JUST HOW LOW CAN HARRY GO?
As duke tells podcast he must break cycle of ‘genetic pain and suffering’ passed on from Charles and Queen...
PRINCE Harry yesterday launched another broadside at the Royal Family in which he appeared to suggest both his father and the Queen failed as parents.
He dramatically claimed he had no choice but to leave in order to ‘break the cycle’ of ‘genetic pain and suffering’ for the sake of his own children.
In an explosive interview, Harry spoke of his years of therapy, revealed he wanted to walk away from the monarchy in his 20s, and even touched on his ‘wild days’ of partying and the infamous naked photographs of himself in Las vegas. vowing to bring up his own children differently from how Prince Charles raised him (in turn based on his upbringing by the Queen and Prince Philip), the duke of Sussex said: ‘He’s treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids?’
Harry described his life as a cross between the movie The Truman Show – in which a man discovers he is living in a reality Tv programme – and a zoo.
The prince made his comments in the ‘Armchair expert’ podcast with US media personality dax Shepard, who has had his own well-publicised battle with drink and drugs.
The duke said he was now ‘more comfortable being able to talk about my
own struggle because I do it to help other people’. ‘I don’t see it as complaining,’ he added. Talking about his life and his family ‘comes from a place of courage rather than weakness,’ Harry insisted.
While the hour-and-a-half long conversation was ostensibly about mental health, it was littered with Harry’s gripes about being born a royal, coping with the goldfish bowl of public life and why he wanted out.
Although he made a point of saying he didn’t want to ‘point the finger of blame at anybody’, Harry’s clear suggestion that Charles played a role in his childhood unhappiness will do nothing to repair their fractured relationship.
His mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, was by contrast painted in glowing terms.
It will also be seen by many as implicit criticism of his grandparents, the Queen and the late Duke of Edinburgh, for the way they brought up their own children.
Harry, 36, who has a son Archie, two, and is expecting a daughter with Meghan, said: ‘If I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on, basically.’
Referring to his father’s often distant relationship with his own parents and Prince Philip’s insistence on sending his sensitive son to Gordonstoun School in Moray – later described by a miserable Charles as ‘Colditz in kilts’ – the prince added: ‘It’s hard to do but for me it comes down to awareness.
‘I never saw it, I never knew about it, and then suddenly I started to piece it together and go, “OK, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he’s treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids?”’
Harry’s implicit criticism of the way he was brought up is likely to re-open wounds already inflicted by his and Meghan’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey in March.
In it the couple made a series of highly damaging allegations about family members, with Harry accusing Charles, 72, of cutting him off financially and saying: ‘I feel really let down by my father.’
Neither Buckingham Palace nor Clarence House were commenting last night.
But it is clear they feel frustrated Harry is continuing to talk publicly about deeply personal family relationships. ‘They appear to be making careers of talking about their previous ones,’ a source said. ‘It is not helpful.’
Sources also noted that ‘nothing ever appears to be their own fault’.
The podcast was littered with references to other commercial ventures, such as the prince’s new series on mental health with Miss Winfrey with Apple TV+.
Harry, who recently took a job as ‘chief impact officer’ at a Silicone Valley mental health and life coaching start up company, also talked about how he wants to continue with therapy even thought he does not believe he needs it.
Meanwhile, the podcast’s host plugged the fact he is moving to Spotify, the streaming firm Harry and Meghan have also done a lucrative deal with.
It came as senior royals in the UK had a busy day of official engagements. Charles was visiting a cancer care charity, while William and Kate were in Wolverhampton to highlight community initiatives as part of mental health awareness week.
FOR someone pathologically obsessed with protecting his privacy, the Duke of Sussex spends an inordinate amount of time baring his soul for a global audience.
Indeed, Harry rarely sees discretion as the better part of valour these days. Yesterday, he revealed his intimate thoughts on a podcast with US actor Dax Shepard, a selfconfessed former crack-cocaine smoker.
And if anyone thought the prince couldn’t sink any lower than branding the Royal Family racist on prime-time US TV, they were hopelessly wrong. In a bitter broadside, he accused Prince Charles of failing as a father because of his own dysfunctional upbringing by the Queen.
Leave aside the hypocrisy of invading their privacy during his thoughtless tirade. To undermine the grandmother he supposedly loves while she still mourns her husband is truly despicable.
Perhaps these self-pitying antics win plaudits from his and Meghan’s woke West Coast admirers. They leave millions of others cold.
And while Harry was score-settling, what of William? His brother was visiting a mental health charity, serving the country – a lesson in dignity and decorum.