Family business is a royal pain

Prince Harry admits, as a wayward teenager, to drinking, smoking cannabis and using cocaine as part of a willingness to do almost anything that would upset the established order. It’s fair to say that as a young father in self-imposed royal exile, with nonconforming wife and minor television celebrity Meghan Markle leading the way, Harry is at it again.

Royalists may be aghast, but the public no doubt can see through the elitist entitlement and hypocrisy, and witness that Harry and William, and father King Charles, ultimately are members of a dysfunctional family just like many others. Brothers who come to blows because one does not like the other’s choice of girlfriend; tears and tantrums because of “baby brain” gibes delivered to a new mother on her sister-in-law’s wedding – hardly royal scandal. It’s more like petty banality of the sort that strikes a chord with the everyday person.

Boasting of war kills, as Harry has done, is distasteful and not something soldiers generally do. Harry’s new book, Spare, may be both a cry in anger as well as a call for help. It is certainly a nice little earner for the Harry-and-Meghan franchise for spreading royal chaos from afar. “The Firm” may not like the optics. But as a family, thanks to the whingeing couple, they have to deal with their emotional entanglements in public.