Prince Harry makes possibly biggest blunder yet

It seemed to be an off the cuff comment but in just three words Prince Harry could not have sounded more removed from reality.

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One of the hardest things about writing about the royal family, specifically Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, over the last year plus has been rationing the Marie Antoinette references.

The doomed French Queen is famously (and totally inaccurately) said to have, when faced with the angry, hungry proletariat, responded with a blithe, “Let them eat cake”, the expression epitomising the extreme privilege of royalty and the titled few’s total ignorance about the real world.

The Marie Antoinette comparison is one that has proven again and again to be all too apt when it comes to the shenanigans of the Sussexes, such as when Meghan wore an outfit that cost an estimated $21,600 to visit a Harlem school where 94 per cent of the pupil’s get free meals.

Today though it’s Harry’s turn after he offered up exactly the sort out-of-touch declaration that would takes the cake (boom tish) and which would Marie Antoinette proud.

Cast your mind back to March this year when it was announced that the sixth in line to the throne had gone and gotten himself a day job, specifically as the chief impact officer (CIO) for a $6.6 billion start-up called Better Up.

Prince Harry is the chief impact officer at a Silicon Valley start-up. Picture: Better Up.

At the time, quite what this gig entailed was a mystery and today we don’t really have much more of a sense of that besides drum up publicity for the Silicon Valley darling and use the word ‘impact’ with grating regularity.

Still, in his CIO role he has given an interview to Fast Company magazine where Harry was asked about “increased burnout and job resignations”, apt given that he might be the most famous job-quitter in history aside from his great-uncle King Edward VIII.

The Duke of Sussex’s response? We should ‘celebrate’ people who quit jobs that don’t “bring them joy”.

In those three words he could not have sounded more removed from reality than if he had started talking about cake.

Let’s just take a moment here to reflect on the fact these sage words about work are coming from man who has had a job in the private sector for 15 months; who previously had only ever been employed for the family business and the army; a man who until July last year had only ever lived in places provided for him by his Gan Gan or the military; and a man who received millions of dollars from his dear Papa up until the age of about 35 years old.

It is this man, a man with a startling paucity of real life experience, who is readily offering up career wisdom, something that makes about as much sense as asking Prince Andrew for dating advice or Prince Philip (back in the day) for driving tips.

Today, Harry is being dragged over the media coals for his quitting comments given how wildly privileged they are. However, what really makes this situation so much more embarrassing for him is that this all comes only a day after his brother Prince William debuted his latest and most personal mental health project.

On Monday, an episode of Apple Fitness+’s Time To Walk series, starring the royal, came out in which the 39-year-old choked up while talking about his time as an air ambulance pilot and opened up about his mother, his family life and the toll that working as a first responder took on his own mental wellbeing.

It is a move which has earned William nearly universal acclaim and it is one that could not be more removed from what his brother is getting up.

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. Picture: Danny Lawson – WPA Pool/Getty Images.

The contrast between the men’s projects could not be more stark: We have one brother making himself vulnerable in a deeply moving way in an effort to help others and the other serving up the sort of advice that would make Gwyneth Paltrow blush at the acute California-ness of it all. (It’s hard to imagine Harry circa 2015 saying something like “We envision a world where growth and transformation are possible for everyone” or talking about “how helping others reach their peak performance positively impacts the whole world,” as he just told Fast Company.)

Then there’s the money part of things.

In return for William’s for perambulatory reflections Apple donated a five-figure sum to each of three charities – Shout in the UK, Crisis Text Line in the USA and Lifeline here in Australia. Goodo then.

And Harry? Better Up, the platform that he is busy being Chief Impact Officer for costs $684 per month to access, making it totally out-of-reach for the vast majority of people.

And is he doing all of this out of the goodness of heart? Not quite. In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Better Up had “declined to comment” on how he would be paid, but the company’s CEO Alexi Robichaux did reveal that Harry would be joining the company’s leadership team as an “officer of the corporation.” It would seem highly unlikely he is doing this out of the goodness of his heart.

(It must be noted though that Better Up has partnered with the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, of which Harry was formerly President, to offer 1000 “young leaders” access to the platform for free.)

