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LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 03: Prince Harry leaves after attending the National Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral during the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations on June 3, 2022 in London, England. The Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II is being celebrated from June 2 to June 5, 2022, in the UK and Commonwealth to mark the 70th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth II on 6 February 1952.
Photo by Toby Melville – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Prince Harry is already paying for his selfless attempt to spare Prince William and King Charles any more pain

The duke's attempt at getting some good karma has cost him.

Prince Harry probably thought he was doing a good thing when he extended an unexpected olive branch to King Charles and the Royal Family this fall, but it turns out that it wasn’t a good thing for his brand.

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Amid the ongoing animosity between the Duke of Sussex and his estranged relatives, virtually anything that’s a degree less than hostile is viewed as a potential olive branch these days — that includes Prince William literally just saying his brother’s name in an interview, apparently — but in this case Harry really did seem to take one for the team in order to spare his brother and father any more pain during what’s already been an extremely difficult year for them.

Spare is the operative word here, of course, as Harry’s gesture of good will concerns the re-release of his memoir. First hitting shelves as a hardback in January 2023, Spare took a lengthy time to hit return to book stores as a paperback, with it widely assumed that the delay was due to Harry working on some fresh material to go with it. As it happened, when the Spare paperback came out this October it contained no new chapters or passages whatsoever.

Considering that Harry has said in the past that he has enough damning family secrets in his back pocket to fill two books, clearly he didn’t neglect to expand Spare due to a lack of ideas. Instead, he must’ve been inspired to withhold from outing any further skeletons in the Royal closet given how tough 2024 has been for the king and Kate Middleton, both of whom have battled cancer, and their respective partners, William and Queen Camilla.

Prince Harry’s Spare re-release tanked, and it’s obvious why

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS - APRIL 22: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex speaks on stage at the Invictus Games 2025 host city announcement during day seven of the Invictus Games The Hague 2020 at Zuiderpark on April 22, 2022 in The Hague, Netherlands. The bid for the Invictus Games 2025 has been awarded to Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, in partnership with True Patriot Love Foundation. These Games will be the first to incorporate winter adaptive sports, in addition to some of the core sports from previous Invictus Games.
Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation

Electing not to kick them when they’re down in this way might’ve been the best thing to do to salvage a sliver of family loyalty, then, but it wasn’t the best thing for the book’s sales. It’s been confirmed that the highest the Spare paperback reached on the U.K. charts was a paltry 73rd place. In its second week of publication, on Oct. 24, it only sold 3000 copies. That couldn’t be a more different story from the hardback release, which topped bestseller lists internationally and sold 700,000 copies in the U.K. alone. It even won a Guinness World Record for being the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever.

In a year in which Harry and Meghan have endured a lot of negative publicity, another bestselling run for Spare would’ve been a much-needed victory for Brand Sussex, but this was probably for the best. Especially if those rumors are right and bout the duke and duchess are slowly moving themselves towards returning to the U.K. in some shape or form. Perhaps tanking his book’s re-release is worth it for showing his family that he can be trusted once in a while. Apparently, you can either take the high road or the road that leads to high sales. We’ll see if Harry chose the right one.


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Christian Bone
Christian Bone is a Staff Writer/Editor at We Got This Covered and has been cluttering up the internet with his thoughts on movies and TV for over a decade, ever since graduating with a Creative Writing degree from the University of Winchester. As Marvel Beat Leader, he can usually be found writing about the MCU and yet, if you asked him, he'd probably say his favorite superhero film is 'The Incredibles.'
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