Palace aides are reportedly scrambling to find a way to stop the publication of Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir as King Charles III attempts to establish his reign.
There are rumours senior royal advisors are concerned that Harry’s revelations about the royal family – especially his father – in the book could harm the new monarch’s reputation.
According to The Daily Mail, staff are so concerned that they’ve already held discussions about how to prevent the book from hitting shelves early next year.
“The question inside the Palace is: ‘Can the book be stopped?’,” an insider said to be close to the King told the publication.
“It may be that even Harry can’t stop it at this stage but the feeling at the very top is that there’s no good that can come of airing grievances in public.”
There was already speculation that the memoir would be delayed following the Queen’s death on September 8, and that Harry may edit some of his more controversial comments out of respect.
Multiple outlets have suggested the prince is “toning down” the memoir in the wake of his grandmother’s passing and his father’s subsequent ascension.
Harry hasn’t held back in the past, openly questioning his father’s parenting style and his own upbringing in the royal family in 2021.
“I don’t think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly, when it comes to parenting, if I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on,” he said in a rare podcast appearance.
“It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway, so we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say ‘you know what, that happened to me, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.”
He also claimed in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that his father stopped taking his calls when he and wife Meghan Markle first shared their plans to leave the royal family in 2020.
From the moment Harry announced he was writing a memoir, there were concerns that he may share more unflattering revelations about the royal family.
Now palace aides are said to be planning a delicate strategy for the first months of King Charles’ reign, and any rogue comments from his son could cause serious complications.
It’s understood that the royal family won’t be given advance copies of the book, nor will they have any say over its contents when it goes to print.
In fact, some outlets have suggested that even Harry himself won’t be able to make any major changes to the memoir at this stage, as the manuscript has already been signed off.
With that in mind, it’s unlikely even members of the royal family’s staff would be able to actually stop its publication at this late stage.
There is no official release date at the moment, however the book is said to be coming in early 2023.