COMMENT
How do you judge another person's happiness? Not to get all philosophical on a weekend, a time when most of us should be lolling in elasticised pants and not contemplating the existential nature of joy, but it's a question that crops up semi-regularly when it comes to Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. Is the royal, who, along with wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, cast themselves out of royal life with a flourish of made for social media photo moments, happy in his new life?
Back before any of us had ever heard of Megxit or Montecito or had tried to figure out what the hell "[unleashing] the power of compassion to drive change" means; back in the years when Prince Philip was still on the gaffe-prone job and Queen Elizabeth II was pluckily opening hospital wings on the reg and keeping David Cameron on the straight and narrow, Harry was known for wearing one thing: a big cheeky smile. He grinned at kids, beamed at crowds and seemed to generally be having a jolly good time of it.
Only later did he reveal how much he had been suffering.
So what about now? Post his escape from the Palace?
According to historian and venerable royal biographer Hugo Vickers, the answer is not a pretty one.
This week, Vickers, the author of books on the Queen Mother, Wallis Simpson and Prince Philip's mother Princess Alice (and who recently collaborated on an autobiography with the Duke of Kent) appeared at the Henley Literary Festival and got onto the subject of the Duke of Windsor and whether he ever showed remorse for his decision to throw in the Crown in the name of love.
"If you woke him up at 4am and asked if he had any regrets, he would have said 'no'. But if you want to know what he really thought, look at his eyes," he told the crowd.
"As for members of the Royal family stepping away, I don't think it usually leads to happiness in the long run.
"I don't think it did with the Duke of Windsor.
"As for the Duke of Sussex, who knows what is going to happen to him, but he looks utterly miserable."
Harry may no longer have any official duties, but, on paper, Harry should be as happy as Larry (David, Ellison or Fink, you can take your pick). He and Meghan are the proud owners of a 16-bathroom mansion in upmarket Montecito in California, a town where they can rub shoulders with any number of celebrities when they deign to leave their large gated estates. The Sussexes also stand to become tremendously wealthy, based on the estimated $200 million-plus worth of deals they have done with entertainment titans Netflix, Spotify and Penguin Random House, not to mention his 'day job' as the Chief Impact Officer for coaching and mental fitness platform BetterUp (Bet he's the sort of bloke who is always willing to change the cumbersome water bottles at the communal cooler).
Beyond the material side of things, there is also the fact that Harry's life is now wholly his own. He is no longer obligated, as he was as a frontline working member of the Royal family, to suit up and gladhand Aldermans and Lord Mayors the length and breadth of the UK to try and keep the Royal Standard flying. If Harry now wants to spend his days working on ideas for TV shows (a Duke's guide to motorbike repair? A 13-part celebration of the Americans trouncing the King's forces in 1781?) or chugging bee pollen smoothies while refreshing Twitter, he can. His time and his career are now entirely up to him, giving him the sort of latitude and freedom to say and do things that would have been unthinkable back in his HRH days.
But I suppose the thing you've got to ask yourself here is - is that enough? Enough, that is, to counterbalance the sad ways his life has changed since the Sussexes exiled themselves to the US West Coast?
There is, most notably, his fractured relationship with his family.
On the night that the Queen died, Harry reportedly dined with his uncles and aunt rather than father King Charles and brother Prince William, and it has not been reported if the Duke spent any time in private with Charles during their two-week stay in the UK last month.
Likewise, despite the Wales and Sussex families both staying in homes on the Windsor Estate during the mourning period and the lead-up to Her Majesty's funeral - the houses only about a reported 120 metres away from one another - there have been no indications they spent any time together. During the funeral itself, there was no eye contact or any sort of interaction between William and Harry.
Pre- the historic eruption of Megxit, William and Harry were generally reported to be very close, and that tight bond makes perfect sense. How could anyone else ever truly understand what it was like to have endured that sort of childhood and to face those sorts of pressures?
That support is now a thing of the past.
So, too, the fact that Harry now lives 8,500 kilometres away from the nearest Mayfair members' club means that he is no longer in the daily orbit of his longtime schoolmates and intimates.
In leaving the Royal family, Harry has also been forced to give up his honorary military titles, Captain General of the Royal Marines, Honorary Air Commandant of RAF Honington and Commodore-in-Chief, small ships and diving, Royal Naval Command.
In 2021, a friend of the Duke told the Times, "His military work is one of the most important things to him."
Again, that source of pride is now gone too.
And all those glossy, highly lucrative deals? Are they really as wonderful as they might seem at first glance?
Harry's memoir will be released next year, and last week the Daily Mail reported that he "has launched a last-minute bid to tone down his bombshell autobiography amid fears his final draft 'might not go down too well' in the wake of the Queen's death."
The Sussexes have also been working on a Netflix series which has been described as an "at home" docu-series (Page Six) and as a documentary about their "love story" (Meghan in an interview with The Cut). In recent days, it has been reported that the couple wants to re-edit the show given the accession of Charles, with one Hollywood industry source having said, "I wonder if the show could even be dead in the water at this point - do Harry and Meghan just want to shelve this thing?"
If you think about it, the Duke and Duchess have really just exchanged being accountable to one powerful organisation for them being accountable to a number of powerful organisations who have to keep shareholders sweet (The expression 'out of the frying pan and into the fire' comes to mind here).
The pressure on the Sussexes to deliver must be immense; no less than their future ability to keep the lights on and the fridge stocked with organic hummus depends on it. Being incredibly famous is no guarantee that entertainment giants will keep ponying up those cheques that are stuffed with more zeroes than a sold-out MAGA rally. Earlier this year, Spotify parted ways with Barack and Michelle Obama, while Netflix pulled the pin on the animated children's series that Meghan had been working on as part of a tranche of high-profile cancellations.
The economic landscape of late 2022, with skyrocketing inflation and the stock market tumbling, is vastly different to that of 2020, when there were billions of dollars of cash sloshing around corporate America and the Sussexes' star was firmly on the ascendent (Not to mention the novelty value of a company being able to boast of having a couple of real-life members of the Royal family on their books during the annual billionaires' summer camp in Sun Valley. Certainly trumps a new Gulfstream in the one-upmanship stakes).
I really hope that Harry has, despite Vickers' assessment, found some sort of peace and joy; God knows the man deserves real contentment.
During his Henley appearance, the historian also said: "I think the reason the Queen always had such sparkling eyes was because she dedicated herself to duty. [The Duke of Windsor] took the path of perceived happiness [by abdicating so he could marry Wallis Simpson], and in the end it's duty that makes you happy."
Last year in an infamous statement, the Sussexes declared that "service is universal." But happiness? Sadly not.
New York Times: Men are leaving fiction reading behind. Some people want to change that.