Harry wants to be the People’s Prince, but deep down he’s just a snob

And the air was thick with smoke from bridges being burned. And the man who had set fire to the bridges said that the bridges could be repaired if only there was “accountability” from his family, the family who were scorched by the flames of his wrath and choked on the vengeful fumes.    

Either Prince Harry is dim or deranged; quite possibly a bit of both, I think. In a series of TV interviews to promote his memoir, Spare, which came out today (January 10), the Duke of Sussex sprayed accusations and grievances around like an Apache helicopter gunner mowing down the enemy with a chain-gun. Which Harry did actually do, during his highly creditable stint in the British Army (killing 25 Taliban; a reckless boast), but at least he wasn’t firing at people he claimed to love, people who couldn’t fire back. Like his father, brother and stepmother.

“Nothing in this book has been written with any intention to harm them or hurt them,” he told Tom Bradby on ITV1. A sympathetic yet steely interviewer, Bradby looked politely perplexed. “Some people will say you have railed against the invasion of your privacy, yet here you are invading the privacy of your nearest and dearest,” he prompted. Harry stiffened, flinty eyes cooling from Mediterranean blue to Scottish rock pool.

While the People’s Prince makes much of being his mother’s more relatable, rebellious son, Harry can actually be quite a snob. (Unconscious arrogance, you might call it.) Asked by Anderson Cooper on America’s 60 Minutes why he and Meghan didn’t just “renounce your titles as Duke and Duchess” Harry replied curtly: “And what difference would that make?”

Well, it would sever Harry’s connection with the institution whose dark, defensive, deviously hierarchical manipulations he despises and whose failure to offer protection against a loathed media forced “my wife, my son and me to flee for our lives”. On the other hand, the monarchy is the source of his power and fame. Clearly, Harry doesn’t hate it quite enough to lose those.        

One thing the Snarkles could not have foreseen is becoming a laughing stock. Once you are the object of national mockery, you really have lost the country. (Even in the US, talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel, previously considered a Sussex friend, ran a riotous sketch of two Princes – actors dressed as the late pop star of that name – slapping each other). From the cheeky chappie people loved because he was a bit of a laugh, to scowling, self-righteous butt of the joke. Oh, Harry, what have you done?

It’s the lack of self-awareness that is jaw-dropping. Harry has done so much therapy his cerebral cortex has basically been liquidised to a California smoothie; when he speaks, out comes a mushy green blurt of avocados, chia seeds and coconut water. It’s utter drivel.

In the ITV interview, Harry notably dialled down the racism charge to “unconscious bias”. There is already a sense of damage limitation as Spare’s misery moanathon is greeted with less sympathy than its $20 million publishing deal might have anticipated. Are the Sussexes waking up to the fact they have gone too far? Madam in Montecito won’t like it if her golden goose becomes a turkey.

I wrote all of the above before reading Spare today. Wow. Whatever they paid JR Moehringer, the ghostwriter, it was worth every dollar. Skilfully constructed and beautifully articulated, the memoir flatters its subject, lending Harry the coherence, nuance and gentle, humane insight he sorely lacks in interviews.

At its anguished heart is the tragedy of a 12-year-old boy losing his beloved mother, a blow so devastating that young Harry could make no sense of all the damp hands extended to him by the crowd outside Kensington Palace. He realised the hands were wet with tears yet he could not cry because his mother would never leave him and William, would she? Unaddressed by a family that was both deeply suspicious, and incapable, of displaying emotion, the shock traumatised the prince for years. On the rugby field at school, he says he was “scary” because, unlike the others, he actively sought out pain. Because pain was a reminder of losing his mother, and he never wanted to forget.

More than a decade later, during Army training, his helicopter instructor congratulated him on his fearlessness. “You’re not terribly concerned, if I may say, Lieutenant Wales, with dying.”

“I explained,” says Harry, “that I had been unafraid of death since the age of 12.”

The manner in which Diana perished, her hounding by the paparazzi, created a pathological loathing of the media that dictates her son’s actions, disfiguring him to this day. A therapist tells the prince he is “addicted to the press... reading it, raging at it… she said these were obvious compulsions”. It’s true; he is still trapped in 1997.

“Please don’t read it, darling boy,” his father begs. Then along came Meghan and any criticism by the media (unkind or often justified) rekindles the paranoia. Fight and flight. “She is perfect, perfect, perfect,” he raves shortly after they meet. Is she? Or is she a projection of all his longing to be loved?

It’s an incredibly sad story, but ultimately devastating. A revenger’s tragedy. Harry has burned his bridges, although he may not know it yet. His life as a royal turned all to ashes.