“Spare takes readers immediately back to one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror,” reads the press release from publisher Penguin Random House. “As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.” The forthcoming tell-all is described as “a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.”
The one-word title is, at first glance, a vague one, yet, for Harry—and the generations of royal second-borns before him—it carries heavy significance.
“The heir and the spare” or “the spare to the heir” has long been a common refrain to describe the monarch and their sibling. In the olden days when disease was rampant and death among children common, having multiple offspring, or “spares” were necessary to ensure a family’s line in case death befell the first born. Simply put: they were human insurance—and, once their older brother reached a mature age, expendable.