Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir will boost Prince William’s popularity
As the royal family braces for the 2022 publication of the Duke of Sussex’s memoir, it may actually spell good news for the future king.
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Get out the tartan, the Queen’s gone on holidays.
If there was ever a time when Her Majesty dearly needed six weeks of drizzly walks across the moors, too much salmon for words and having to fend off the midges at her beloved Scottish estate Balmoral, then it’s now.
It is only a scant three months since her beloved husband Prince Philip passed away and her family – and the monarchy – is now staring down the barrel of a new nerve-jangling, tension-rising Sussex crisis.
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Last week, it was announced that her grandson Prince Harry is set to publish a memoir next year, with its promise of being, in the royal’s words, an “accurate and wholly truthful” account, suggesting that another round of dirty laundry-airing could be on the horizon.
It’s a case of deja ewwww … not more whining?
Current signs don’t point to Harry’s publisher Random House recouping much of the rumoured $27 million advance they paid the royal in the UK.
A poll done late last week found that only a dismal 14 per cent of Brits were even interested in reading the book. (That figure is only 25 per cent across the pond in the US.)
Likewise it has emerged that his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s debut literary offering, a children’s book called The Bench, has only sold 6195 copies in the UK.
However, no matter how impressive or lacklustre the sales of Harry’s potentially soul-baring book might end up being, what is clear cut here is that there is one person for whom its publication will have a seismic impact: William.
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As ironic as it might be, the prospect of Harry spending 100,00-odd words enumerating all the slings and arrows of fortune he suffered while a working HRH could very well be a real boon for his older brother.
So far, we’ve had his dignity-free James Corden interview, he and Meghan’s now-infamous Oprah outing, the podcast where he told the world about the “pain and suffering” of growing up in the royal family and his very own TV show where he accused the royal family of “total neglect”.
After all of this, the mind positively boggles at what depths there are yet to be plumbed by the sixth in line to the throne.
And yet, the monarchy has never basked in such a warm glow of public support since Harry assumed his self-appointed role as truth-teller-in-chief.
As counterintuitive as it might be after the sustained onslaught of Sussex revelations, in the UK, the royal family is going gangbusters. Between mid-March and mid-April, the popularity of all the senior members of the royal house, besides the Sussexes, only improved.
The shiniest stars in the royal firmament right now are undoubtedly William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Respectively, 80 per cent and 78 per cent of people have a favourable view of the duo, both having enjoyed healthy increases in their popularity.
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In fact, it looks like the more that the now California resident blasts his family (and the family business) the more the UK as a nation coalesces behind the royal family.
(Meanwhile, the same poll found that the public opinion of Harry and Meghan, despite having revealed the cruelty and racism they faced behind palace gates, fell to the lowest level ever.)
In April, another poll found that 47 per cent of people wanted William to rule when his grandmother passes away, compared to only 27 per cent wanting Prince Charles to reign next. (It’s hard not to pity Charles, a well meaning bloke who has spent 51-years waiting for a job that no one wants him to actually do.)
What is clear now is that Harry’s various headline-grabbing disclosures this year seem to have only helped his brother.
Huh.
Interestingly, not only does every fresh round of revelations only hurt Harry in the public’s estimation in Britain, they have also had a halo effect for William.
William used to be the boring brother, the serious, dull Prince who seemed to have somehow lost any lingering youthful vestiges of charisma along with his once lustrous blonde locks. (Vale the pin-up Prince.)
Harry, by contrast, was the Fun One, the cheeky, grinning brother who appeared to have inherited a natural magnetism by Bentley-load.
My, how the antique 18th century mahogany tables have turned.
Every time Harry opens his mouth to launch another salvo, his brother looks more and more like a very attractive regal option.
William’s dependability now looks like highly admirable steadfastness; his slightly stale mien now looks like an attractive stolidness. Even-tempered, considered and not prone to emotional outbursts, the older Wales brother has morphed from slightly anaemic-looking figure to an inherently desirable future king.
However, while Harry might have spent much of 2021 accidentally making his brother look good, the monarchy has also clearly taken some direct hits. When William is crowned, the millennium-old institution he will inherit will be on the cusp of one of its most dicey and demanding periods in modern history, thanks in part to his brother’s defection to the US.
Harry’s revelations, and perhaps his book too, have asked deeply uncomfortable questions that William must now find answers to when he inherits leadership of the 1200-year-old institution.
One of the biggest problems he will have to confront and deal with is about race. William might be popular at home but the majority of the 2.4 billion-strong population of the Commonwealth are people of colour.
If the future King William V wants to keep this union of nations together, he will have to address and fix the view held by some that the monarchy is a bigoted beast (even if that bigotry is unconscious).
No matter how many earnest declarations William might make that the house of Windsor is “very much not racist” he will still face an uphill battle to fully rehabilitate the image of the royal family on this point.
William and Kate were always going to face the task of revitalising and refreshing the image of the royal house – in 2019, 46 per cent of 18-24 year-olds surveyed said they thought the UK should continue to have a monarchy; as of March this year, that figure has fallen to only 31 per cent. However, that job has now been made considerably harder by Harry and Meghan’s actions and words.
The Sussexes’ leaving and claims have triggered a once-in-a-century existential crisis by undermining assumptions about the value and purpose of a hereditary monarchy.
Is it a valuable part of British society and or an archaic drag on public resources? Are royal family members deeply committed public servants or a bland bunch of over-privileged, part-time do gooders? Is the royal family a source of national pride or a queasy hangover of the colonial past?
Again, William will also have to satisfactorily find a way to address all of this all if he wants the crown to survive.
It’s lucky then that the Queen is enjoying some much needed R’n’R right now.
In 1951, when the last royal defector, King Edward VIII, penned his autobiography, he totally horrified the royal establishment.
Then, he went back to quietly twiddling his thumbs in France, staying publicly silent on the royal family for the rest of his life.
In 2022, might Harry follow in the steps of his great-great uncle? We will have to wait and see.
Silence might be golden but it doesn’t come with a cheque.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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