By Natalie Oliveri|
ANALYSIS — Princess Margaret once gave Prince Harry a biro for Christmas.
Perhaps she had some sort of inkling that, one day, he would feel the need to pen his story for the world to read.
"Oh. A biro. Wow," Harry tells his "Aunt Margo" after opening the small gift, describing it as a "cold-blooded" choice in Spare.
In his book, the Duke of Sussex says he and his aunt were never close, describing her as "almost a total stranger" who he grew up "feeling nothing for her except a bit of pity and a lot of jumpiness".
READ MORE: All the biggest bombshells from Prince Harry's memoir Spare
But, as he "grew older it struck me that Aunt Margo and I should've been friends".
"We had so much in common. Two Spares."
He then compares he and William's complicated relationship to Queen Elizabeth and her younger sister, and even sees similarities in Princess Diana and Margaret.
"The simmering rivalry, the intense competition… Aunt Margo also wasn't that dissimilar to Mummy".
That biro anecdote pops up 11 times in Harry's memoir. It clearly touched a nerve.
Later, in the early days of his relationship with Meghan Markle, Harry desperately searches for a pen after dropping his phone into a river during a boy's trip in Africa, losing her number in the process.
The only way of contacting her is the old-fashioned way. And he needs a pen.
Harry's musings throughout the 410-book touch on the supernatural more than once.
From feeling the constant presence of his mother Diana, to believing her spirit somehow intervened to help Meghan fall pregnant, to the irony of needing a pen – perhaps a final laugh from Margaret watching from above.
Harry presents an unprecedented look into the royal family, giving The Crown a run for its money. This is The Crown, but in real life.
He describes the palaces and royal residences with great detail, reveals touching anecdotes about the Queen, King Charles and the notoriously private Prince and Princess of Wales (some good, some bad) and clears up many untruths that have been peddled about his life for years.
For example, a long-told story about Harry giving William Princess Diana's sapphire engagement ring he inherited is "absolute rubbish".
"I never gave Willy that ring because it wasn't mine to give. He already had it."
More on these later.
Forget, for one moment, everything you have read since the book was leaked days before its official publication of January 10.
Yes, the most juicy parts of the book have been pored over and dissected by the press, commentators and those on social media, though most are unlikely to have read the book in its entirety.
Harry spoke about the importance of context while on The Late Show, his final television interview promoting the book.
In those sit-downs, both in America and the UK, and in the extracts printed worldwide, it's easy to accuse Harry of being a whinger.
The 'ginger-whinger' is one term that has become a popular insult, particularly since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex spoke at length about their life, including their grievances, in a six-part Netflix documentary.
But for those who have put aside time to actually read his book, Harry is far more complex than someone who solely complains about his royal life.
READ MORE: 'Why a royal reunion before the coronation is unlikely'
And he has every right to complain.
There are four main themes to his book: the death of Diana, Harry and William's sibling rivalry, the realities of being the spare and Harry's deep loathing of the media.
Spare truly is hard to read at times.
That Harry is still deeply traumatised by the untimely death of his mother is obvious. Her death in 1997, when Harry was just 12, has impacted every aspect of his life since.
Reading that he was convinced, for years, that she wasn't dead but in hiding and biding her time for a re-emergence, in particularly difficult and sad.
Despite his years of therapy, Harry's trauma remains and it is laid bare through much of Spare.
You can barely go 10 pages without some reference to "Mummy". The pain this little boy, now grown man, felt and still feels is raw. It's hard not to sympathise.
But this trauma, Harry says, has left his memory unreliable – a statement he makes early on and leaves the reader with doubt anything in the following pages can be considered trustworthy.
The book has since been called out by historian Hugo Vickers for a number of "quite serious" mistakes.
Harry writes: "Landscape, geography, architecture, that's how my memory rolls. Dates? Sorry, I'll need to look them up. Dialogue? I'll try my best, but make no verbatim claims, especially when it comes to the Nineties."
Elsewhere he writes, in reference to his mother's death: "Pa said Mummy hurt her head but maybe I was the one with brain damage? As a defence mechanism, most likely, my memory was no longer recording things quite as it once did."
And: "Whatever the cause, my memory is my memory, it does what it does, gathers and curates as it sees fit, and there's just as much truth in what I remember and how I remember as there is in so-called objective facts.
"Things like chronology and cause-and-effect are often just fables we tell ourselves about the past."
Harry's hatred and distrust of the media comes from their role in her death, with Harry firmly believing her car would not have had it not been pursued by the paparazzi.
That deep loathing has only increased, with countless stories detailing his wayward teenage years, his juvenile mistakes and then his relationship with Meghan.
He says, over and over, that he does not want history to repeat itself, fearing the hateful stories written about his wife would drive someone to harm them, or worse, Meghan taking her own life.
She threatened to do that while pregnant with Archie, so overwhelmed by the negative things the media and public were saying about her.
READ MORE: Harry sets record straight about Meghan's wedding tiara incident
When discussing the options on how to break away from the royal family at the so-called Sandringham Summit in 2020, Harry says: "I told everyone assembled that, above all, I was desperate to keep security.
"That was what worried me most, my family's physical safety. I wanted to prevent a repeat of history, another untimely death like the one that had rocked this family to its core twenty-three years earlier, and from which we were still trying to recover."
