I’m just wild about Harry, the rascal who became royalty’s trump card

Republicans can’t afford to laugh off Prince Harry, whose dedication to a good cause is genuine.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry at the Invictus trials in Bath. Picture: Getty Images

I want to say something complimentary about the royal family, which isn’t easy because all the cool kids obviously are on the other side of the argument. But I’m going to give it a go anyway.

And I’m going to do it by playing their best hand: Prince Harry.

Don’t roll your eyes. I know this isn’t New Idea, and OK, sure, some older readers — like, say, me — will remember that Harry’s reputation was once for being the rapscallion prince, the one you are still likeliest to find nude online; the one forever being photographed with cigarettes and sexy girlfriends.

That’s all old news now, but how did he get away with it?

Mainly because he was born third in line to the throne. Not the heir or even the spare but further back than even that, although being third in line doesn’t exactly make him a minor royal like, I don’t know, Beatrice, if you can even remember who she is.

Let’s say Charles and William, back in the early noughties — which by coincidence was when Harry was deep in his naughties — had found themselves in some kind of accident. That’s not an inconceivable scenario, and Harry might well have ascended.

King.

That’s quite the title.

He won’t get there now because Kate’s fecundity has seen Harry slip down the line. He’s behind Charles, William, George, Charlotte and the new baby, Louis Arthur Charles (I was actually going for Prince Arthur, however inappropriate some apparently deemed it).

But he still has to be a prince, and that puts a lid on just about every normal ambition a young man may have for his life.

He has a title and, with it, the responsibility of belonging to one of the oldest institutions in the Western world.

Theoretically, one supposes he could ignore it and spend his days cavorting with Israeli supermodels on Biarritz mega-yachts, like some of the old-style Monegasques used to do. Like the oil-soaked emirs still do.

Harry instead took The Firm’s firm advice and served for a decade in the British Army and, yes, it’s exciting for critics to mock Harry for his service because surely he wouldn’t have been in any real danger?

They’d have wrapped him in cotton wool.

Maybe, but consider this: in 2008, Harry had to leave his post in Afghanistan suddenly after his location was revealed by the press, and not only because he was at greater risk but because his fellow soldiers, as if already not sufficiently imperilled, were suddenly at greater risk.

Imagine living with the knowledge that you just being around makes it likelier that your friends and colleagues will be killed.

Probably it makes an impression on you. Probably it’s also useful to consider the people Harry met while serving.

The truth about war is that we ask men — it’s still predominantly men — to do monstrous things, deemed necessary by the government of the day.

Some come back shattered.

For Anzac Day this year, I interviewed three returned servicemen who had been wounded in Afghanistan.

Wounded.

We all get what that means, right? Injured. Hurt. Except you can’t really get your head around what happened to them until they describe it, and even then it’s a struggle.

“I had my gun between my legs,” said former soldier Peter Rudland, who was one so kind as to give me his time.

“On impact, when we crashed (the helicopter) the gun got embedded.”

I didn’t quite understand. He sent a picture. I wish he hadn’t. Believe me, you don’t need to see it, not that we could ever publish it. Suffice to say when the gun was removed from Peter’s leg, it left a rifle-shaped hole.

Yes, that big and yes that deep.

Truly, men suffer doing what we ask them to do.

For years, many suffered alone, without much direction.

Harry has stepped into that space. He champions the Invictus Games, an international event for wounded servicemen.

The event has grown under Harry’s guidance into quite the spectacle. The inaugural Games in London were in 2014. It gets bigger every year. By last year it had 550 competitors from 17 nations.

In October it comes to Sydney.

Yes, I know, how stupid can I be? It’s obviously a publicity stunt to get the public to warm to the royals’ Generation Next.

But is it?

Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, was an advocate for HIV-related research and it seems that Harry toyed with that cause to give his own life meaning. He visited Lesotho and Botswana to raise awareness, an awful phrase, debased by celebrities.

But Invictus is his thing.

He’s not mucking around. I mean, this year alone his poor bride-to-be, Meghan, has been dragged to countless Invictus events, including the team trials in Bath (she had to wear a team polo, which is a lot to ask of a girl.)

Take a look at pictures of Harry at these events. One shot I really love has Harry standing behind a man who basically is seated on the base of his torso since he has no legs and only one arm. He’s using the one limb he has left to pitch a shot-put, and Harry’s expression is priceless. It’s not pity on his face. He’s not inspired by the athlete’s courage. It’s more: Come on, mate, go for gold!

People are entitled to be cynical. Harry is an aristocrat, perhaps even a pawn in the game to entrench power in one family seat. They suspect he’s being used by those who practise the dark arts — brand management — and therefore we should just get rid of him — and them — and install our own, Australian-citizen head of state, and why not get rid of the flag while we are at it?

I just can’t see it happening, at least not yet.

Republicans are trying to write him off as a product of masterful PR, but plenty of ordinary people see Harry’s commitment to the cause of wounded as genuine. You couldn’t fake the enthusiasm he brings to the task, and that, more than anything, is surely fatal to the non-royal side of the argument.

No, he’s not to be king. But he’s their trump card.