It is January 2005. The birthday party’s questionable theme is “natives and colonials”. The man third in line to the throne plumps for a Nazi officer’s uniform with a red swastika wrapped around his left arm. The photos leak and a national scandal ensues.
During the PR crisis that followed, the 20-year-old royal rang his father, Prince Charles. “To my surprise he was serene,” Harry recalled in his 2023 memoir, Spare. “He spoke to me with such tenderness, such genuine compassion, that I was disarmed.”
Seven years later, pictures emerge of Harry naked in a Las Vegas hotel room after playing strip pool. Mid-brouhaha, he meets up with his father in Scotland. “To my surprise, to my relief, he was gentle,” Harry later recalled.