Any life built on a foundation of resentment can never be a happy one, writes Kel Richards.
Have you had your fill of Harry and Meghan yet?
I know there are a lot of people who are feeling rather Harry-and-Meghan-ed out at the moment.
Well, brace yourself because on January 10 Harry’s autobiography will be released — in which he will (once again) wash his dirty linen in public and show great disrespect for his family.
And the headlines and the TV news will be full of it.
So, let’s ask: what (exactly) is going on here?
A lot of people are inclined to put the whole of the blame onto Meghan.
They think she has Harry hypnotised, that he has the IQ of a sea anemone, and he is just being led around by the nose and has no real of idea of what is going on.
But I think that lets Harry off far too lightly.
Let me suggest that he is a young man relentlessly driven by bitter resentment.
And the title of his new book — this autobiography will be out barely a week into 2023 — tells us a lot about his resentment.
The book is called “Spare.”
This refers to an old saying that applies to any royal family — and to all aristocratic families — that the role of a wife is to produce “an heir and a spare.”
That is, to give birth to a first son to be the heir the titles and all that entails, and a second son who will be the “spare” in case something happens to his elder brother.
There are earls in Britain today who never expected to be earls but who were thrust into the role because an older relative fell under a bus or whatever.
That’s the whole “heir and a spare” idea.
For Harry to call his book “Spare” shows us he is obsessed with this fact.
What that book title tells us is that he deeply resents — and has apparently resented all his life — the fact that he is the second born, that he is not the heir, that he will never be king.
Well, resentment is a bad thing to build a life on — but that’s what it seems Harry has done.
He chose to marry a woman who would feed and support his resentment.
He has chosen to publicly criticise his family for treating him as the “spare” not the “heir.”
Exactly what he expected his father, King Charles III, to do I can’t imagine.
To declare both his sons legal heirs?
To declare that on his death they would share the throne?
To declare that son number one (William) was out of the running and make Harry the heir instead?
Because only something dramatic like that would heal the resentment that is eating up Harry from the inside.
But none of those moves are legally possible.
King Charles and Prince William are bound by the laws of England, and the law of precedence, just as Harry is.
It’s out of their hands.
That leaves Harry in much the same position as the late Duke of Windsor — the man who was briefly King Edward VIII and who abdicated — giving up the throne for Wallis, whom he described as “the woman I love.”
Dickie — as he was known in his family — lived the rest of his life in resentment at not being king.
He had, apparently, believed that parliament would change the law (as it then stood) and allow him to marry Wallis and remain king.
That didn’t happen.
And the rest of his life was consumed by the destructive cancer of resentment and bitterness.
Harry is quite possibly choosing to go down that same path.
But if he does it’s his choice — so perhaps we shouldn’t blame Meghan quite as much as many people are keen to do.
And what do you think the future holds for this couple?
Where do you think their lives will be in five years? In ten years from now?
They have given up royalty for celebrity — and celebrity is a notoriously fickle thing.
Most celebrities have something they can do to earn their place on the celebrity circuit.
They can sing or they can act — they are pop stars or movie stars — or (like the Kardashians) are major TV stars.
Harry and Meghan only have one profession — attacking the royal family.
That’s it. That’s what they do. It’s all they do.
But that’s a career that can’t last forever.
When they’ve dug up their last piece of dirt and done their last piece of mockery — their career is over.
What do they do then? They might re-invent themselves — but their future looks fragile to me.
Will King Charles III strip them of their titles “Duke and Duchess of Sussex”?
I don’t think so.
I think Charles is going out of his way to avoid being publicly negative about his son.
Rather, he is behaving quite graciously towards them — considering the way they have behaved towards him.
And King Charles is focused on monarchy, not celebrity.
It is clear he is focused on the long term and the bigger picture.
Celebrity comes and goes but monarchy is around for the long haul.
So, no, I don’t think he’ll strip of their titles.
What does that mean for Harry and Meghan?
It means that — just like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor before them — they might end up with titled but empty lives.
Any life built on a foundation of resentment can never be a happy one.
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