Prince Harry dismantles himself – and harms his own goals

analysis

The royal motto “Never complain, never explain” apparently threw Prince Harry overboard when traveling from Great Britain to the USA. Because he complains and explains a lot. Very much. Too much of. In his interviews and in the excerpts from his memoirs “Spare”, the ex-royal looks like an angry child at the height of his defiance phase. Many of the things that Harry and Meghan have complained about so far are very important.

Prince Harry: like an angry child

How misanthropic parts of the British press act and what boundaries are crossed must be named. Good thing someone like the Sussexes with their reach is doing just that. And the structural racism that the two have recognized should also be named. And one should listen to Meghan when she laments having experienced racist resentment. listen and believe her But what Harry is doing now goes beyond that. And he’s doing himself and his wife a disservice.

The Duke of Sussex throws one dirt bomb after another. Attacks his brother for his choleric disposition. Concerns his stepmother, who usually stays in the background herself and never opposes the monarchy. He reiterates that she was considered the “bad guy” in his parents’ breakup. He describes her alleged urge to rehabilitate her image as “dangerous”. In doing so, he paints – whether intentionally or not – a fairly misogynist picture: that of the evil lover as the sole culprit. He seems to be ignoring his parents, whose marriage would in all likelihood have failed even without Camilla. Here, too, the 38-year-old sounds like an angry child of divorce.

Frostbite and first sex

Plus the most absurd passages in the book that make the ex-royal a joke: Harry’s frostbite penis at Williams and Kate’s wedding. Harry’s first sex with an older woman behind a pub who spanked his butt. The fact that Harry calls his brother’s hair loss “alarming.” Things get dangerous when Harry reveals that he killed 25 Taliban in Afghanistan. For a man who cares a lot about his safety and that of his family, a stupid admission to say the least.

Naively – just like a child – Harry seems to think that if he just shouts, his family will listen to him. He thinks Charles, William and Co. would understand him better now. But how he can believe that they could take a step towards him now that he has publicly exposed them and himself is difficult to understand. In order to settle a dispute, it takes two parties who, despite all the allegations, are accountable. Who also see their own mistakes. Harry asks his family to do just that, but offers no reflection in return. He remembers how Prince William is said to have asked him to hit him back during an argument. He generously explains that he didn’t want to do that. In fact, his biography is exactly that: a counterattack.

Disservice to himself and Meghan

The tragedy is how Harry, with his book, is undoing much of the effort he and Meghan have made over the years. Suddenly he claims in his ITV interview that Meghan and he didn’t call the family “racist”. I beg your pardon? It sounds like gaslighting on a big stage. Does Harry want us all to think we got it wrong? In December, he and his wife accepted an award in New York for their efforts in the fight against racism. Speaking to journalist Tom Bradby, Harry claims he only meant that there was racial prejudice in his family. Everything else was fueled by the press. You have to ask yourself: why didn’t he and Meghan put it right if they didn’t mean it?

Prince Harry could have used his reach and influence better. It is correct that he draws attention to old-fashioned structures in the monarchy. Likewise for racial prejudice. After his scandal book, little of that remains. What people are seeing now seems more like the outbursts of anger and frustration of a traumatized child. “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we carry inside us when we don’t have a sensitive witness,” says trauma specialist and psychologist Peter A. Levine. Prince Harry seems to have been missing an empathetic witness after Princess Diana’s death. He was left alone with his feelings. Now that he’s a grown man, he wants to shout her out. It’s not likely to do anything.

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