The Duke identifies a genuine problem with Royal back-up acts, but his answer – to condemn hard work and duty – is much worse
What are we to make of the claim that the Princess of Wales admonished the Duchess of Sussex for accusing her of having “baby brain”? Harry includes the anecdote in his autobiography Spare in order to portray the woman he once described as “the sister I never had” as a buttoned-up prig, unable to engage in girlie banter.
According to Harry, a postnatal Kate told Meghan over tea at Kensington Palace in June 2018: “You talked about my hormones. We are not close enough for you to talk about my hormones!” William then allegedly pointed at his sister-in-law, saying the “rude” comment was “not the way things were done in Britain”.
“Meg” apparently responded by telling the heir to the throne to “get your finger out of my face”. It was a petty squabble, but the alleged exchange appears to act as an allegory for what this all really boils down to: the seriousness of the royals, content in their roles, versus the superficiality of the Sussexes, who by all intents and purposes were and still are lost.
To his credit, Harry has identified a problem with the monarchy. It has struggled to keep a handle on its “spares”. The tortured history of those playing second fiddle to the heir stretches back to the reign of Richard the Lionheart, whose youngest brother John tried to usurp him when he went off to fight in the Third Crusade.
George, the Duke of Clarence, was famously so resentful towards his eldest brother Edward IV that he attempted to overthrow him no less than four times. Then we had Queen Mary conspiring to imprison her sister Elizabeth I in the Tower of London, and the “folly” of George III’s brother Edward, which brought George’s reign into disrepute. More recent experiences, with Princess Margaret’s hellraising and the Duke of York’s many controversies, shows this is a problem the Windsors have yet to solve.
Harry has a point, then. Yet the trouble with his response is its total lack of seriousness. Like a man-child who has thrown all of his toys out of the pram, such that he can no longer reach them, he serves up all his petty grievances without providing any solutions whatsoever.
Rather than trying to reform the Royal family from within – as his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, did so successfully – the 38-year-old has shirked his responsibilities and gone off to America to cash in on his misery. That is what has proved his downfall here. He demands to be taken seriously as the self-styled “Moraliser of Montecito”, and yet there is a puerility at the heart of his reckless actions.
From telling tales of 25 Taliban kills – which have now placed a target on his back and a burden on his security team – to referring to himself as a “young stallion” in one of the most cringeworthy loss-of-virginity tales ever committed to paper, the book is, at times, bordering on babyish.
A plethora of other mistakes, such as bragging repeatedly about how many times he took illegal drugs, show a complete disregard for his continued position as a role model, particularly to young adults, regardless of his tanking approval rating among the general population .
Moreover, in apportioning all the blame to others, and none to himself, it is clear to even the most casual reader that he is instinctively averse to taking responsibility for anything. His decision to wear a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party in 2005 was supposedly down to William and Kate – even though Harry was 20 years old when it happened.
This infantilisation of Harry, I have to admit, is partially the media’s fault. From the outright condemnations of his walk behind his mother’s coffin (might he not have felt more aggrieved were he removed from the ceremonial aspects of the funeral?) to the references to him and his brother as “Diana’s boys” long into their 30s, we have all contributed to the Duke of Sussex’s exaggerated sense of self – and that “all” extends to the public, too.
No one is denying that this sensitive soul wasn’t terribly damaged by the sudden and tragic death of his beloved mother. It is disturbing to read that he wasn’t hugged upon learning the news. But Harry seems to mistake seriousness in the rest of his family for a lack of feeling when, seemingly without him realising it, the book actually suggests the opposite is true.
The King, for instance, comes across as far less stiff-upper-lipped than most royal fathers. This is a man who was scarcely hugged by his own parents and, according to Harry, was so relentlessly bullied at Gordonstoun that he thought he might die there. But when the dreadful news of Diana’s death came, he tried his utmost to break it as gently as possible, patting Harry’s knee and reassuring him everything would be okay.
Opinion will remain divided on whether it was a good idea to keep the princes in Scotland, or to turn off all the televisions – but there remains a strong sense that the royals were doing what they thought best under near impossible circumstances.
Harry reveals that his father later apologised for failing to get him help sooner, and offered advice when he started suffering from panic attacks. And, contrary to depictions of him as a largely absent father, the King used to sit on the side of Harry’s bed until he was asleep as he knew he was afraid of the dark.
He also insisted Harry write rather than call as he “loved” his letters and even left notes under the pillow for his “darling boy”. These actions appear at odds with suggestions that the King struggles to express his emotions in private.
Harry’s portrayal of William is similarly confused. Described as his “complete opposite” and “arch nemesis”, William is depicted as so in thrall to the throne that he appears heartless, trying to deny Harry the right to have a beard on his wedding day and banning him from giving his best man speech due to concerns he may offend the VIP guests.
But Harry unwittingly reveals the strength of the love William so clearly has for a brother he fears has lost his way with his account of that dog bowl scrap in Nottingham Cottage. Why would William get so angry if he didn’t care about his brother?
Harry believes the Prince of Wales became “piping hot” over Meghan’s alleged “rudeness” to staff because he was “parroting the media”. What naivety. When they had that row in 2019, the press coverage was still relatively favourable towards the Duchess of Sussex. It would be another two years before a bullying complaint against her reached the front pages.
Rightly or wrongly, William had formed his own opinion of Meghan. It must have incensed Harry to see his own flesh and blood take the views which were also widely held among the staff, to whom he clearly felt a sense of duty.
There is a seriousness about the Prince and Princess of Wales because there has to be. People want their royals on walkabouts, not The Oprah Winfrey Show. They want them carved in the mould of the late Queen: duty first, the self sacrificed. They want stoicism and stability, not raw emotions. And they want hard graft, not cashing in. That’s what the royals get rewarded for – in public support and taxpayer funds – and why Harry gets punished in the opinion polls for being against those values.
At one point in the memoir, Harry ridicules the fact that his relatives competed for the most appearances in the Court Circular, the official diary of royal engagements, as if it is somehow a bad thing for a member of the monarchy to be hard-working. Six years spent with someone who openly mocks the idea of curtseying to Queen Elizabeth II – combined with living a Santa Barbara life of sun salutations and soya-milk lattes – has clearly clouded his judgment.
Fundamentally, the Duke of Sussex’s war on the monarchy has backfired so spectacularly because he has forgotten how seriously the British take the notion of “keep calm and carry on”.