“I tried not to care” says Prince Harry as he claims Camilla turned his bedroom into her own personal dressing room

(Image credit: Anwar Hussein / Alamy Stock Photo and Justin Setterfield / Getty Images / Future)

published 8 January 2023

In a snippet from Prince Harry’s (opens in new tab) upcoming memoir, Spare (opens in new tab), he has claimed that Queen Consort Camilla converted his bedroom at Clarence House into her own personal dressing room as soon as he moved out.

Prince Harry has claimed that, as soon as he moved out of Clarence House, Queen Consort Camilla turned his bedroom into a personal dressing room.
Writing about the alleged incident, he said, “I tried not to care. But especially the first time I saw it, I cared.”
In other royal news (opens in new tab), Prince Harry thinks Princess Diana “would be sad” but understanding about his relationship with Prince William (opens in new tab).

The leaked passages of Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir, Spare, have contained all sorts of allegations, from King Charles allegedly planting stories about his sons in the press (opens in new tab) to Prince William and Kate Middleton being massive fans of Suits (opens in new tab). Now, ahead of the books release on Tuesday 10 January, yet another snippet has been published - and this time, the heat is aimed at Queen Consort Camilla.

In the passage, Prince Harry claims that Camilla Parker Bowles allegedly converted his bedroom at Clarence House into her own personal dressing room as soon as he moved out.

“I tried not to care," wrote Prince Harry. "But especially the first time I saw it, I cared.”

This story has not come out of the blue. A similar incident was mentioned by Tina Brown (opens in new tab) in her book The Palace Papers, which is available now on Amazon (opens in new tab). Curiously, in Brown's account of the room conversion, she wrote that it was Harry’s old bedroom at Highgrove House that was turned into a dressing room.

While Camilla's outfits do not often draw as many eyes or headlines as Meghan Markle’s or Kate Middleton’s, she certainly has enough clothing to warrant the alleged extra storage.

As well as her collection of eye-catching hats, following the death of the Queen in September 2022, Camilla has inherited and stepped out in a number of her most prized jewellery pieces, including a dazzling Belgian Sapphire Tiara (opens in new tab).

It appears that King Charles could also use the space offered by an extra dressing room. Princess Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, revealed in the documentary Serving the Royals: Inside the Firm, that Charles' "pyjamas are pressed every morning," and that even "his shoelaces are pressed flat with an iron.”

The alleged room conversion likely did nothing to improve the already tense relationship between Prince Harry and his stepmother. Elsewhere in his upcoming memoir, Harry revealed that he and his brother Prince William both consistently urged their father not to marry Camilla, who he had been having an affair with while married to their mother.

Harry wrote, “I remember wondering … if she would be cruel to me; if she would be like all the evil stepmothers in the stories.

“Willy had been suspicious of the Other Woman for a long time, which confused and tormented him. When those suspicions were confirmed, he felt agonising remorse for not having done or said anything before.”

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Charlie Elizabeth Culverhouse is royal news and entertainment writer for Goodto.com. She began her freelance journalism career after graduating from Nottingham Trent University with an MA in Magazine Journalism, receiving an NCTJ diploma, and earning a First Class BA (Hons) in Journalism at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute. She has also worked with BBC Good Food and The Independent.