The response to Prince Harry’s ‘disastrous’ interview says more about us than him

One of the most famous men in the world sits on a white sofa in a warmly lit private home in California. It isn’t far from where he lives with his wife and two children, in the exclusive suburb of Montecito. He speaks for almost half an hour, despite only being scheduled to speak for 10 minutes. The journalist asking the questions, Nada Tawfik, says later that he arrived with no entourage, that he was “down-to-earth, softly spoken and easy to talk to”.

Throughout the globally broadcast conversation, he says he’s “really, really sad” to be sitting there. He’s “uncovered [his] worst fears” after losing a legal battle concerning the security he receives in the UK. “I thought … the one thing I could rely on was my family keeping me safe,” he says. “I’m devastated.”

Prince Harry during his candid interview with the BBC.Credit: BBC

Watching the interview, I study him. His frustrated smiles, his helpless shrugs, his tense jaw. What I see isn’t a 40-year-old man who has been pilloried by commentators and called, among other things, a spoiled, entitled narcissist. I see a terrified little boy.

Prince Harry’s interview with the BBC was a response to last Friday’s loss in Britain’s Court of Appeal. In 2020, a decision was made to withdraw his family’s taxpayer-funded police protection when they’re in Britain.

Since then, he has insisted that while he is no longer a working royal, he inherited a lifelong security risk at birth, which should therefore entitle him and his family to a certain level of protection. He says that immediately after his decision to step aside, his security score was downgraded from the highest level to the lowest without any risk assessment and despite well-documented threats against him and his family. He argues that “private security can only do so much” in the UK and that without police protection, his family isn’t safe to return to the country he called home for 35 years.

The response to the ruling, and the interview, has been brutal. He’s been called “delusional” and “out of touch with reality”. He’s had his fears called a “conspiracy theory”, been told to “count his blessings”, and to “just shut up”. In other words, he needs to stop playing the victim.

In this criticism is an interesting sticking point: the idea of privilege and our inability to see its complexity. How financial privilege is not the only kind of privilege, and how, no matter who you are, it’s not particularly good fortune to lose your mum when you’re 12 or to have her death broadcast around the world as one of the defining moments of modern history. To grow up in what sounds like an emotionally underprivileged environment, where you were born into a rigid role you never felt at home in.

Perhaps Prince Harry is a litmus test for the limits of our empathy. We like to think that decades of research, an increased general understanding of wellbeing and an expanded psychological vernacular, we’ve come a long way when it comes to understanding of mental health and specifically, trauma. We’re more compassionate than the generations before us, we say. We’re more patient. We know that what we’ve been through becomes a part of us, and it informs our fears and our biases and our choices.

When we watched Prince Harry walk behind his mother’s coffin, the weight of his loss was felt universally. It was complex grief and complex trauma, locked inside an institution that isn’t known for its emotional intelligence. Where did we think that pain would go?

Somewhere along the way, we seemed to decide that it was either too messy or had an expiration date. We were willing to tolerate an unprecedented resignation, a Netflix documentary and a memoir. But there’s a time limit to our compassion. He lost his mum, so what? Move on. Let go. We’re all hurting. Don’t feel safe in the UK and don’t want to pay for your own security? Don’t go back! We’re just sick of hearing a kid who grew up in castles crying.

You might take issue with the way Prince Harry has gone about addressing his grievances, or think he’s impulsive and attention-seeking. You might find him to be insufferable or annoying, and question his work ethic.

But consider this: His mother was killed when she left the royal family. She was being chased by paparazzi because leaving her official role didn’t change who she was. She wasn’t safe. Perhaps that truth seems tired to the public, but I’m sure it doesn’t feel that way to the person who’s had to live with the consequences of it.

And it’s worth considering what our collective eye-roll to this says about us.

Clare Stephens is a writer, editor and podcaster.