It’s Harry’s casual and relentless cruelty to Wills — in the name of ‘honesty’ — that is so monstrous
Going Spare? Me, too. Yet while there has been so much about Prince Harry this week — everything from his frozen penis to losing his virginity alfresco, although sadly these two incidents are not connected — let us spare a thought for Prince William.
Where does all this leave him? imagine his position. For most of your life you have loved and looked out for your little brother, only to discover via the pages of f the fastest- selling memoir in n history — 1.43 million copies in n all formats in U.S., Canada and d Britain on day one — that he e resented you all along. Deeply.
Everything, from your bigger er bedroom and your more exalted position in the family hierarchy, to your physical resemblance to Mummy, which he envy, envy, envies. Then he exults when this resemblance disappears with age, replaced by ‘your alarming baldness, more advanced than mine’.
So casually cruel, in the name of being honest, as the song goes.
Yet the Willy-bashing signs were always there, long before Spare was published earlier this week. (Earlier this week? Already it seems like 1,000 years ago.)
Speaking to oprah Winfrey, Harry made it obvious that somewhere deep in his ruined psyche, part of his happiness was dependent on William’s misery.
‘i am free, my brother is trapped’ was the theme song then. on the netflix docu-series it was ‘i married for love, my brother did not’.
Harry has also stated his belief other royal men married women who ‘fit the mould’ whereas he did not: he married a living saint.
Another cherished leitmotif is that William and Kate (and other senior royals) are somehow ‘ jealous’ because Harry and Meghan are so very superior at being royals. Meanwhile, the attacks on the Princess of Wales and the leaked texts over the dreary saga of the bridesmaids’ dresses — well, Harry knows very well how much they will wound and infuriate his older brother.
For when you start to drain the Spare swamp, Harry’s obsessive attacks on the British Press are equalled only by his obsession with William and his superior status. And if you have to vitiate someone else’s happiness to augment your own, to prove to yourself that you are not the second-rate sibling after all, then you are a monster.
Harry misses few opportunities to have a dig at William while elevating himself. He does not even baulk when it comes to sacrosanct family relationships. ‘[My mother has] done her bit with my brother and now she’s very much back to helping me,’ he once said.
‘i’m just making sure that [the Queen’s] protected and got the right people around her,’ he told nBC’s Today show last year, with the tacit suggestion that Prince William couldn’t be trusted to do the same.
‘i am my mother’s son,’ is his mantra, using the golden Diana legacy to pave his way to popularity
the U.S. and usurp William in the process.
on screen, in person or on the page, he strives to show that he is the better brother; morally superior in every way, not a dull, plodding obedient royal dupe like Someone He Could Mention.
i’ve put my arm around my brother all our lives and i can’t do that any more,’ said a sad William, when the rift between them peeled open in January 2020. imagine a younger brother fostering a lifelong resentment against an older brother because he was born first. But this is the sorry juncture we have reached. Broadcaster Andrew Marr said this week that book and general Prince post-Megxit Harry’s behaviour were not only damaging for the monarchy, they might even hasten its demise. it is hard to argue with that.
THROUGHOUT Spare, senior royals and courtiers are portrayed as bumbling fools while progressive, smart Harry the Hare is the admirable antithesis to silly billy Willy the Timid Tortoise. it is relentless — and very damaging.
And judging by Harry’s appearance on the Stephen Colbert chat show in America — which brought the series’s largest audience in two years, with 3.5 million viewers — the monarchy is an even bigger laughing stock there. Harry, too — although i doubt he realises he was being mocked on camera.
Meanwhile, everything was delightfully Hollywood backstage. ‘He is a great hugger,’ said his celebrity make- up artist Jenn Streicher, whose other clients include actor Chris Evans, whom People magazine has just dubbed ‘the sexiest man alive’.
The same magazine also ran an interview with Harry this week.
‘My hope has been to turn my pain into purpose,’ he said. These days Harry doesn’t even have the decency to blush, making Jenn’s task so much easier.
Back home in the dull, buttonedup Britain of Harry’s imagination, another man’s life drifts deeper into the shadows. it must be saddening to realise your only brother is jealous of you, but this is so much more. Every action has a consequence and the sparkling highs of Harry’s exciting new life are matched only by the lows he has excavated in William’s.
For the burden of it all falls onto the shoulders of the Prince of Wales like a concrete cloak.
King Charles doesn’t want a fuss — his only wish is that his last years are problem free. ‘Don’t make them a misery,’ he begged his warring sons at his own father’s funeral.
it is upon William somehow to positively navigate forwards out of this sorry mess, to pick up the pieces and to carve out a future for himself, for his family, for the monarchy and the country, too.
The saddest thing is that he has to do all this not only without the support of his only brother, but in spite of his only brother.