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Any doubts as to whether Prince Harry has torched the royal rule book were erased when he drank tequila on air with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday. Or maybe when he revealed his go-to In-N-Out order (animal style!) to People magazine. After days of reports based on leaked copies or errant sales of Harry’s memoir, plus a few planned promotional interviews, the book was released Tuesday. Did we get up at a painfully early hour to speed-read?
Yes, yes, we did.
We’ll spare you our reaction to “Spare,” as the book is called. You can read The Post’s review here. Instead, here are five key points to help explain the origins of this palace-shocker and why its revelations are so powerful.
1. Harry and Meghan don’t want privacy. They’re trying to control their narrative. In interviews tied to publication of “Spare,” (which racked up the highest first-day sales of any nonfiction book it has ever published, publisher Penguin Random House says), Harry has been asked about the contradiction between a tell-all memoir and his years of complaints about media invasions of his privacy. The same questions surrounded the premiere of the couple’s six-episode Netflix docuseries in December. The couple’s press secretary hit back in a statement last month: “The Duke and Duchess have never cited privacy as the reason for stepping back” from their royal obligations. The tabloid media that surrounds the royal family created a “distorted narrative,” the statement said, that would “trap the couple into silence. … They are choosing to share their story, on their terms.” BuzzFeed News’s longtime royal reporter, Ellie Hall, has documented this issue. To Harry’s credit, he has acknowledged the awkward position he is in, feeding the same media beast that he has previously criticized.
2. Harry dodges when asked whether he is infringing on the privacy of his relatives. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex hate the British media — yet at the same time they are supplying the world, tabloids included, with tidbits from the family. Harry says he is only setting the record straight after years of palace officials leaving him and his wife to the tabloid jackals. Harry asserts that his own family’s agents peddled false reports to the British media about the Sussexes and traded negative stories about the couple in exchange for positive coverage of other royals. This hairsplitting over hypocrisy leads to a few revelations (some rehashed), including the physical confrontation between Harry and Prince William and the bridesmaid dress brouhaha. But it is never settled. Harry wants credit for putting his name behind his words — admirable, and not a family trait. Yet the truth is that his family is the reason people buy his book.
3. Reconciliation appears unlikely — at least for a while. Harry has said that he would like to have his father and brother “back.” But he may want something he cannot have: He wants “a family, not an institution.” Perhaps if he spoke more with his family (it’s been a while, he’s told interviewers), he would remember that the House of Windsor is 100 percent institution. “Clamping down on individual happiness” could be the family motto as much as “never explain, never complain.” Like it or not, Harry’s family leads the monarchy he’s criticizing, so it’s hard to see how he can trash one without damaging the other.
4. Harry’s story is a remarkable historical document. Descriptions of “Spare” as “pure chaos,” TMI or the lament of a privileged White man oversimplify the book. (Which is not to say that chaos, TMI and hearty helpings of privilege are not essential parts of the book.) Harry’s memoir sweeps in: one man’s singular journey from schoolboy to soldier to married father; a love letter to a lost mother, cast in the grief of a 12-year-old boy; an indictment of a family with resources to care for two wounded children — but no apparent will or concern to do so; a love-struck man’s celebration of his wife. “Spare” is no literary masterpiece (for your own sake, skip the multi-chapter talk of his frostbitten todger). In time, Harry might regret sharing so much. But some content is stunning: Harry accuses his stepmother, Camilla, soon to be crowned queen, of spreading negative reports about him amid efforts to improve her public image. He recounts speaking to his brother about their father’s efforts to promote himself at their expense.
Think about that. A lot of Americans who were tiring of Harry and Meghan will likely find elements of Harry’s story to respect or even lament. When the prince spoke with Colbert about his military service in Afghanistan and why he included it in his book — details that were swiftly criticized — the effect was moving.
5. Harry says monarchy is valuable in the 21st century but not how it needs to change. The “heir and the spare” dynamic that the prince describes dominating his life (“I was the shadow,” he writes, “the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy.”) suggests, as one Guardian column put it, “something deeply unhealthy about hereditary power.” Yet Harry has been more specific about changing British tabloid culture than the British monarchy. We don’t anticipate deeper reflections in the near term. But Harry and Meghan have seen it from inside, and if they can’t explain why it matters — who can?
ICYMI: Here’s video of Harry’s “60 Minutes” interview with Anderson Cooper:
Coverage from around The Post
Harry and Meghan’s family drama is inescapable — anywhere in the world, writes London-based reporter Adela Suliman. The release of Harry’s memoir this week — on the heels of last month’s Netflix documentary by the California-based Duke and Duchess of Sussex — has sparked debates across the globe, “with many viewing the rogue royals’ complaints about their family through their own cultural lenses.”
This four-minute video highlights key moments from Harry’s first U.S. interviews promoting his book.
For those who want to read highlights, this article by London bureau chief William Booth rounds up the major revelations.
Here’s a timeline of the relationship breakdown between Harry and William, by London-based reporter Jennifer Hassan.
And some satire from Post Opinions columnist Alexandra Petri: “I’m the prince from ‘Two Princes,’ and I have also written a tell-all”
Amid all the “Spare” coverage, the Princess of Wales turned 41 this week.
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