VINAY MENON
From wild child to role model, Harry’s change is admirable, but I kind of miss bad Harry,
Prince Harry is an inspiration and a force for good.
Had I written that sentence a few years ago, I’d soon be sitting in an HR office with senior editors. They’d read me the Star’s drug policy, examine my pupils with a doctor’s head mirror and then request a urine sample. Who could blame them? Anyone describing His Royal Highness as a force for good back then was clearly high. Prince Harry an inspiration? Only to those who brawled with paparazzi, went on biweekly benders, wore regrettable Nazi costumes to Halloween parties, used racist epithets in homemade videos or got wasted enough to shout “Alright, then” when challenged to a game of strip billiards.
Prince Harry was the royal who seemed more like a court jester. You never pictured a coat of arms so much as a coat of bongs. Royal duties? A few years ago, if asked to predict what he’d be up to in 2016, you’d be torn between “financing a new kind of hallucinogenic lager” and “officiating shotgun weddings in Vegas.”
But here we are and Bad Harry has become the kind of foggy memory one suffers after a night of blackout carousing. In his place on the world stage now struts Good Harry, a bearded 31-year-old who rolled into town on Monday to promote the Invictus Games. He founded the “international adaptive sports event for wounded, ill and injured service members and veterans” after his own tour of duty in Afghanistan, including missions as an Apache chopper pilot.
The Invictus Games are coming to town in 2017, a fact you could not have avoided on Monday. Good Harry made sure of that. On newscasts, on social media, at hotels and sports venues, he was namechecked more often than Drake.
After Monday, Canada may well name a Timbit after the royal lad.
Good Harry spoke eloquently at a press conference at the Fairmont Royal York, tying in the horrific injuries he witnessed in combat and the chance Invictus gives veterans to heal, to become whole again, through sport. He sang the praises of Canada’s military and encouraged the rest of us to “cheer on the custodians of that proud history.”
As he talked, behind him the eyes of Team Canada glistened the way eyes do when people are suddenly near a stranger who truly gets the trauma they have carried in their hearts.
For all of this, Good Harry deserves a rousing ovation. We don’t do enough to support and care for our veterans. All too often, their sacrifices — they are fighting so we don’t have to — get taken for granted, get lost in the abstract. Our soldiers should be lionized. We should wear poppies every day.
So in a celebrity-obsessed culture, Invictus celebrates the people we should be celebrating, which is why Good Harry earned vows of support from every level of government on Monday, including John Tory, Kathleen Wynne and Justin Trudeau.
Still, the radical makeover of one Prince Henry of Wales — jetting off to comfort victims of natural disaster, speaking out about equality and feminism, sweetly joking with schoolchildren, snagging humanitarian awards, enlisting the Queen to make a video that playfully mocks the Obamas, Invictus — is kind of depressing.
I miss Bad Harry. In a world in which conformity is driven into our heads at an early age, he seemed determined to always do the wrong thing. His impish grin was subversive. He telegraphed the vague dangers of a caged tiger. His gaze said: “Yes, I am part of the monarchy. Yes, I have lived my entire life in the public eye. No, don’t be surprised if I accidentally burn down Buckingham Palace one day while doing shots of sambuca with European supermodels.”
There’s no question Good Harry is making the world a better place. But Bad Harry allowed the rest of us to live vicariously through his misdeeds, which I’d argue was also making the world a better place. Whenever I was doing taxes or mowing the lawn, I could take comfort in knowing Bad Harry was shirking his own stodgy protocols and suffocating restrictions and pointless duties.
Bad Harry was like a Peter Pan with impulse-control problems and an open tab. He prowled the streets in khaki Dockers and wool pullovers, forever on the hunt for fun. He made no apologies — well, he was forced to make a few — about the traumas in his own heart. There was something visceral and pure about Bad Harry.
He was the boy no one is allowed to be.
Then one day, he was gone. vmenon@thestar.ca