Harry launches fresh attack on Charles saying he grew up in ‘broken home’ & insists ‘mum felt like I do’ about Royals
PRINCE Harry last night launched a fresh attack on his father King Charles by blaming his adult traumas on growing up in a “broken home”.
In his first interview since his Frogxit eviction, the Duke of Sussex, 38, slammed his “incredibly painful” childhood where he complained of being starved of hugs and attention.
He told physician Dr Gabor Maté — in a £19-a-ticket global livestream to promote his book Spare — that he had to move his family to the US to break the “cycle of pain”.
He was also likely to trigger renewed anger from the Royal Family with a jibe about his upbringing.
Harry, who did tours of Afghanistan, told Dr Maté: “I was also a fantastic candidate for the military.
“I don’t know how it is around the rest of the world but certainly in the UK we tend to recruit from broken homes — you know individuals that are ready for it.”
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His Hungarian-Canadian inquisitor said the royal had grown up in an environment where there was a “lack of child being held”.
Dr Maté added of the late Queen: “At some point you wanted to hug your grandmother but it wasn’t done.”
The royal, who was 12 when Charles divorced his mum Diana, said in the fireside chat: “I did have an incredible childhood, elements of it, and elements of it were incredibly painful.”
The dad of two said he and his wife Meghan “try their best to make sure you don’t hand on any traumas that you have as a parent”.
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He claimed the “root cause” to his suffering was living in the UK and he had to move his family abroad.
Dr Maté said of Harry and Meghan, whose parents also divorced: “You both come from broken families, it is not accidental that you find each other.”
It is the first time Harry has publicly spoken since we revealed his eviction from Frogmore Cottage, Windsor.
It comes six years since he gushed about his family on Radio 4’s Today programme.
Prince Harry risked also further stoking his war with William last night — by claiming he was closer to their mother Diana.
The Duke of Sussex said he always felt slightly different to the rest of the Royal Family and claimed: “My mum felt the same” — seen as a dig at his elder sibling.
In the livestream, Harry talked about seeking therapy to cope with the death of Diana in a Paris car crash in 1997, days before his 13th birthday.
And he claimed taking the psychedelic drug ayahuasca was “one of the fundamental parts” of his life that changed him and allowed him to cope with his trauma.
In the live-streamed talk, billed an “intimate chat about loss and childhood trauma”, US-based Harry said he felt “incredibly free” after writing book Spare which trashed his family, adding it was a “huge weight off my shoulders”.
He also claimed the biography was an “act of service”.
But he did not discuss his plans for the coronation of his dad King Charles in May — nor news revealed by The Sun that he and wife Meghan, 41, are to be evicted from their UK home, Frogmore Cottage in Windsor.
And he will have infuriated William with the claim that he believed he was closer to their mother — whose death continues to cast a huge shadow over his life.
He told Hungarian-Canadian Dr Maté: “I certainly have felt throughout my life, throughout my younger years, I always felt slightly different to the rest of my family.
“I felt strange being in this container and I know that my mum felt the same.
“So it makes sense to me. It didn’t make sense at the time I felt as though I felt as though my body was in there, but my head was out and then sometimes it was vice versa.
“But the times that I ventured towards being myself, being my authentic true self, for one shape or another whether it was through media or family or whatever it was, it was almost like the ‘Don’t be yourself, come back to what you’re expected to be’.”
The livestream was broadcast online to promote Spare — seven weeks after it hit bookshelves and became a global bestseller.
The talk also touched on Harry’s mental health issues and drug use.
Trauma expert Dr Maté, 79, who once accused Israel of terrorism, claimed that by reading Spare he could diagnose Harry with a string of ailments including attention deficit disorder, depression, post-traumatic stress injury and agoraphobia.
The physician said he would stop short of calling Harry a drug addict despite the Duke’s book saying he gorged on cocaine, marijuana and psychedelics.
These included Class A ayahuasca, a natural high from vines in the Amazon rainforest and which is illegal in the UK.
Harry claimed his cocaine use was a social thing, adding: “That didn’t do anything for me.”
He added: “Marijuana is different, that did actually help me.”
Harry described smoking weed out of the toilet windows at Eton College and also when he lived at Kensington Palace.
But he appeared to backtrack from confessions in Spare that he drank heavily in the years after his mother’s death to cope with her loss. He told Dr Maté: “Alcohol was certainly more of a social thing.”
The Duke reserved his biggest, and most worrying, praise for ayahuasca.
Dr Maté has run ayahuasca healing therapies with the Temple of the Way of Light, a shamanic healing centre in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest.
Harry described using the drug as “removing Instagram filters”.
He said: “Layers of filters, it removed it all for me, and brought a sense of relaxation, release, comfort, lightness that I managed to hold on to for a period of time, but the moment I’m back in the chaos, kind of then dissipates.
“I started doing it recreationally and realised how good it was for me. It is one of the fundamental parts of my life that changed me and helped me deal with traumas and pains of the past.”
In the last 15 minutes of the livestream, Harry took questions submitted by estimated hundreds of thousands who had paid for the experience.
But only one question referenced the Royal Family — and that was to ask if he found any trapdoors in castles and palaces as a child.
Spare was roundly blasted for revealing private conversations with his family and causing a diplomatic incident when Harry wrote about killing 25 enemy combatants while serving in Afghanistan.
He also became the butt of the joke after describing in the book his “frost-nipped” manhood on a trip to the North Pole and losing his virginity to an “older woman” in a “humiliating experience” outside a pub when he was aged 17.
Just 24 hours after releasing the book Buckingham Palace wrote to Harry and Meghan to order them out of Frogmore Cottage.
But speaking about his memoir, Harry said: “Once the book came out, I felt incredibly free.
“I felt a huge weight off my shoulders.
“But also the system of which I was, I guess to some extent still am, part of doesn’t encourage the living of free living.”
He also claimed: “I’ve shared enough over my life.
“There’s people that have shared things on my life, outside of my control, true or false, but to be able to share the things of my life that I think are important for other people.
“It does, it feels good, but it also feels, to me it feels like an act of service.”
Last night Buckingham Palace said it did not want to comment on his comments made in the livestream.
