Prince Harry got ‘cold feet’ about revealing royal secrets in memoir, which finally arrives in January

Prince Harry’s hotly anticipated memoir is finally coming in January, an apparent delay that may be partially due to the duke getting “cold feet” about how much he wanted to reveal about his difficult royal upbringing and his fraught relationships with his father, King Charles III, and his brother Prince William.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that the death of Queen Elizabeth II raised uncertainty about the project, which was supposed to be part of Harry and Meghan Markle’s effort to launch themselves a major media moguls. There were reports in the U.K. press that Harry was working with his ghostwriter to “desperately” try and rewrite parts of his book that were most critical of his father.

The Times said the book is due for release Jan. 10, but it hasn’t confirmed a Daily Mail report that it will deliver “bombshell after bombshell,” putting Buckingham Palace “in a state of high alarm.”

Prior to the queen’s death, Harry and his American wife won fans in the United States for their star power and their “willingness to speak with unusual, unflattering candor” about the British royal family, which is “often veiled in secrecy,” the Times said.

In their 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex alleged that the royal family was indifferent to Meghan’s mental health struggles and their distress over attacks by the U.K. tabloids. They also explosively said that one unnamed relative made racist remarks about the skin color of their future children.

As recently as 10 days before the queen’s Sept. 8 death, Meghan made veiled threats to reveal more royal secrets in an interview with New York magazine. She and Harry were gearing up for a  a major media blitz to launch her Spotify podcast, “Archetypes,” to promote their Netflix docuseries about their life in California, and to support the release of Harry’s memoir, which many expected would be published in the fall.

But after the queen’s death, the Sussexes may have rethought some aspects of their P.R. strategy. For his part, Harry may have realized that any attacks his book makes on members of the royal family, or on the monarchy, to which his grandmother devoted her life, “could strike many readers as unseemly,” the New York Times reported.

“Prince Harry has gotten cold feet about the memoir’s contents at various points,” book industry executives with knowledge of the process told The Times. The project “has been shrouded in rumors, delays and secrecy.”

When Harry’s book deal was first announced in the summer of 2021, Penguin Random House described it as “an intimate and heartfelt” memoir that would provide “the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses and life lessons that have helped shape him,” including his childhood and his coming-of-age as a royal, his time in the military, his marriage to Meghan and his experiences with fatherhood.

For the monarchy and for Harry, the memoir comes at a “delicate time,” the Times said. The British public is trying to adjust to Charles as king and is reeling from political and economic instability, the Times noted. The death of the queen also has renewed questions about the value of the monarchy in 21st century U.K. life.

The British public long regarded Harry as one of its favorite members of the royal family, but his flight from royal life and his candid confessions with Meghan have been criticized as  “ungracious” and as an attempt to cast themselves as victims.

Harry is in “an impossible situation,” the Times added. “Damaging revelations could hurt the monarchy and his relationship with his family.”

It’s been reported by the Daily Beast and other outlets that Charles won’t tolerate any “inaccurate or unfair” attacks on him or other members of the royal family from Harry and Meghan. Friends and royal experts have told the Daily Beast that Charles could ban the Sussexes from his coronation in May or withhold the prince and princess titles for their children, Archie and Lilibet, if Harry criticizes Camilla, the queen consort, or if Meghan makes good on her threat to reveal more secrets about the royal family.

But the Times reported that Harry could dampen sales of his book if he holds back, with the  publisher possibly having a difficult time recouping the $20 million advance it reportedly paid to Harry, plus any other additional costs.

Holding back also “could erode Harry’s self-made image as the rebellious, truth-telling prince,” the Times added.

“Is his goal to enhance his celebrity with a certain sector of the public, or is it to repair the rift with his family?” literary agent Matt Latimer said to the Times. “Those are competing goals to some extent, and it’s hard to do both.”

So far, it appears that Meghan is trying “to do both” by adopting a conciliatory tone towards her in-laws in her first major interview after the queen’s death. Talking to Variety earlier this month, the former TV actress tried to keep things as positive as possible when discussing the 10 days she spent in the U.K. for the queen’s funeral.