Prince Harry's Ghost Writer Reveals Late Night Argument With Royal

Prince Harry's ghost writer revealed they had multiple arguments and at one stage he feared they were "hurtling toward some kind of decisive rupture" as they worked together on his book Spare.

J. R. Moehringer wrote an essay for The New Yorker in which he described a disagreement with the Duke of Sussex over a section of the royal's memoir during a Zoom call.

The author's description gives a fascinating portrait of the power dynamic that exists between ghost writer and celebrity subject.

And it offers startling insight into an aspect of Harry's character that Moehringer said "all his life, people had belittled"—the duke's "intellectual capabilities."

The pair had already been through rounds of edits and were looking at Harry's experience of being subjected to a staged kidnapping during his military training, in which his pretend captors referenced the death of his mother Princess Diana to test his mental resilience.

"Clawing that specific wound," Moehringer wrote in The New Yorker. "The memory of Harry's dead mother, is out of bounds. When the simulation is over, one of the participants extends an apology.

"Harry always wanted to end this scene with a thing he said to his captors, a comeback that struck me as unnecessary, and somewhat inane.

"Good for Harry that he had the nerve, but ending with what he said would dilute the scene's meaning: that even at the most bizarre and peripheral moments of his life, his central tragedy intrudes.

"For months, I'd been crossing out the comeback, and for months Harry had been pleading for it to go back in. Now he wasn't pleading, he was insisting, and it was 2 a.m., and I was starting to lose it. I said, 'Dude, we've been over this.'"

"Although this wasn't the first time that Harry and I had argued, it felt different," he continued. "It felt as if we were hurtling toward some kind of decisive rupture, in part because Harry was no longer saying anything. He was just glaring into the camera.

"Finally, he exhaled and calmly explained that, all his life, people had belittled his intellectual capabilities, and this flash of cleverness proved that, even after being kicked and punched and deprived of sleep and food, he had his wits about him.

"'Oh,' I said. 'O.K.' It made sense now. But I still refused. 'Why?'

"Because, I told him, everything you just said is about you. You want the world to know that you did a good job, that you were smart. But, strange as it may seem, memoir isn't about you."

Ultimately, Harry consented and his comeback was removed from the book, though the prince "shot me a mischievous grin" and told his ghost: "I really enjoy getting you worked up like that."

Despite their disagreements, Moehringer clearly has affection for Prince Harry: "I just liked the dude. I called him dude right away; it made him chuckle.

"I found his story, as he outlined it in broad strokes, relatable and infuriating. The way he'd been treated, by both strangers and intimates, was grotesque.

"In retrospect, though, I think I selfishly welcomed the idea of being able to speak with someone, an expert, about that never-ending feeling of wishing you could call your mom."

Moehringer writes that he had recently lost his own mother when the pair first spoke, a shared experience that allowed them to connect.

And he also lends insight into Harry's intentions in writing the book, to take on the media who the prince felt had misrepresented him: "As Borges dreamed of endless libraries, Harry dreams of endless retractions, which meant no end of revelations.

"He knew, of course, that some people would be aghast at first. 'Why on earth would Harry talk about that?' But he had faith that they would soon see: because someone else already talked about it, and got it wrong."

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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