I think Prince Harry might be the most aggrieved man in the West. He is also extraordinarily difficult to feel sorry for. His wife Meghan – with that rictus smile – might be worse. The pair together are shallow, thin-skinned weirdos who don’t seem to have many friends. And the complaining! There is just so much complaining – to the BBC, to Oprah, to random royal correspondents. And about what? A charmed life in Montecito? Suffering the consequences of their own decision to emancipate themselves from their family? Please.
The latest instalment in the Sussex tragicomedy comes in the form of a BBC interview. (Whoever does royal and ex-royal PR should have worked out by now that BBC interviews usually go wrong for them.) Prince Harry is rowing with the Home Office, and his family, about the level of security the UK state should provide him when he returns there. He‘s seeking to overturn changes made to the arrangement in 2020, when he stepped down as a working royal. He was overruled and now says it was all an establishment stitch up. “Whether you’re the government, the Royal Household, whether you’re my dad, my family – despite all of our differences, do you not want to just ensure our safety?”
It is all so dislikable. Harry, with his preternatural entitlement, stamping his feet like a badly trained 10-year-old, blaming the state for the obvious and predictable outcomes of his own decision. He is a man who seems to believe he is both faintly messianic and the great victim of the universe at the same time. He is spoilt, vindictive, callous, lazy – whatever.
All of the above feels great to say. Sneering is so easy and, yes, briefly satisfying. I am not the only one who has to actively moderate the contempt I feel for the Sussexes (it just comes so naturally!). But I can’t shake the dull, nagging feeling that it is all wrong. Not because Harry is actually victim-in-chief, nor because beneath it all I think he is probably an alright bloke (I don’t), not even because his wife is probably subject to harsher treatment than most in the public eye. But because he is so obviously miserable. And I don’t think it is a particularly nice instinct to look at the miserable and roll your eyes. No matter how much he invites it.
As much as I want to roll my eyes at Prince Harry’s complaining, it’s clear he’s really miserable
You don’t have to be religious to accept it was God who brought Trump and Zelenskiy together
The child of a globalised world, I grew up with Chinese-made smartphones and fast fashion
I was glad to see Conor McGregor mixing with Tucker Carlson. His stock is now even lower
The monarchy is sick. King Charles III – who was crowned just two years ago – has cancer. His daughter-in-law was diagnosed just a month after he was. She is currently in remission. Harry is estranged, and apparently desperate for a reconciliation that likely will not come. Prince Andrew had to settle a civil sexual assault case brought against him by Virginia Giuffre. She died by suicide at the end of April. Tragedy is endemic to the house of Windsor.
This is the best case against monarchy. I have dedicated several column inches and hours of my life to arguing for the institution. Yes – it is not right or befitting for a place like Ireland. Republics – France, the United States – still count for some of the greatest and most noble countries in the world. Of course royalty is archaic and outmoded. And sure, such hereditary privilege is “anti-democratic” (I cannot help but laugh when people raise this particular case, because duh, that‘s literally the point!).
Nevertheless, none of this really matters. People on the street are not active, ardent or even conscious royalists. But monarchy provides a kind of scaffolding to the public realm that is often invisible. It is a cohering force and has been for a very long time. It works.
But I am increasingly of the view that the more salient consideration, or at least the more human one, is the personal cost of it all. This goes under-examined because the family is supposed to maintain some air of detached mysticism, an aloof apolitical distance. (Prince Harry is not very good at this part of the job.) We cannot know too much about them because we can only revere things we don’t fully understand. And for royalty to matter they have to be revered. All of this is captured in the now-cliched Walter Bagehot essay on monarchy: “We must not let daylight in upon the magic”.
That‘s all well and good for everyone but the monarchs. But all of this is what led to Prince Harry truly believing his mother was killed by the press, having to walk emotionless behind her coffin aged 12 down the Mall, who believes now that there is a grand establishment conspiracy to deny his family safety and security, who exposes his own brother as a nasty brute in an insecure and needy tell-all memoir. Is this the magic we are supposed to obscure from the daylight? It reads like straightforward suffering to me. And taste dictates that we shouldn’t will or abet the suffering of anyone, no matter his background.
