15 September 2023 , 06:00
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It's a special day for Prince Harry today - not only is he spending it at his Invictus Games, but he is also celebrating his birthday.
The Duke of Sussex turns 39 and will be marking the occasion by spending it alongside wife Meghan Markle at the 2023 Invictus Games in Dusseldorf. It's not known exactly how he will celebrate, but it's likely Meghan will have lined him up some lavish gifts.
The royals' incredibly privileged lives mean that they rarely want for anything. In fact, when it comes to Christmas, it is a well-known tradition that the royals actually buy small, cheap, joke presents for each other.
Prince Harry, who turns 39 today (Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation)But it seems Harry was left baffled one year by one gift he received from an unlikely royal relative - and he even branded it 'cold-blooded'. Writing in his memoir Spare, Harry recalls his great-aunt and the late Queen's sister Princess Margaret or "Aunt Margo" as he calls her and claims he didn't know her very well despite sharing "12.5 per cent" of her DNA.
He writes that on a Christmas Eve at Sandringham Estate when everyone was getting ready to open their gifts, Margaret gifted him an unusual present - a tiny biro with a rubber fish wrapped around it. He recalls: "Standing before my pile, I chose to open the smallest present first. The tag said: 'From Aunt Margo'. I looked over, called out: 'Thank you, Aunt Margo!'" After opening the gift, Harry claims he was surprised and thanked Margaret, who he says pointed out that it was not just any biro, but a special one.
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A young Prince Harry with Princess Diana, Prince William, the Queen and Princess Margaret (Getty Images)Harry adds: "It wasn't just any biro, she pointed out. It had a tiny rubber fish wrapped around it. I said: 'Oh. A fish biro! OK.' I told myself: That is cold-blooded." In his book, Harry also adds that growing up he thought he and Margaret should have been friends as they were "Two Spares" and had a lot in common.
The memoir says: "Her relationship with Granny wasn't an exact analogue of mine with Willy, but pretty close. The simmering rivalry, the intense competition (driven largely by the older sibling), it all looked familiar. Aunt Margo also wasn't that dissimilar from Mummy. Both rebels, both labelled as sirens."
Relations between Prince William and Harry have long been strained despite their closeness in their younger years. The fallout is said to have begun before Harry’s wedding to former Suits star, the Duchess of Sussex, with the duke accusing William of being snobbish to his bride.
But it worsened after the accusations Harry publicly levelled at his brother in double tell-alls: his memoir, Spare, and his Netflix documentary. In his autobiography, released just months after Elizabeth II died, Harry accused William of physically attacking him and pushing him into a dog bowl in a row over Meghan.
Harry and Meghan, in their Netflix series two months after the Queen’s death, claimed Kensington Palace lied to protect William when it issued a statement denying a story he had bullied Harry out of the royal family. Harry also wrote of how Charles pleaded with his two sons during a tense meeting at Windsor just after the funeral of Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh, saying: “Please, boys. Don’t make my final years a misery”.