I WANTED OUT, SAYS HARRY THE RELUCTANT PRINCE
In an astonishing new confession, he says he considered quitting Royal role... but stayed for Queen He wanted to be a ‘bad boy’ and admits: ‘I spent years kicking my heels... I didn’t want to grow up’
PRINCE HARRY has admitted that he once ‘wanted out’ of the Royal Family and considered turning his back on the privilege he was born into to live an ‘ordinary life’.
In an extraordinarily candid interview, the 32-year-old Prince opens up about his troubled 20s and says how, after leaving the Army, he ‘didn’t want to grow up’ and struggled to find a meaningful role for himself.
Speaking to journalist Angela Levin – who revealed last week that Harry believes ‘no one in the Royal Family wants to be King or Queen’ – the Prince gave an astonishing insight into how he once felt directionless, and sought an escape from the pomp and pageantry surrounding him.
‘I spent many years kicking my heels and I didn’t want to grow up,’ he admitted.
Several years of partying, drinking and heavy smoking followed – which he has previously described as ‘total chaos’ – and Harry admitted coming ‘very close’ to a breakdown several times. And when he finally decided to be more constructive, he even questioned whether remaining a junior Royal would allow him to use his talents effectively – and considered life as a commoner instead.
‘I felt I wanted out but then decided to stay in and work out a role for myself,’ he said, making it clear he was primarily motivated by his loyalty to the Queen.
It was obvious his life in the ‘goldfish bowl’ had left its mark. He added: ‘We don’t want to be just a bunch of celebrities but instead use our role for good.’
Harry, who was just 12 when his mother Princess Diana died, admitted feeling most at home during his years in the Army. He was devastated in 2007 when, after ten weeks in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, his position was leaked by a magazine and he had to be hastily withdrawn for security reasons.
‘I felt very resentful,’ he said. ‘Being in the Army was the best escape I’ve ever had. I felt as though I was really achieving something. I have a deep understanding of all sorts of people from different backgrounds and felt I was part of a team.’
Tellingly, he added that while in the Army, ‘I wasn’t a Prince, I was just Harry’.
But with professional help, recommended by his brother William, Harry found a way to reinvent himself and carve out a role which has won public respect and affection: promoting the cause of injured servicemen and women, and tackling mental health issues, among other things.
He said that he and William were ‘incredibly passionate with our charities and they have been chosen because they are on the path shown to me by our mother’.
But when asked whether his girlfriend Meghan Markle had in any way advised him on mental health issues, he replied: ‘Absolutely she did not.’
In a sure sign of his maturity, Harry showed he had given serious thought to the future of ‘The Firm’ in the 21st Century.
‘We want to make sure the Monarchy lasts and are passionate about what it stands for,’ he said. ‘But it can’t go on as it has done under the Queen. There will be changes and pressure to get them right.’
Perhaps surprisingly, he also claimed to be an avid viewer – along with millions of commoners – of The Crown, the hugely popular Netflix drama about his grandmother and the House of Windsor. ‘It’s great but I wish they’d stopped at the end of the first series,’ Harry said. ‘They absolutely must not move on to the younger generation.’
‘In the Army, I wasn’t a Prince – I was just Harry’
IN NORMAL times I’d let it pass, but I’m writing as your Ken Palace advisers are clearly AWOL, and these are not normal times. You may not have noticed, as you’re too busy at the meat counter of Whole Foods or getting the Natural History Museum to open just so you and Meghan can gaze at dinosaurs in private, but we’re all on post-Election edge here.
The nation is divided and angry, the Government is hanging by a gossamer thread, and in the past week or so it has seemed as if it’s only the Queen keeping the country together: visiting the bereaved of Grenfell Tower, giving her Gracious Speech in Parliament, shooting off to Ascot.
Right in the middle of all this – in a Newsweek interview on Wednesday – you pop up and rattle our faith in the one thing this country basically still believes in, far more than bloody Brexit and almost as much as the blessed NHS. The Monarchy. What on earth were you thinking, frightening the horses with this: ‘Is there any one of the Royal Family who wants to be king or queen? I don’t think so, but we will carry out our duties at the right time.’
What a Ratner moment that was. ‘Reluctant Royals’ is very bad PR for the brand, and The Firm is not just any brand – it’s arguably the most successful in UK plc.
In that one sentence you also reveal that you fail to grasp the corporate purpose of The Firm. The entire point of the Royals is: you do what you are, not you are what you do. The Queen is Queen. Your father is heir to the Throne. Camilla is consort. Your only job – since you threw in the Army, which must count as a mistake – is therefore Prince.
Your sister- i n- l aw Catherine seemed to get this when she described herself as ‘Princess’ in the space left for occupation on George’s birth certificate. It’s your honour and your privilege, whether you like it or lump it, and you don’t seem to like it very much.
I shudder to think of your grandmother’s reaction.
She has served this country without putting a foot wrong or opening her mouth out of turn for 70 years, and now you reveal that your father and brother are mere huffy hostages of history.
Then, in the next breath, you explain that you are doing the world a favour just by your very existence. ‘It’s a tricky balancing act,’ you say. ‘We don’t want to dilute the magic… the British public and the whole world need institutions like it.’
This makes me worry, Harry, that you have either never heard of Bagehot’s first rule of the Royal Family, which is never let daylight in on the magic, or you’ve chosen to ignore it.
After all, you are, as you say, on your ‘journey’ and still finding your ‘path’. You have chosen to broaden the national conversation on mental health as a tribute to your late mother. This is all wonderful, and your creation of the Invictus Games is also a great credit to you. But your Newsweek interview shows – God, I sound old – that you still have some growing up to do, and ‘learnings’ to absorb.
‘Even if I was king, I’d do my own shopping,’ you boast, thus missing the key point. Unlike Princes Charles, William and George, you have dodged that heavy duty. You will never be king – and therefore have nothing to complain about.
You are free to enjoy your status as most popular Royal, the People’s Prince. You can merrily have your cake and eat it from here to kingdom come. So we don’t want to hear another peep for a while (and yes, that’s the Royal ‘we’.) A copy of Bagehot’s The English Constitution is in the post.