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King Charles III’s former butler, who served the monarch for seven years, said he was surprised by Prince Harry’s claims in “Spare.”
Grant Harrold has written a memoir, “The Royal Butler: My Remarkable Life in Royal Service,” where he details his time working with and befriending King Charles and Queen Camilla. The etiquette expert told Fox News Digital he was stunned when he first read Harry’s 2023 memoir, where the Duke of Sussex described his struggles with royal life.
“I’ve openly talked about this because … his memories and mine are very different,” said Harrold. “You think we [were] in two different households because I talked about this happy family … with his stepmother and everything. He’s saying he didn’t. I never witnessed that.”
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“I saw some magazine [clippings] the other day … from the king’s wedding,” said Harrold. “When you look at these pictures of Harry around his stepmother, both leaving Windsor and chasing after the cars, that’s not somebody who’s unhappy. If he was really that unhappy, I know people who wouldn’t even go to weddings or wouldn’t even get involved because they’re unhappy. And I was there the night before. There was a dinner for [Prince] William, Harry and the king. … it was a lovely occasion … There were no issues.”
A spokesperson for Archewell, which handles the office of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, previously told Fox News Digital they would not be commenting on Harrold’s book.
In “Spare,” Harry describes in detail his sibling rivalry with his brother William, heir to the British throne, and the death of their mother. In the opening chapter, Harry wrote that his father, then Prince Charles, broke the news of his mother’s accident but didn’t hug his son. He also wrote that he and William both “begged” their father not to marry Camilla, worried she would become a “wicked stepmother.”
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Harrold stressed he never witnessed any unhappiness from Harry during his time as a working royal. The Duke of Sussex and his wife stepped back as senior royals in 2020 and moved to California. The couple cited the unbearable intrusions of the British press and a lack of support from the palace as their reasons for leaving.
It’s unknown if the father of two simply kept his private thoughts about his royal life to himself until now, Harrold noted.
“With mental health, you sometimes have no idea someone is unhappy about anything,” said Harrold. “He could have been pretending. … I’m not saying he’s not [sincere], but all I know is there was no evidence of him being unhappy at all or suffering from any kind of mental health issues. But it’s a silent thing, so it’s possible. But nobody knew.”
“My memories are definitely very different from his,” said Harrold. “It’s almost as if it were a different household, but it wasn’t. That was his household, it was his home. And it’s where I spent a lot of time as well.”
“It’s interesting because the queen said, ‘recollections may vary,’” Harrold continued.
“She talked about that toward the end of her life about the situation. And it’s true. My memories and Harry’s are obviously very different. It’s up to people to read my book and make their own minds about it. But I think … if they read what I’ve put, look at press clippings or any TV footage from back in the day, they can then make their minds up. And I think it’ll be quite obvious that something, as I keep saying, doesn’t add up.”
In televised interviews before the publication of “Spare,” Harry accused Camilla of leaking private conversations to the media to improve her reputation, The Associated Press reported. He said members of the royal family got “into bed with the devil” to gain favorable tabloid coverage. He singled out Camilla’s efforts to rehabilitate her image after her longtime affair with his father.
“That made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press,” Harry, 41, told CBS. “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 gonna be people or bodies left in the street.”
Buckingham Palace never publicly responded to Harry’s book.
Harrold worked in the king’s household from 2004 to 2011. He was invited to Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005 as a guest.
“At the end of the festivities, Charles and Camilla were catching a flight to head straight to Birkhall,” he recalled in his book. “We all went outside to wave them off and laughed as we saw William and Harry had decorated their car with ‘Just Married.’ As they drove off through the arches to cheers, the boys raced after the car, followed by the media.”
Harrold described Charles as a “fantastic father,” a doting parent who looked after his sons after they lost their mother, Princess Diana, in a tragic accident. The late Princess of Wales died in 1997 from injuries in a Paris car crash. The princes were 15 and 12 years old at the time.
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“A lot of people assume that he wasn’t hands-on, or he wasn’t around,” Harrold explained to Fox News Digital.
“Yes, his duties were very different, especially after the divorce, to what Princess Diana was doing. But equally, they both made time for the boys. They both were hands-on, they both did things in their own way. Diana might have taken them to a water park, for example, but the king would [also] take them up to Balmoral to do a bit of shooting or fishing in the countryside, which they loved.”
“Both parents brought something very different to the table, but the boys liked that,” said Harrold. “I think their characters have been shaped by both parents and grandparents. I was talking about Harry the other day, and someone said, ‘He comes across as being quite stubborn.’ I said, ‘Well, you could say that’s from his grandfather, Prince Philip… because his grandfather was quite stubborn. His mother stood her ground. You could argue that side as well. But this is what’s great about them.”
“William’s got a bit of shyness and a bit of quietness, which comes from his mother and, to a degree, from his father,” Harrold continued.
“But when I was there, I did witness a father who was hands-on. He was very funny with them. He was very sweet with them. And he definitely tried to fill a gap, 100 percent. He was trying to fill that space their mother’s death had left. He was definitely trying, not to replace her, but to fill that space.”
Harrold said he remains grateful for his experience working at the palace and for witnessing another side of the royals.
“I suppose the thing that surprised me was probably … how normal he is,” said Harrold, referring to the king, 76.
“Like everybody else … you see them, you read stuff, and you hear stuff. And we all make up our minds about what those people are like. And they always say, don’t meet your idols because it’s not what you imagine. But luckily for me, meeting this family that I followed throughout my childhood and teenage years, it was exactly what I hoped they would be.”
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