Prince Harry has recounted losing his virginity to an unnamed older woman at the age of 17 in his explosive autobiography titled Spare.
The book which is translated in 16 languages recounts Harry’s decades of disenchantment with his privileged, scrutinised and constrained royal life.
In it he alludes to the book’s title, recounting the alleged words of his father, then Prince Chares now King Charles 111, to his mother, Princess Diana, on the day of his birth: “Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an heir and a spare — my work is done.”
While William was destined from birth to be king, Harry, who is fifth in line to the throne behind his brother and William’s three children, has often appeared to struggle with the more ambiguous role of “spare”.
The Duke of Sussex, 38, explained how his anonymous first lover treated him like a ‘young stallion’ and detailed how the steamy exchange took place in a field behind a ‘very busy pub’.
In 2001, the royal was still a student at Eton College in Windsor when one of the Royal Family‘s bodyguards Marko paid him a visit.
At the beginning of the meeting, Prince Harry says he suspected Marko had heard about the one-night stand – which he described as a ‘humiliating’ experience.
Over lunch in a cafeteria in the city centre, the bodyguard – who had a ‘sombre look’ on his face – told the Prince that he had been sent to ‘find out the truth’.
The father-of-two wrote: ‘I suspected he was referring to my recent loss of virginity, a humiliating episode with an older woman who liked macho horses and who treated me like a young stallion.
‘I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and sent me away. One of my many mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a very busy pub. No doubt someone had seen us.’
However, the real reason Marko had been sent to check up on Harry was because King Charles’ 111 press office had been informed a newspaper had evidence of him taking drugs -which Harry said was ‘all lies’.
Three years after his rendezvous with the anonymous older woman, Prince Harry started dating Chelsea Davy.
The couple – who met while attending schools in London – dated on-and-off for six years from 2004 after Harry travelled to Zimbabwe, where Chelsy’s millionaire father owns and runs a game reserve, during his gap year.
In November, reality star Catherine Ommanney, 50, claimed she had a two-month fling with the Prince in 2006 – when he was 21 and she was 34.
Catherine said in an interview with The Sun that she first met Prince Harry, now 38, in a bar in Chelsea while he was still in a long-term on-off relationship with socialite Chelsy Davy.
There, she says, they ‘shared a cigarette on the steps outside and [Harry] really opened-up to [her]’.
After going back inside, she claims Harry made them all bacon sandwiches, play-fought with his friends and gave her a kiss before heading home.
Catherine claims they met a few more times before the romance fizzled out and it wasn’t until 2009, a year after she married her second husband (from whom she is now separated) that the two bumped into each other again at a polo match.
She told the Sun she ‘hopes Meghan looks after him’, and that she wishes Harry nothing but ‘happiness and success’.
She says that after meeting in a bar, the pair then went to Eclipse nightclub in South Kensington together, before heading to one of his friend’s houses.