One word that cost Prince Harry his brother
One simple word has seen Prince Harry and Prince William’s relationship destroyed and his popularity in the UK plummet.
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The scene: A multimillion-dollar estate somewhere in the Santa Barbara environs. I’m imagining lush lawns, manicured gardens and a sweeping mansion only slightly smaller than the Louvre. Inside a group of well-dressed 30-40-50-somethings gather; the mood is warm, excitable; the canapes, organic; the wine, a premier cru.
And the reason that the great, the good and the simply ultra wealthy have decided to go out on a school night to dodge Gwyneth Paltrow and her latest theory about gluten? A British Prince of the Realm who just published a 400-page book that reads like the longest break-up letter in history.
This week JR Moehringer, the ghostwriter of our party boy Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex’s trans-Atlantic missile of an autobiography Spare, has penned a piece for the New Yorker about the process of helping famous names tell their various tortured stories.
So far, most of the coverage of the Moehringer article has focused on the fact that he makes working with Harry, a man for whom we have no proof he has ever read an entire book, sound about as exasperating and trying as attempting to separate Prince Andrew, Duke of Disgrace and his comfort-eating biscuit tin.
But there is one moment in the piece that I think is much more interesting.
Moehringer writes that in January this year, after Spare had been published, one of the Duke’s pals had thrown him this party to mark the occasion. On the night, Harry, he writes, was “overjoyed” by the sales and that “readers were reading, at last, the actual book,” that is, the royal’s own account of his life.
Later the Duke got up to thank various people. Moehringer recounts: “He mentioned my advice, to ‘trust the book,’ and said he was glad that he did, because it felt incredible to have the truth out there, to feel – his voice caught – ‘free.’
“There were tears in his eyes. Mine, too.”
The way that Moehringer paints the scene, it’s a touching, meaningful moment – a man who had been stuck in a life not of his own choosing – finally having emancipated himself from Buckingham Palace’s dictats.
However, in pursuit of that single word – “free” – Harry has paid, whether he quite realises it or not, an extraordinarily high personal price.
Perhaps the most obvious loss is of his brother Prince William, the Prince of Wales and self-styled Regular Dad. See, up until Spare, the father-of-three had largely escaped the signature Sussex spray and pray treatment.
During Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s infamous Oprah Winfrey interview in 2021, William was largely left out of things aside from his brother’s claim “we’re on different paths” and that he and Charles were “trapped”.
Sure, by this time there had been more media coverage of the brothers’ falling out than of some US presidential campaigns but still. As Harry told their prime time confessor Winfrey the royals’ “relationship is space at the moment”.
“And, you know, time heals all things, hopefully,” he added.
Things took a bit of a turn when the Sussexes’ Netflix cry-me-a-river-for-cash docuseries landed in December.
Harry told audiences that the Prince had been “terrified” after William “screamed and shouted” at him during the Sandringham Summit, which made it sound like he was more shaken by a sibling brawl than taking on the Taliban.
He also seemed to suggest that his brother’s aides had been complicit in planting and leaking stories to the press.
This was hardly likely to improve the channels of communication between Kensington Palace and Sussex base camp but really, none of this was smoking gun territory.
Reconciliation still seemed a viable possibility if just one of the proud men had the courage to WhatsApp the other.
And then came Spare.
The single person who came out of the book the worst was unequivocally the Prince of Wales. While their father King Charles comes across as egotistical, thin-skinned and about as good at parenting as Fergie is at financial management, the person with the biggest target on their back was ‘Willy.’
Sensationally, Harry recounted his brother assaulting him after a fight over claims Meghan had bullied Palace staffers. (She has always denied the allegations.) Vale the dog bowl that paid the ultimate price.
Then there was Harry chucking his brother and sister-in-law Kate, the Princess of Wales under the bus by recounting how they thought his choice to wear a Nazi costume to a dress up party was a scream.
Perhaps more damaging was the sense the Spare gave of William as a petty and jealous person, such as him wanting to have nothing to do with younger sibling when they were both at Eton, him ordering Harry to shave off his beard for his wedding to Meghan and the elder putting the kybosh on the happy couple tying the knot in one of London’s grand churches.
