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Prince Harry: The problem with the “Spares”

Prince Harry: The problem with the “Spares”

In his memoir, “Spare,” Prince Harry addresses an important topic: the royal “understudy.” Other monarchies are also familiar with the problem

Prince Harry’s memoirs, which were published last week, have, as the title “Spare” or in German “Reserve” already suggested, a large, plaintive leitmotif: how difficult it is to bear in a royal family the second-born, the younger and thus not the heir being. You always have to play second fiddle, be a backup as a purpose in life, born to step in if something should happen to the heir to the throne.

You may be of royal rank, but you will probably never rule. Although you have almost as many privileges as the higher-ranking sibling, you are just as mercilessly deprived of your privacy, you are in the glaring light of the public, although you have no specific role to fulfill and foreseeable in the course of your life with the birth of every other niece and each subsequent nephew in the line of succession will continue to slide.

“Spare”: Prince Harry on “understudy”

Harry’s recollections once again raise the question of whether the position of royal “understudy” should be reconsidered in general before the next generation – in the British monarchy, the two younger Wales children Princess Charlotte, seven, and Prince Louis, four – reached adulthood. Because the , which once seemed indispensable in times of high child mortality and the risk of war to secure the succession, has actually served its purpose today.

The renowned British-American journalist and royals biographer Tina Brown recently suggested in her book “Palace Papers – The Windsors, the Power and the Truth” as a possible approach that the younger children of monarchs could be “released from the golden cage earlier “. That would mean not training them for future royal duties at all, but encouraging them from the start to prepare for a normal career. But that would also include giving titles to neither them nor their future spouses and children.

Denmark is leading the way

How this can work was shown by the royal relatives in Denmark last year under the motto “better late than never”: Queen Margrethe II officially announced in September that the four children of her younger son Prince Joachim, so far all princes and princesses, would be born by decree from 01.01.2023 only bear the French titles of counts and countesses inherited from their deceased prince consort Henrik.

Since it is foreseeable that none of them will ever ascend the throne and will not be needed to fulfill representative duties in the Kingdom of Denmark, she wants to give her grandchildren the chance of a normal life by withdrawing their royal titles and enable them to develop their careers unhindered. Those affected reacted less relieved, but rather affected and hurt, especially Prince Joachim’s older sons, both over 20 and known internationally as models under the names Prince Nikolai and Prince Felix.

On the other hand, things went really well for the Bernadottes in neighboring Sweden: Crown Princess Victoria’s younger brother Prince Carl Philip, Duke of Värmland was allowed to keep his title. At the request of his father, King Carl Gustav, the forty-three-year-old father of a family carries out a manageable number of official duties for the crown, sometimes without his wife Sofia. But he has been earning his living completely and scandal-free for more than ten years himself: At that time he founded the with a friend from university. After studying graphic design and marketing, he has been working there full-time as managing director and designer and is very successful: the agency counts traditional brands such as Georg Jensen silverware among its customers. They have designed an award-winning porcelain service for the Swedish manufacturer Gustavsberg. And the Danish high-end household goods company Stelton and the German glass brand Zwiesel are also among her clients.

“The Princess and the Shaman”

Just as financially independent but much less scandal-free, Carl Philips’ cousin Princess Märtha Louise of Norway, sister of Crown Prince Haakon, navigates through her life. Banished to the place behind her younger brother by the principle of royal primogeniture (priority of male succession to the throne), which was still in force at the time of her birth in 1971, she renounced her title “Royal Highness” a good 20 years ago when she married the middle-class writer Ari Behn ” and any financial support from the royal family. In 2019 she also had to agree that she would no longer expressly refer to her royal origins in her professional life. The trained physiotherapist and longtime operator of an esoteric therapy center, which critics like to deride as an “angel school”, had offered esoteric spiritual healer workshops together with her current fiancé Durek Verrett, a self-proclaimed shaman, under the title .

