was being paid for information. He suspected another staffer was sabotaging Meghan. The thing is… guess what, William already knew all of this, or parts of it, because he was intimately involved in the campaign against Meghan and Harry.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, WENN, Backgrid.

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50 Responses to “‘Spare’: Prince Harry went to Scotland Yard over the palace leaks & sabotage”

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  1. equality says:

    If your printer quit working wouldn’t option 1 be the only print out? What morons. I love that PH went to his office and checked.

    • Seaflower says:

      This.

    • Feeshalori says:

      Of course, start with the most draconian option, work your way backwards then claim your printer is on the fritz. I see.

    • Erin says:

      You work for the effing Queen of England and you can’t find a working printer in that palace?? i k ow we talk about these people being completely incompetent but come on this is just straight up BS. For something this important you couldn’t bother to find another way to print something? I don’t buy it at all.

      Also, after the weeks we have spent digging through everything that M&H have gone through and what W&K, C&C so many royals do I just cannot imagine living this way. Constantly scheming, briefing, backstabbing, looking over your shoulder, the games that the press and RR play with you, and you have to participate in. I just can’t imagine the stress of waking up every morning and thinking about what story I’m going to plant against who today because they briefed against me or someone close to me two weeks ago. Or what story can we make up to take the attention away from something else I’ve been doing that I don’t want the public to linger on. On top of the constant knowledge that the press and RR have dirt on you and everyone in your family that they can drop at any moment. And I know we don’t even know that half of it!

    • BeanieBean says:

      Why does an agreement have to be printed at all? Don’t they know how to digitally sign PDFs? Are they truly that incompetent?

      • Scooby Gang says:

        @Beaniebean – This was my very first thought. They couldn’t review documents on a tablet? They have to print everything out? Were they planning to have H sign with a quill/ink pot? Get with the times, people.

      • DeeSea says:

        Hey, KCIII should implement digital signatures for all of his future ceremonial document signings. That way he won’t need to worry about those pesky, vexing inkwells.

      • Jennifer says:

        England probably requires a fancy ink pen 😛

    • Silver Birch says:

      I guess the sun really has set on the British Empire if they don’t even have a functioning printer!

  2. Brassy Rebel says:

    As Peter Hunt points out, after vowing to look into it, apparently, William did nothing. If he did, we’ve never heard what came if it.

    • Snuffles says:

      Yeah, I’m sure William never looked into it because he was behind it all. But makes me wonder if Harry and his people did a complete investigation and he knows EXACTLY what went down and he’s teasing that knowledge in the book.

      • Harper says:

        Harry told Bryony Gordon that his family knows what they did to Meghan and Harry knows why they did it. And I suspect it’s in the other 400 pages of the book. The other pages he can release now that Betty’s gone.

      • TigerMcQueen says:

        They probably had a mini Summit before the Summit, like their dinner when H&M were on the Oceania Tour. It’s been obvious to me they decided to only offer the most draconian option for H&M’s exit, thinking that Harry would 1) freak out and not take it and leave Meghan and Archie, or 2) take it and fail and come back and leave Meghan and Archie. They have always underestimated Harry.

  3. Polo says:

    Yeah I remember Christopher jones leaving and I don’t know if it was before or after but byline had an article about him leaning to his boyfriend who was friends with Dan Wooten (they went to the same UNI). I think that’s what this story was about..
    Nothing much came of it after that though..

  4. Jais says:

    As a reader, it seems pretty clear that there’s a good chance that William already knows all this bc he was a part of it. Does Harry see this too? He’s clearly giving William an out here in blaming it all on the staff. Is that to give grace to his brother or does he really not think William was involved? I’m actually not sure.

    • Polo says:

      I think at this time he probably didn’t know or see the extent of Williams involvement.
      In one of his interviews he says once they left to Cali is when he had another revelation.

      I also think once Jason k got involved with the bullying announcement and worked with the daily mail it all probably clicked. At that point it was obvious William was a part of this. We see that in the documentary when they say “it’s your brother..”

