Prince Harry's Memoir Acquired by Tabloids He Is Suing on Day of Chaos

Prince Harry's memoir ceased to be the publishing industry's best kept secret after some of its biggest bombshells leaked through multiple news outlets days before publication.

Possibly most embarrassingly of all for the new author, The Sun and the Daily Mail—two newspapers he is suing—acquired copies of Spare after it was reported it was accidentally put on sale early by a bookshop in Spain.

After initially boasting about their scoops in online articles, both publications dropped several exclusives on Thursday, including details of how Prince Harry and Prince William begged King Charles III not to marry Camilla, now the queen consort.

The two U.K. tabloids, having had their versions translated into English, revealed that the prince describes meeting Camilla for the first time.

The Sun reported that he told himself the experience was similar to getting an injection: "This is nothing. Close your eyes and you won't even feel it."

Camilla was bored, he reportedly wrote, and saw the meeting as "pure formality" because Harry was not an heir to the throne but they did speak briefly about horses.

Harry, the newspaper reported, was worried Camilla might become his "wicked stepmother" but both Harry and William were willing to forgive her in "their hearts" if she could make Charles happy. He and William, however, begged Charles not to marry her.

Quoted by the Daily Mail, the book reads: "I remember wondering... if she would be cruel to me; if she would be like all the wicked stepmothers in the stories."

He added: "Willy had been suspicious of the Other Woman for a long time, which confused and tormented him; When those suspicions were confirmed, he felt agonizing remorse for not having done or said anything before."

Harry and wife Meghan Markle have between them launched four lawsuits against the Mail and its sister title The Mail on Sunday and one against The Sun and banned their PR team from engaging with both newspapers. Newsweek has contacted the Sussexes and Transworld, Harry's publisher in the U.K.

And Rupert Murdoch's U.S. tabloid got in on the action too with a series of exclusives published by Page Six, who also obtained a copy.

The couple have never sued the New York Post but Harry did complain of Page Six running pictures of Meghan picking Archie up from his first day at nursery.

He told the Armchair Expert podcast in May: "Page Six of the New York Post, they took photos of my son being picked up from school on his first day."

He added: "It's this sort of rabid feeding frenzy, and going back to the kids point it's absolutely true. These kids don't get a choice; they don't get a say in it."

Among Page Six's exclusives, Harry's memoir says Charles would joke about the prospect he was not Harry's real father.

The extract read: "Pa liked telling stories, and this was one of the best in his repertoire. He'd always end with a burst of philosophizing ... Who knows if I'm really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I'm even your real father?

"He'd laugh and laugh, though it was a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumor circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy's former lovers: Major James Hewitt. One cause of this rumor was Major Hewitt's flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism."

Another section said Harry felt he lost his brother when William married Kate Middleton in 2011.

Quoted by Page Six, it read: "The brother I'd escorted into Westminster Abbey that morning was gone—forever. Who could deny it?"

"He'd never again be first and foremost Willy," Harry continued. "We'd never again ride together across the Lesotho countryside with capes blowing behind us. We'd never again share a horsey-smelling cottage while learning to fly. Who shall separate us? Life, that's who."

Hours earlier, a separate leak to The Guardian revealed that Prince Harry accused William of attacking him during an argument about Meghan.

All in all, Harry and his team appeared to lose control of what was once thought to be publishing's most closely guarded secret in the space of less than 24 hours and some of the main beneficiaries were the very tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic that the couple have criticized the most.