Prince Harry and life as a royal brother
With Will and Kate’s Baby No. 2 on the way, Harry will have much to teach on being a spare to the heir
Prince Harry greeted this week’s announcement that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their second child with his signature humour: “I can’t wait to see my brother suffer more.”
For Prince William’s younger brother, who turns 30 on Monday , the news means he will fall even further down the line of succession. But Prince Harry will likely have much to teach his new nephew or niece about being the spare to the heir.
In a new biography out Tuesday, Prince Harry: Brother, Soldier, Son, author Penny Junor reveals details of Prince Harry’s life, from the questions of his paternity, to the instability of his mother, Princess Diana, to his wild binges, but also how he has matured, and in the following excerpt, what life is like when you are sibling to the man who will be king.
HRH Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge was born at 4:24 in the afternoon of 22 July 2013, in the middle of a heat wave.
Harry was one of the first people William phoned with the news; Harry saw the baby the following day when the family was back at home. When asked about his nephew, Harry extended his hands and said, “He’s about this long and this wide. It’s fantastic to have an addition to the family. I only hope my brother knows how expensive my baby-sitting charges are.”
Harry is clearly very taken by George, although not so taken that he’s volunteered to change many nappies, but while his birth and William’s marriage to Kate brought very real joy, they also marked the end of an era. The brothers are best friends and enormously close in every sense — their charitable work overlaps; they share an office and they live within the same complex at Kensington Palace; they shared the same childhood — and that bond will never diminish. But the relationship has inevitably changed as William’s focus has changed. He is no longer in the military, no longer up for partying till dawn, or tripping over guyropes in the early hours at Glastonbury. He is more interested in getting an unbroken night of sleep and listening to George’s growing vocabulary. It is what happens with most siblings when one of them starts a family of their own.
When, or who, Harry will marry is anyone’s guess. For two years Cressida Bonas appeared to be a contender, until they broke up at the end of April 2014
They have always been very different characters and, as they have matured and their choice of careers has exposed them to separate challenges and experiences, those differences have become distilled. William’s instincts and enthusiasms are pure middle England, cautious and conservative. He craves normality, and in another life would happily live as 90 percent of the population does. When Harry says he would like to be normal, Main Street is not at all what he has in mind. He is what someone who knows them both well describes as “an absolutely thorough-going, full-fat eighteenth-century aristocrat. He’s a Rupert of the Rhine, a torrid figure, and I use the eighteenth century absolutely intentionally where along with privilege went responsibility — which was lost in the Victorian era and certainly in the last century. Yes, absolutely he lives life to the full and he has lots of money and he has friends, in the sort of Prince Hal way. He is much more altruistic and philanthropic than they were in the eighteenth century, but he does have that split which they had — this sort of hell-raising, Cavalry commander, using somebody as a mounting block type of thing; but with it, that real connectivity which they had, because the people were their power base. Harry is as English as English can be.”
They still share the same passions, which are reflected in the three distinct causes that the Foundation supports (conservation, disadvantaged children and veterans), but they are no different from brothers working in any family firm; as they are becoming more experienced, more confident, more opinionated and engaged with the subjects, there are differences of opinion, clashes, tensions and jealousies between them. For example, Harry is every bit as passionate about conservation as William, but at the moment it is his brother who is seen to be its champion. It was his brother who led the launch of United for Wildlife, a major initiative that has brought together the seven largest wildlife charities to try and stop the illegal poaching of endangered species. And because of his expeditions to the Poles, it is Harry who is seen as the Prince of veterans; while the reality is that William is also very engaged in the welfare of veterans, but from a different aspect. And Harry’s indisputable affinity to children doesn’t mean that William is indifferent to their well-being — and each of them has a view about how best to tackle the problems.
“Thank heavens to date the strains have only been the natural thing be- tween brothers,” says one of their team, “and unlike quite a lot of brothers, they can then go and have beer together and say, ‘Okay, you do the conservation, I’ll do the veterans.’ That’s literally how it sorted itself out. Jealousy is not a word in Prince Harry’s lexicon: he doesn’t get jealous, he’s remarkable like that. “I think they would still choose to spend an evening together, yes,” says a friend. “It would be a different night from the one they would have spent three of four years ago, which would have been, ‘Who can remain standing longest?’ as it were. Harry loves going round and having supper with George and Kate and William. It’s that sort of night they have now, because they’re growing up. That’s not to say Harry doesn’t have an alternative night — he’s probably got four or five alternative nights which he also enjoys, and William is probably not on those nights anymore and it would be a bit odd if he was. But they are very, very close and Harry loves the whole domestic bit which his brother’s now doing — which is interesting because he’s not longing to get married or anything but I think he sees what his brother’s getting out of it, which is fantastic.” When, or who, Harry will marry is anyone’s guess. For two years Cressida Bonas appeared to be a contender, until they broke up at the end of April 2014. Friends had said it seemed to be serious between them, but they had said much the same about Chelsy Davy. All that is certain is that, as both women know, being in love with Harry is the easy bit. Taking on everything else that it entails is a very different matter. Kate Middleton is an exceptional woman from a stable, loving family and she is rock solid. She might have been born for the job, and William was very lucky to have found her and got know her in the privacy of St. Andrews. But she made sacrifices for which no amount of red carpet, titles or tiaras can compensate. Only Prince Harry and Chelsy know what brought their relationship to an end — although it must have been amicable because they are still friends. It may have been that she wasn’t prepared to live with that level of media scrutiny and she valued her freedom too much. It may be she thought the whole royal set-up looked stultifying. Or it may be that the relationship had just run its course. But friends say the Cressida hates the media attention and she too is completely unmoved by the royal connection. “Cressida, I do know, is about as interested in the whole royal thing as Chelsy was,” says a friend, “which is to say not at all. Kate probably loved William very deeply very early, so she got it into her head this was what she was going to have to live with, and at least Kate will be Queen one day. That’s a fairly substantial thing to do with your life; and if you conduct yourself well it will have an impact on a massive institution in British public life with this enormous history. If you’re married to the spare-butone, what kind of life is that? I think that’s Harry’s problem; to find anyone who will marry into that — because most substantial women wouldn’t.” Excerpted from the book Prince Harry: Brother | Soldier | Son by Penny Junor. Copyright © 2014 by Penny Junor. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.