Harry brands Camilla 'the villain' as her 'need to rehabilitate her image' ended 'with bodies left in the street'
9 January 2023, 06:51 | Updated: 9 January 2023, 06:57
Prince Harry has branded Camilla "the villain" and "dangerous", claiming bodies were "left in the street" during her image rehabilitation following her affair with Charles.
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Harry launched into the scathing attack of his stepmother during an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes.
The duke wrote in his tell-all memoir Spare that Camilla "sacrificed me on her personal PR altar".
He told interviewer Anderson Cooper: "She was the villain, she was a third person in the marriage, she needed to rehabilitate her image."
He added: "The need for her to rehabilitate her image...that made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press.
"And there was open willingness on both sides to trade information and with a family built on hierarchy, and with her on the way to being Queen Consort, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street because of that."
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However, in his UK interview with ITV on Sunday night, the duke denied that he had been "scathing" about the Queen Consort.
"I want to sort of just briefly talk about your stepmother and the press 'cause you, you are pretty consistently scathing and suggest that you are..." presenter Tom Bradby said.
"Scathing?" Harry said. "What, scathing towards?"
He went on to explain: "Well, I think in the book it is very clear what happened."
An excerpt revealed Harry and William begged their father Charles not to marry Camilla, fearing she would become their "wicked stepmother".
"'We support you' we said, 'We endorse Camilla' we said," Harry's book reads.
"'Just please don't marry her, just be together, Pa.' He didn't answer.
"But she answered. Straight away. Shortly after our private summits with her, she began to play the long game.
"A campaign aimed at marriage, and eventually the Crown, with Pa's blessing we presumed."
In his book, which was released five days ahead of the official release date in Spain, Harry also claims Camilla changed his bedroom into her own dressing room as soon as he moved out - a move which deeply upset him.
He said his stepmother made the change at Clarence House in London.
"I tried not to care. But especially the first time I saw it, I cared," he said.
Harry also alleges in Spare that Camilla leaked details of a meeting she held with William.
The Duke of Sussex described the anticipation of meeting her for the first time like "waiting for an injection" and claimed she appeared "bored" as they spoke about horses.
Camilla's public image has changed dramatically over the years since she was cast as the third person in the marriage of the then-Prince and Princess of Wales due to her affair with Charles.
In 1994, Charles confessed to adultery in a TV interview, but only after his marriage had "irretrievably broken down".
After Charles and Camilla both divorced - and Diana died in 1997 - the duchess' emergence as the prince's long-term partner was part of a carefully planned PR campaign.
Their first public appearance together was outside the Ritz hotel in London in 1999, dubbed Operation Ritz, where the mass of waiting photographers had been tipped off.
