Prince Harry once received quite a bizarre, "cold-blooded" present from one of the senior royals.
The Duke of Sussex used to spend his Christmas with the royals before he cut ties with them in 2020. He was also very into their tradition of giving their gag gifts at Christmas, which they open on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day in a nod to their German heritage.
In his memoir Spare, he recalled getting one such gift from the late Queen Elizabeth’s sister Princess Margaret "Aunt Margo" as he called her.
He wrote: "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. Like most Britons, I mainly knew of her."
Recalling the Christmas gift, he added, "We were at Sandringham in a big room with a long table covered with white cloth and white name cards. 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."
"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!'".
Harry wrote: "I tore off the paper. It was… A biro? I said: Oh. A biro. Wow. She said: Yes. A biro. 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."
In the book, Harry also reflected that he and Princess Margaret "should've been friends" since they were the Firm's "two spares" and had much in common.
