Opinion:
Throughout history, princes have been brought down by murderous siblings, murderous parents, murderous Catholics and Protestants, gout, ulcers, the French, a barrel of malmsey wine, and hunting accidents. But Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex has just made history as the first Prince ever truly felled by nothing more sinister than his own pen.
Harry – or Aitch or Harold as we have learned recently he is alternatively called – has, of course, written, or at least helped to write, a memoir called Spare.
On Friday morning, Kiwis woke to see that despite a supposedly Bond-worthy degree of stealthiness and secrecy surrounding its publication that a Guardian journalist and greedy Spanish booksellers had managed to foil the minutely planned, meticulous global media rollout of the royal’s tell-all next week.
The dirt has been well and truly dished and it’s right there slapped on the internet for everyone to see. The biggest revelations: That he and brother Prince William “begged” their father, King Charles, not to marry his wife, Queen Camilla; that he had killed 25 people during his two tours in Afghanistan; that he had taken cocaine and mushrooms; that he lost his virginity to an older woman in a field behind a pub; and that le grand duchess falling out between his wife Meghan and Kate, now Princess of Wales, was based on the former telling the later she had “baby brain”. (It will be interesting to see how this release cock-up for the ages might affect book sales.)
Let’s be honest – it’s juicy, it’s a can’t-look-away car-crash of hurts, it’s a Bold and the Beautiful-worthy familial farce and there is one very clear loser in all of this – Harry.
If there has ever been any doubt about the royal’s lack of judgment, his self-centredness, ego and need for oodles more therapy, then here it is.
In several hundred pages and in return for a reported $29 million cheque, Harry has just managed to do what he has long accused the British press of having been beavering away at - of delivering a devastating blow to his reputation.
The man who has emerged from the pages of Spare (based on what has been put out by British and American media outlets with Spanish copies of the book) is one full of ever-bubbling anger and spite, and who is willing to debase his family in front of a global audience.
In the battle for hearts and minds that he and Meghan seem eternally obsessed with, in their persistent quest to right the narrative so they are viewed as unimpeachable victims of an ancient institution that trapped them in its maw, the Duke has instead managed to sabotage what standing he had left.
If Harry thought Spare’s publication would issue forth a global outpouring of sympathy because he suffered the gross indignity of being born second and into a messy, imperfect family then he is about to be in for a very unpleasant surprise that no amount of dairy-free, matcha-flavoured ice cream or crystal workshops are going to fix.
If Netflix’s nearly six-hour series Harry & Meghan painted Aitch as a bike ride-loving, Californian Dad then Spare, at least what we know of it thanks to those naughty Spanish booksellers, is an unedifying, at times cringe-worthy, journey through the subconscious of a man who seems eternally aggrieved. (No one in the world needed to know that he and brother William are circumcised or the details about how he lost his virginity.)
The Duke seems like a man who not only abjectly refuses to grow up but who is still full to the brim with vinegar and bile and whose willingness to throw Charles, Camilla, William and Kate under the bus just feels all a bit malicious.
Long gone is the party Prince – here is the eternally pissy Prince.
And that is why Harry is the one who stands to lose the most in all of this.
Because really, how much damage will Spare do to the family and institution he has such a problem with and how much more damage will his appetite to reveal all do to him?
Fine, the King comes across as a callous, distant father who would seem to be better at horticultural tinkering than hugs. William is portrayed as a violent bully who behaved like an “heir” and he and wife Kate look like upper-class, ill-educated twits for encouraging him to wear that Nazi get-up.
It’s all deeply unflattering but what is most revealing here is what his choice to unmask all of this says about Harry, a man willing to proffer up stories and details that will embarrass and degrade his family.
Essentially, he just looks like a bit of a stroppy Peter Pan.
Moreover, the man has so far failed to show he can ever accept a lick of responsibility for his actions. It was William and Kate’s fault that he wore a Nazi uniform to a dress-up party in 2005, never mind the fact that he already had it as one of two options.
It is the press’ fault that William does not see the incredible gift to the monarchy that was Meghan, with Harry saying that during the Dog Bowl Biffo incident of 2019, after William called her “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”, Harry responded by telling him he was “parrot[ing] the press narrative” about the former actor.
In 2009, Harry sparked outrage after being filmed calling a fellow Sandhurst officer a “Paki” and telling another “you look like a raghead”.
He writes: “My father’s office issued an apology on my behalf. I also wanted to issue another, but the staff of the Royal House told me ‘I advise you not to. Not the best strategy, sir.’
“F*** the strategy. I didn’t care about the strategy. What I did care about was that people thought I was racist.”
Is that owning up to what he said and did? Or was he more worried about how the public perceived him?
And what of less publicised moments, such as when in 2005 he said of his girlfriend, Zimbabwean Chelsy Davy, “She’s not black or anything, you know”?
Or that he told comedian Stephen K Amos, “You don’t sound like a black chap”?
If anyone has had it up to their gullet with the unhappiest prince since Hamlet doing all this soliloquising then avert your eyes and block your ears. Next we will see at least four hours of new Harry interviews, when chats with Britain’s ITV and America’s 60 Minutes, Good Morning America and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert are foisted upon us.
Ultimately, the story that Harry is telling the world with Spare is not one about his own suffering but his willingness to now make others suffer too.
Here’s hoping that someone in all of today’s hullabaloo has remembered they might need to tweak their Archewell website, where the tagline still reads, “Leading the way with compassion”. That’s one statement that no one can swallow right now.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Take a refreshing break from heavy winter dishes.