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. Picture: Dominic Lipinski / POOL / AFP.

Let me be clear here: Harry’s commitment to raising awareness about mental health and addressing the stigma that can surround it has been exemplary and his dedication to this cause is abundantly clear and an enduring credit to him.

But spruiking a service far, far out of reach for most people strikes an excruciatingly tone deaf note.

No matter how slick a press release, it is nigh on impossible to sell his Better Up work as being in service of the greater good, not when it costs the equivalent of $8,208 annually to access, a sum very few people, no matter how great their need, could afford.

And where things get even murkier here is the fact that he now appears to be being paid for focusing on a cause has long pursed for philanthropic reasons.

Take his Apple+ TV series, The Me You Can’t See, which came out this year. When the project was first announced in 2019, it was reported that the money would go to mental health charities. However, at the time of the series’ release in May, the Washington Post reported “a spokesperson declined to answer questions about the current financial arrangements and what profit Harry might take from the series.”

If the former Army captain had passed on his fee to a worthy cause, you would think the world would have heard about it given that the Sussexes’ much more modest (but still generous) moves such as paying to fix a Texas women’s shelter roof and helping donate nappies to homeless pregnant women have found their way into the press.

Or, consider his autobiography (suggested titles: Long Walk To Montecito; Becoming (A Ratepayer); The Secret Diary of A Prince Aged 37 and 1/4) will come out next year and which could very well explore his grief, anger and his psychological wounds. For this work, he will reportedly be paid an estimated $28 million. Now, $2.1 million of that will go to his AIDS charity Sentebale, but the other $25.9 million? Presumably into his bank accounts.

The issue is one of motivation because what has been introduced into the mix over the last year or so is the slight ick factor that comes from someone doing something that looks suspiciously like monetising their mental health struggles. Meanwhile, William is only looking more and more like the golden child.

What ‘joy of quitting’ brouhaha has also done is strip away the veneer of his “Call me Harry,” knockabout bloke public persona and reminded the world that he is a man who up until last year lived off his father’s generosity and never had to pay an electricity bill in his life.

He might love to talk about putting his young son Archie on his bike for rides and how he and Meghan went to a supermarket for one of their early dates but his understanding of ‘work’ seems about as solid as Philip’s of the road rules: A fleeting and vaguest of notions at best.

This has all Harry served as a reminder of what a wildly rarefied world he inhabits and his abject disconnect from the realities of life for tens, if not hundreds, of millions of Americans.

If Harry wants his US career, and the fat cheques that follow, to thrive, then pronouncements like his thoughts on quitting have to stop. If there is one thing we have learned in this it is just how removed the man is from the realities that people who were not born into extreme family wealth face.

Does he really think that the Amazon warehouse workers who stay in roles where they are expected to work in what the Guardian has called “unsafe, gruelling conditions” do so because they bring them “joy”? Does he really think a single parent working two minimum wage-gigs is doing so because they find working essentially for tips a soul-satisfying experience? Does he have any understanding of the fact that one in six Americans stay in jobs they would otherwise leave because of the associated health insurance?

And what of the roughly 9.6 million people in the US alone who have lost their jobs during the pandemic? Hopefully they are all out there today finding “joy” somehow.

Harry might have chafed against royal life and know a thing or two about being stuck in a role that sucks at one’s marrow but what he does not seem to grasp is that he has had, and will always have, the sort of choice and freedom that comes with having millions of dollars in the bank. That is a luxury that very, very few people have.

What this current situation reminds me of is that Marie Antoinette created a toy farm in the gardens of Versailles called Le Petit Hameau (the little hamlet) where she would dress up as a shepherdess and try her hand at milking. She and the ladies of the court would go and have a pretend bucolic frolic, as if farming was all placid calves and perfectly groomed hens, and as if they had any notion of working life.

It feels like Harry is doing something very similar, just with less need for a fetching crook and a muslin dress.

What Marie Antoinette learned all too painfully was the very real risks of being deeply removed from the travails and experiences of the masses. Here’s hoping, for the sake of Harry’s bank accounts, he cottons onto this lesson, and fast.

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.

Originally published as Prince Harry makes possibly biggest blunder yet