Prince Harry once asked his grandmother, the late Queen, for permission to break protocol, but it didn’t leave his brother, Prince William, in the best mood.

The Duke of Sussex married Meghan Markle in 2018, but prior to his wedding taking place, he had a conversation with his grandmother. And in this conversation, Harry posed a question to the late Queen about his facial hair.

The British Royal Family has many protocols, customs and traditions, so it won’t come as a surprise to know that when royal weddings take place, these customs are somewhat exacerbated.

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Writing in his bombshell memoir Spare, which came out in January 2023, the Duke of Sussex reflected on the conversation he had with his late grandmother about how he wanted to keep his facial hair for his wedding.

“After all the stress of asking Granny for permission to marry Meg, I thought I’d never have the courage to ask her for anything else. And yet I now dared to make another ask: Granny, please, may I, for my wedding, keep my beard? Not a small ask either,” he recalled.

He continued to pen that a beard “was thought by some to be a clear violation of protocol and long-standing norms”, with this even more prominent because the Duke of Sussex was to get hitched while donning his Army uniform. He noted: “Beards were forbidden in the British Army.”

Harry then spoke of how at the time, his wife-to-be had never seen him without it. “She loved my beard, she loved to grab it and pull me in for a kiss,” he penned, adding how he didn’t want her to walk down the aisle to be greeted by a “total stranger”.

“I explained all this to Granny,” Harry revealed in his book, with him reflecting on how she “understood”. But then he explained it to his brother, noting how he “bristled? Not the done thing…”.

Harry continued: “When I informed him that his opinion didn’t really matter, since I’d already gone to Granny and got the green light, he became livid.

“He raised his voice. You went to ask her! Yes. And what did Granny say? She said keep the beard. You put her in an uncomfortable position, Harold! She had no choice but to say yes. No choice? She’s the Queen! If she didn’t want me to have a beard I think she can speak for herself. But Willy always thought Granny had a soft spot for me, that she indulged me while holding him to an impossibly high standard…”

Prince Harry then revealed that the brothers’ feud over his beard went on for “more than a week”, adding that William “wouldn’t let it go”. He noted how at one point he ordered him, “as the Heir speaking to the Spare”, to shave.

Harry then recalled how he asked William why it mattered so much to him, with the Prince of Wales allegedly responding that it was because he wasn’t allowed to keep his beard. Harry then penned: “Ah – there it was. Finally, I told him flatly and defiantly that his bearded brother was getting married soon, and he could either get on board or not. The choice was up to him.”