By Katherine Tinsley
3:06pm PST, Dec 23, 2025
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In Spare, Prince Harry shared he wasn't close to Princess Margaret, but he still accepted a present from the royal.
"I didn't know Princess Margaret, whom I called Aunt Margo. She was my great-aunt, yes, we shared 12.5% of our DNA, we spent the bigger holidays together, and yet she was almost a total stranger," Harry wrote. "Like most Britons, I mainly knew of her."
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The royal family is known for exchanging gag gifts on Christmas Eve, and Princess Margaret's present took Prince Harry by surprise.
"We were at Sandringham in a big room with a long table covered with white cloth and white name cards," Prince Harry recalled. "By custom, at the start of the night, each of us located our place, stood before our mound of presents. Then suddenly, everyone began opening at the same time."
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"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. I tore off the paper. It was… A biro? I said: Oh. A biro. Wow. She said: Yes. A biro," he added. "I said: Thank you so much. But 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."
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Although they didn't spend much time together, Prince Harry realized how similar his life is to Princess Margaret's.
"Now and then, as I grew older, it struck me that Aunt Margo and I should've been friends. We had so much in common. Two Spares," Harry noted.
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"Her relationship with Granny wasn't an exact analogue of mine with Willy, but pretty close," Prince Harry continued. "The simmering rivalry, the intense competition (driven largely by the older sibling), it all looked familiar."
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Prince Harry later compared Princess Margaret to his late mother, Princess Diana.
"Aunt Margo also wasn't that dissimilar from Mommy. Both rebels, both labeled as sirens," he declared.