Ultimately, the future King William V emerged from Spare looking like more than a bit of a d*ck.
If anyone who had been walking their dog in Windsor Great Park in early January and heard the sound of priceless Limoges dinner services (plural) being smashed in a back garden then I think we know who it was.
Those in William’s inner-circle wasted no time in spelling out exactly how seething he was, describing “burning” with anger and “hurting” to The Times, while in the Daily Beast his friends recounted him feeling “utterly betrayed” by Harry and he “hates” him.
In the months since then, there have been suggestions of a slight thawing in relations between Charles and Harry with reporting of a phone call or even phone calls which might even have included a “heart to heart” (‘And then Meghan told me it wasn’t my turn to use the meditation yurt but hers and I have to consult the chart on the fridge…’).
However, contact between the King’s sons would seem to be about as warm and open as that between Ukraine and Russia.
When it comes to Charles and Harry, it really is anyone’s guess where things go from here and His Majesty has made it energetically clear via ‘unnamed sources’ popping up in British broadsheets that, despite all the slings and arrows, he still very much loves his son.
So, there is still the possibility that wounds might be healed, hands stretched out across the water etc.
But William?
The way things are looking right now, the chance of a fraternal rapprochement seems about as likely as Vladimir Putin cheerfully giving back the Donbas and sending Volodymyr Zelensky an apology fruit basket.
So back to that word “free.” Harry, having purged and unburdened himself, might have found this elusive state of emotional and personal liberation but it has cost him what was, outside of Meghan, perhaps the most meaningful and longest relationship of his life.
He has chucked that all away in the name of some sort of personal exorcism which might only represent temporary satisfaction.
It’s a question of short term versus long term. The Duke seems to have got, as of now, exactly what he wants: Catharsis, a hell of a lot of cash and seeing his name rocketing up the bestseller charts.
But I wonder if he ever contemplated where this might leave him in the years to come?
If he needed not one but two cautionary tales on this front then I present you with exhibit A) Charles’ 1994 Jonathon Dimbleby interview in which he admitted he was not Husband of the Year material; and exhibit B) Diana, Princess of Wales’ 1995 Panorama sit-down in which she gave the world the notorious “three of us in the marriage” line. (Strange she didn’t mention the various upper crust sorts she had been boffing but hey.)
It’s easy to understand why they did what they did. Charles was losing the tabloid War of the Wales’ to his bobby dazzler of a wife and perhaps thought controlling the narrative would play in his favour.
It didn’t – he looked like a dirty shagger (there’s an image) and it sparked a debate about whether he could or would ever be King and Head of the Church of England having admitted to breaking the seventh commandment. (Bet he’s broken number ten too – he seems like the sort to covet his Gloucestershire neighbour’s pure-breed a**.)
Diana didn’t fare much better. She might have delivered one of the greatest zingers in history but not long after the credits had rolled on the interview, Her late Majesty informed the couple it was time to divorce, an outcome that the Princess didn’t particularly want.
Both Charles and Diana got the immediate satisfaction of getting their side across (and all without even a peevish ‘so there!’) but at the end of the day, they also hurt themselves in the process.
Harry, in his pursuit of ‘free’ has not just sacrificed his relationship with Willy but also his standing in his homeland where these days he’s about as popular as the return to the six-day working week.
Even in the US where venting one’s spleen is a constitutional right, Harry and Meghan’s hour upon hour and page upon page of fulminating against The Firm has cost them popularity-wise. YouGov polling has found that post Netflix and Spare, both Sussexes have lost ground (his popularity has gone from 52 to 46 per cent and hers from 38 to 36 per cent).
They’re hardly huge drops but given that sharing is viewed as a moral imperative and generally celebrated in the US, that the numbers have gone backwards is a worrying sign.
Interesting that all of Harry and Meghan’s freedom talk hasn’t really translated to soaring popularity in the land of the free.
So, Harry is finally “free”. Mission accomplished and all that. I just hope it was worth it. That and he doesn’t need to go looking for a spare room to stay in next time he’s in London for a court case or some such. There’s a karmic piper waiting to be paid.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as One word that cost Prince Harry his brother
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