    • Layla says:

      The fact that Jason Knauf is still in the keen’s employ is proof enough

      • Coldbloodedjellydonut says:

        Not to mention that the palace recently granted him an honour for his service. They’re such pigs.

  5. Noki says:

    Surely at this stage Harry must have known Willy was involved or was he still in denial? I feel the Keens were especially twisted in telling him they also had their suspicions.

    • Amy Bee says:

      He knows. He said so in the docuseries.

      • Noki says:

        I know,i am saying this meeting in 2020 why was he still talking to Willy about leaks surely he knew by then.

      • Becks1 says:

        I think he was kind of turning a blind eye to it, in a way. That’s not the best saying here but its what came to my head, lol. I think he just kept hoping against hope that these things were happening without William’s knowledge. And William manipulated him into believing so – when he told him “oh….well we did tell Camilla about the dress fitting and the tears” (so then Harry assumed that Camilla leaked it – and she might have, but i still think it was W&K and they were covering their tracks). And in the garden after the Sandringham summit, Harry is telling William what he knows and he was like “yes Kate and I have our own suspicions there.” Of course William had a “suspicion” about who it was because he was directing them to do it!! But he was stringing Harry along.

        I think its clear from the book that Harry loves his father and brother. I think several of us have said this over the past few months, but its also clear that Harry didn’t really expect more from his father in terms of the leaks, using him for PR, etc. But he did expect more from William. I think in 2020, he was still expecting more from William. I don’t think he does anymore.

  6. Layla says:

    He’s either talking about Jason Knauf? Aren’t he and Sad little man university friends?
    Also I was thinking about crygate? Could Melisa Toubati or Jason Knauf have been CT’s source? I can’t remember was she fired before or after this incident

  7. Harper says:

    Harry doing reconnaissance in the nether regions of Sandringham and finding the printer busily humming away was one of my favorite visuals in the book. I believe William was subdued after the meeting because his goal was met–that overachiever Meghan who made him look bad was finally leaving the UK. He’d figure out the part about getting Harry back later.

    • Jais says:

      It really was. And EY just staring at him and not saying a word as the printer is humming away. The duplicity. This image really sums up the inner workings of the firm.

    • Feeshalori says:

      I think what’s most insulting about this BS excuse about the printer is that it was so easily disproven. And EY caught in that bold-faced lie and maintaining a bland face shows they just didn’t care.

      • Kingston says:

        Its clear that the Bee (EY); the Fly and the Wasp are used to their bold-faced lying: to the queen, to Harry and, of course, if theyre lying to the queen, then theyre lying to charles, that idiot bullyam and everyone else in that mausoleum called buckingham palace.

        Rmbr in section 3 after H brought betty up to speed on some of the shidt that was going on and that he had asked the bee the Fly and the Wasp for their help and intervention with the media, to no avail; and she turned to the Bee and the Wasp and asked: “is this true” And they said, with their bold-faced, lying dry eyes: “Your Majesty, we never received any of these requests for support.”

        H said they consider themselves The Monarch.

      • Becks1 says:

        @Kingston that part was ENRAGING to me. They’re just going to sit there and out and out lie to the Queen because they are in charge and because they can.

        A constant question over the past few years is “how could Harry still think so highly of his grandmother?” One response to that has been that the Queen is getting very filtered information and is only being told what the men in gray want her to know. I think here we have a really clear example of that. They’re not just filtering information, they’re lying, creating new information, etc. Harry knew this and knew the problem was with the people surrounding the queen.

        Now we can say that a fish rots from the head, or whatever the saying is, because it does, but the Queen was, what, 93 at this point? almost 94? She probably thought she could depend on these people who her son put in place (or figured she wouldn’t be around long enough for this to be her problem.)

    • Where'sMyTiara says:

      That was Harry in full Virgo mode.
      We stan.

    • cws says:

      I don’t think William wanted Harry back at all…
      Maybe after forcing him to take off a year..

