By Molly Claire Goddard
2:53pm PDT, Oct 1, 2025
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According to
Princess Diana's former hairdresser, there was one rumor about the late Princess of Wales that especially bothered her. The rumor — which centers around the younger of her two sons,
Prince Harry — is so enduring that even the Duke of Sussex has been forced to address it himself over the years.
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Richard Dalton, who worked as Princess Diana's hairstylist from 1981 to 1990, claimed the mother of two was upset by tabloid allegations that King Charles III is not Prince Harry's biological father. "They always went on about, 'Is Charles the father of Harry?'" the hairdresser recalled in
an interview before insisting that "of course" Charles is Harry's father.
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The press speculated that Prince Harry's
real father is
Major James Hewitt — with whom Princess Diana was romantically involved years after the Duke of Sussex was born. The evidence? Harry and Hewitt both have red hair. But they're not the only ones… "Diana's brother,
Charles Spencer, when I used to cut his hair, his hair was bright red," Richard Dalton said. "Lady
Sarah McCorquodale [Diana's sister], also red. The Spencers definitely had red hair. But at that time, I wasn't in a position to actually say, 'Hello, Charles Spencer's hair was red.'"
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Prince Harry responded to the rumor by recounting how King Charles III would crack jokes about it. "Pa liked telling stories and this was one of the best in his repertoire. He'd always end with a burst of philosophizing… Who knows if I'm really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I'm even your real father?" Harry wrote in his memoir, Spare. "He'd laugh and laugh, though it was a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumor circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy's former lovers, Major James Hewitt. One cause of this rumor was Major Hewitt's flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism."