By reading Spare, Harry's lawsuit taken against the British government on the issue of armed police protection makes much more sense.
Throughout, his frustration is evident at his family's constant refusals to quash false media stories about his life, including as a teenager, while in the Army and once he met Meghan.
"Darling boy, just don't read it," King Charles, or "Pa" as he is known throughout the book, repeatedly tells Harry. So does William.
It's this lack of action, Harry says, that ultimately drives him and Meghan away to the safety of America where the British press can no longer attack them.
Spare is also full of many contrasts.
His brutal account of finding a mother rhino hacked to death to stop her running to protect her calf when attacked by poachers is truly heart-breaking. The poachers then took the mother's horn off her face, while she was still alive.
That story sickened me.
This Harry, the Harry that is working to protect the world's most vulnerable creatures, is to be applauded. So I was disappointed to read The Times' review of his book, describing Harry's African wildlife missions as being told over "many boring passages".
Pages later, another side of Harry is exposed. He's experiencing hallucinations brought on by taking magic mushrooms while partying at the home of Courtney Cox.
A life of contrasts, that's for sure.
His vivid descriptions about life inside Balmoral Castle are unexpected, the bathwater he says, is "brownish, suggestive of weak tea" due to the Scottish peat which often "alarmed guests" until Charles would reassure them nothing was amiss.
The dining room at Sandringham, Harry says, is "subtropical" and he and Charles would open a window to let in fresh air until the corgies started whimpering, leading to the Queen asking if there was "a draught". The window would be promptly shut.
The Queen was known for her salad dressing, Harry says, and during one barbeque at Balmoral she'd "whisked a large batch". Prince Philip, widely known for cooking the sausages, also specialised in spaghetti bolognese.
READ MORE: Harry denies Meghan 'destroyed' his relationship with William
Even though he had a "special relationship" with his grandmother, there was little physical affection with her, and indeed with the rest of the royal family. Except his mother, of course.
When Harry asked her permission to marry Meghan, something courtiers told him he "had" to do, and she said, "Well, I suppose I have to say yes" Harry wrote he "wanted to hug her".
"I longed to hug her. I didn't hug her."
Harry criticises the press for its endless comparisons of Kate and Meghan but it seems, he too, was aware of how easily it was to put a foot wrong.
As Meghan and her mother were preparing to visit India on a holiday in early 2017, Harry warned her against posing for a photo in front of the Taj Mahal.
"She'd ask why and I'd said: 'My mum'.
"I'd explained that my mother had posed for a photo there, and it had became iconic, and I didn't want anyone thinking Meg was trying to mimic my mother.
"Meg had never heard of this photo, and found the whole thing baffling, and I loved her for being baffled."
That story, that Meghan had never seen or heard of the famous photo of Diana sitting solo on a bench at the Taj Mahal in 1992, was indeed baffling.
Meghan also mistook Prince Andrew for being the Queen's assistant during her first meeting with the Queen at the Royal Lodge.
Meghan questioned Harry about "that man holding the purse" next to the Queen.
"That wasn't her assistant," Harry tells Meghan, who is confused.
"That's her second son. Andrew".
Harry is delighted that Meghan "definitely hadn't googled us".
Hmmm.
He also gives incredible detail about Prince William and Kate's Apartment 1A inside Kensington Palace when he and Meghan arrived for tea to "clear the air" in June 2018.
"'Wow' Meg said, several times.
"The wallpaper, the crown moulding, the walnut bookshelves lined with colour-co-ordinated volumes, the priceless art. Gorgeous. Like a museum.
"We also thought sheepishly of our IKEA lamps, our discount sofa recently bought on sale, with Meg's credit card, from sofa.com."
But it's also the portrayal of William and Kate that makes Spare such a fascinating read.
Revealing text messages between Meghan and Kate over those bridesmaid dresses make Kate appear cold and direct while the "clash of styles" is never more apparent than when Kate is "taken aback" by Meghan asking to borrow her lip gloss moments before their first outing as the Fab Four.
Harry says Kate "grimaced" when Meghan squeezed a small bit onto her finger.
Royal fans will also enjoy reading how Harry and Meghan "left London in a car disguised as a removals van, the windows covered with cardboard" for their top-secret honeymoon to the Mediterranean.
And the rivalry does not stop with William.
Harry describes the fierce competition between his family members to clock up the most official engagements so as not to be described as "lazy" by the press.
Recorded in the Court Circular, Harry said the official document of events "amplified the feelings of competitiveness" within his family and that certain members had become "obsessed" with being the busiest.
And then there are the comments on Camilla, who he describes with affection in some parts before the accusation she had "sacrificed me on her personal PR altar" through her office leaking stories about him, to make her look better.
Those insights into his family squabbles, the level of protocol that dictates their nearly every move, these things are what makes Spare a thoroughly engaging read.
I now have more sympathy for Prince Harry, and Meghan too, for how they were treated by the royal family and the some sectors of the media.
I feel a slight pang of guilt for being complicit in some small way in reporting on the widespread narrative that was being told about Meghan.
Many would feel guilt in consuming such content, including during the Diana years.
Now that I have read Spare, I truly hope Harry finds the peace he has been seeking since that tragic day in 1997.
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