This use of their title for marketing purposes had caused massive resentment in the Norwegian public. She and her future husband have also made themselves unpopular with extremely candid Instagram videos in which they repeatedly divulge intimate details of their private lives, not unlike the revelations in Prince Harry’s memoirs. Although Märtha is no longer officially a representative of the Norwegian royal family, she remains the daughter of King Harald. Whether she likes it or not, she is in the public eye and everything she does has the potential to reflect back on the Norwegian royal family.

The Crux of the Second Born

That is the crux of the second-born: they can hardly escape their fame qua birth. And they grow up in castles and palaces, surrounded by wealth and privileges that they don’t want to give up later in their “normal” everyday life as adults. But it is usually difficult or even impossible to achieve this luxury standard of living yourself – not only, but also because you are unintentionally in the spotlight of the press and public. This dilemma then leads to such bad transactions of money and goods, as for example between Prince Andrew and his various dubious rich patrons, who over the years have probably hoped for influence and honor in Britain’s first circles through their “gifts”.

Or there may be a complete rift between the second-born and their royal family because they don’t want to submit to the restrictive rules that don’t allow them to engage in lucrative commercial activity while remaining royal — like Harry and Meghan.

This problem is not new, nor will it go away on its own. It was actually identified and addressed in the British royal family in the early 2000s. At the time, there was an embarrassing precedent at the Windsors that made headlines: Sophie, Countess of Wessex, who, after marrying Prince Edward in 1999 with the blessing of the late Queen, initially continued to work as managing director of her own PR agency, has since been replaced British tabloid “News of the World” caught her trying to get orders by waving her contacts to the royal relatives. As a result, the Countess had to sell her shares in the agency and her husband also withdrew from business life; Edward had worked in the film and television industry for a number of years with limited success. From then on, the couple of counts only served the crown, whose livelihood was financed by the royal (in-law) mother.

Damage limitation is no longer enough

Queen Elizabeth II recognized at the time that damage limitation was not enough in this one case. In today’s times, when the monarch or currently King Charles no longer naturally supports the entire royal family up to number 20 or 30 in the line of succession, as was the case in the times of the great-ancestor Queen Victoria, the question arises more and more frequently after appropriate employment for individual members of the royal family. Lesson learned from the Wessex PR disaster at the time, the Queen ordered an investigation into the existing licensing structures for her family members’ business activities, as well as the creation of a code of conduct for the Windsor company.

They should ensure that working royals do not use their status to enrich themselves. If members of the royal family are performing official royal duties and pursuing a professional career at the same time, the two roles should not be mixed up, according to one of the core statements of the “Luce Report”, named after the chairman of the commission of inquiry, the then Lord Chamberlain, Lord Luce. These royal compliance rules state, among other things, that any commercial activity (other than voluntary work) must always be approved by the Lord Chamberlain on a case-by-case basis.

In case of doubt, he must speak out against a member of the royal family accepting an invitation to an official engagement that cannot be completely separated from their business activities. The guidelines also stress that no attempt should be made to exploit the royal family member’s position, connections or access for monetary gain, whether intentionally or accidentally.

Challenge for modern monarchies

The rulebook also suggests that, in turn, companies employing or hiring royals must demonstrate that they do not intend to condone, or even intentionally cause, their blue-blooded employee’s duties to be mixed up with their royal duties and connections.

Not least because of this set of rules, a compromise solution for the ducal couple of Sussex that would have allowed them to partially remain in their position as working royals failed; Harry and Meghan were apparently not willing to be restricted in their business projects in order to comply with these rules. They would not have been able to close deals like the ones with Netflix or the book publisher Penguin Random House, which published Harry’s memoirs.

The issues of “making money” and “appropriate handling of one’s special status” for less important members of the royal families of Europe remain a major challenge for modern monarchies in the 21st century – and so does the sensitive handling within families of these second-born children. The current royal autobiography makes it abundantly clear that growing up in the role of a royal second-born can sadly also leave deep emotional and psychological scars.

Source: Stern

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