  8. C-Shell says:

    This part of Spare was an eye opener, for sure! I’m a broken record. I want to know what the other options were that Harry didn’t describe. It’s the bits that he (or the lawyers) decided to omit that are so tantalizing. Bless him, all Bulliam had to do was not yell or assault Harry and Harry’s all comforted. These insights into how intimidating W was all of Harry’s life are heartbreaking. The worst is in the 400 pages that didn’t make the cut.

    • Scooby Gang says:

      @C-Shell – Exactly this.

      “… all Bulliam had to do was not yell or assault Harry and Harry’s all comforted.”

      W’s vile behavior has become so normalized (at least within the family) that H felt grateful and comforted simply because W did him the favor of not verbally or physically assaulting him.

      It’s both infuriating and heartbreaking.

  9. bus says:

    Interesting. At that point in time, was he still of the opinion that it was NOT the primaries intentionally leaking about him and Megan? …because why specify, directly to William, the particular staffers who were betraying them in this manner if at that point Harry believed that William was directly responsible? If you believe William is responsible for and authorizing the leaks, you would say “I know you authorized this person and that person and I have proof”. That’s a very different conversation. Eventually, Harry started to blame William and Charles for a lot of it, simply for not having stopped both what they authorized and what they failed to stop. It’d be interesting to have a time line of leaks, laid out left to right, oldest to newest, and then ‘stack’ the likely sources for the leaks, with the most likely source on the bottom (Primary/Staffer), then the leaker (Primary/Staffer), then the tabloid and journalist. Then you have a timeline of public events beneath it with a matching time frame indicating dating, engagement, wedding, births, official state trips, etc. I think the whole thing would explain itself with that simple graphic.

    • Rnot says:

      At that point Harry probably assumed that his brother’s love and their prior pact against leaking MUST mean that William didn’t know all of it. He may have realized more after he told him and nothing improved. William did know about it and either couldn’t or wouldn’t stop it. If he wouldn’t then that’s betrayal. If he couldn’t then he needs to be saved. I think Harry has realized more of his brother’s complicity since then. That statement in the interview with Bryony Gordon was a gauntlet thrown down.

    • SomeChick says:

      that would be amazing! maybe a journalist with some ethics will take it on. not going to be me. I don’t want them running over my dog.

  10. Amy Bee says:

    William pretended to not know what was going on.

    • Carty says:

      Was this the same meeting where Willy was screaming and threatened him in front of QE2 and Chuck?

  11. Amy Bee says:

    The press didn’t touch this story because it implicates them.

  12. Eurydice says:

    So many receipts.

  13. ChillinginDC says:

    I think what makes me laugh is that Edward Young thought pushing Harry out would save the monarchy and it did the exact opposite. Smooth move there my man.

    • Jais says:

      Right? EY is the epitome of the evil courtier trope. He’s also a member of RAVEC that’s blocking harry from getting security. Busy little worker bee still trying to protect the hive.

  14. Myeh says:

    The secretary sounds like a real scumbag but then again do we expect anything different from these racist people upholding the OG white hierarchal order for their masters.

  15. Lissen says:

    For me, this so-called summit clarifies why Harry loved his granny despite all the abuse the monarchy had heaped on him and his family. I had always found it bewildering. No more. The queen of England etc. had little power. The grey men ruled.

    Harry sat down beside granny, and immediately the Bee buzzed over to Pa. Chuck came over. Then Willy came over. No conversation possible between grandmother & grandson.

    I found the moment threatening & chilling.

  16. Emily_C says:

    As we all know, Willy was calm about it because he knew about it and was guiding it. I remember someone called Will “sly” when he was a child.

  17. one of the marys says:

    What role would Scotland Yard have in all this? I’m confused by that reference

  18. why says:

    “the Bee” is someone who never had to do printing on his own cause anyone with working experience that is not how faulty printer works. printer print from the first page you moron! so obviously option 5 is on the first (and only) page.