Prince Harry, the world’s favourite royal is coming to Australia to promote the Invictus Games
THIS is what it’s like to be a modern prince: Your beard is voted the sexiest in the world — but you struggle to keep a girlfriend because of the attention. The question is, as he prepares to fly into Sydney, what sort of prince will he ultimately prove to be?
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THIS is what it’s like to be a modern prince. Your beard is voted the sexiest in the world — but you struggle to keep a girlfriend, because they can’t cope with the attention.
You date a beautiful Hollywood actor, but then publicly worry you can’t make her safe. You raise millions for homeless African children and drive the Invictus Games for disabled soldiers, but critics call you a parasite on the taxpayer.
You go to Afghanistan to fight, but are sent home when a magazine exposes you.
At 12, in your dark suit, your head bowed, you must walk with unfaltering steps along The Mall, behind a flag-draped gun carriage that carries the body of your mother Diana, Princess of Wales, watched by thousands of strangers, and untold millions on televisions across the world.
At 32, you talk about what those viewers never saw: the chaos in your head.
“I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well,” you say.
“I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and sort of lies and misconceptions and everything are coming to you from every angle.”
Prince Henry of Wales, better known as Harry, has been the tragic prince, the soldier prince, and the party prince — the one whose cheeky personality always kept him close to the front pages.
The redhead. The black sheep. The larrikin who wore a Nazi costume to a fancy dress party in 2005, and bared his crown jewels on a wild weekend in a Las Vegas suite in 2012.
It’s not surprising that critics have doubted the fifth in line to the throne’s ability to uphold the expectations of the monarchy. Yet he’s always been the most interesting prince. A Newsweek poll in 2014 found he was the favourite royal, with the Queen second.
Now, with Prince Philip announcing he is stepping down from public life just before his 96th birthday, Harry will need to step up.
The question is, as he prepares to fly into Sydney next week: what sort of prince will he ultimately prove to be?
Royal watchers say the next chapter will see the emergence of what is being titled “Team Windsor” comprising William, the Duke of Cambridge; Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge; and Prince Harry.
British royal expert and writer Hugo Vickers says the young royals, particularly Prince Harry, are extremely popular in the UK and around the world, and the Duke of Edinburgh’s retirement is the perfect opportunity for them to “step up”.
“It’ll be interesting to see to what extent other members of the royal family will step forward following Philip’s retirement,” he says.
“I think we’ll see much more of them, particularly William and Harry, who are already earmarked for a number of charities of which the Duke was patron. Prince Harry is certainly a crowd favourite and he has come a long way over the years.”
His evolution from Prince William’s rogue little brother to becoming an advocate of his late mother Diana’s dreams has been inspiring to watch.
He will arrive in Sydney next week ahead of the launch of the passion project he founded in 2014, the Invictus Games, an international Paralympic-style multi-sport event that details life beyond disability. Injured and wounded servicemen and women can participate in various sports in the Games including wheelchair basketball, sitting volleyball and indoor rowing.
Sydney is host city of the fourth Invictus Games from October 20-27 next year, which will include more than 500 competitors from 17 nations competing in 10 different sports.
When Harry arrives on Wednesday, he will take part in a jam-packed program of events and activities to mark the official launch of the Invictus Games Sydney 2018.
He will first attend a launch ceremony at Admiralty House to welcome the Games to Sydney and begin the 500-day countdown until the opening.
After the launch, Harry will join members of this year’s Invictus Games Australian squad for the third Games, to be held in Toronto in September. That afternoon, he will head to Circular Quay to watch a demonstration of sports, including sitting volleyball, indoor rowing, wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby.
He will cap off his first day by heading out on the water to watch a sailing race around Sydney Harbour. The next day, Harry will privately visit some of the venues to be used in the Games and to get an update on how plans are developing.
In an interview with NBC last year, Harry opened up about the “incredible joy” being patron of the Games gives him.
“I was incredibly privileged and fortunate to be born into this position,” he said.
“Early on in life you sort of get harassed and chased around and all that sort of stuff but if you can channel all of your passions and efforts into things that really matter, and bring amazing people together and put smiles on people’s faces ... if I spend the rest of my life doing that then I’m happy.”
Like his mother Diana, who was slammed for softening the stiff upper lip, Prince Harry has not been one to filter his emotions. He broke royal traditions and spoke candidly about mental health in an interview in April.
For the first time, he discussed in-depth the pain he bottled up for 20 years following the death of his mother in a car accident in 1997, when Harry was just 12 years old.
“My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help?” he told London’s The Daily Telegraph in April about his early years, in which he had embarked on a successful military career but couldn’t escape negative headlines.
“All of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with.”
Harry admitted how far he had come, and that he was in a “good place” now.
It was the first time he had ever spoken publicly about the impact his mother’s death had on him.
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