UK

Maureen Dowd: What is the thing about Harry? Perhaps a prince who needs a hug

This Royal loathes being hunted by what he terms the tabloid ‘sadists’, just as his mother was

A right royal mess? Britain's Harry Windsor and his wife Meghan Merkle have divided opinion among the press and public. File photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Maureen Dowd's face
Maureen Dowd
Sun Jan 15 2023 - 19:00

I am, faith and begorrah, no monarchist.

Yet, I found myself, over the past few years, exhausted by the exodus of Harry and Meghan, quitting palace life for the Netflix lobby, spilling secrets to accrue the gazillion that would be needed for a Vinyasa-and-Oprah lifestyle in Montecito.

If Meghan Markle wanted to change the world, couldn’t she do it more effectively from within the monarchy, blowing the dust off old rituals, as she did with her wedding? How could Meghan be “shocked to discover institutional racism in the very institution that created the most enduring business model for it?,” Alicia Montgomery wrote in Slate.

Couldn’t Harry and Meghan rise above Rupert Murdoch and salacious tabloid coverage, as the Obamas rose above the vile coverage on Murdoch’s Fox News? (And shouldn’t the royals stop having the tabloids laid out with their breakfast?)

READ MORE

Couldn’t the couple have played the inside game, as Diana did, more effectively torturing Harry’s ‘villain’, Camilla?

Harry thought he’d find closure in disclosure. He will never feel the crown’s heaviness, but was his burden so unbearable that it needed multimedia unburdening? The family spats seemed sitcom-worthy, the drama as puffed up as a flower girl’s dress. As someone who has manoeuvred sibling friction over politics, I learned to bite my tongue, so I could remain close to my siblings.

Couldn’t the couple have played the inside game, as Diana did, more effectively torturing Harry’s “villain”, Camilla?

Now that I have read Spare, however, these questions seem pointless. It’s like asking Orestes: “Couldn’t you just have made nice with your mother?”

[ Book review: Spare ]

[ Prince Harry interview: A lost man looking for purpose in a life full of privilege ]

The unfathomable 1997 accident in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, the crash that extinguished Diana’s radiance, a luminosity recalled so lovingly by her son in his memoir, turned the House of Windsor into the House of Atreus.

Much to the shock and discomfort of the royal family, Diana’s death opened a flood of emotion for the stiff-upper-lip Brits and Harry is determined to keep that torrent flowing and make sure his mother is avenged.

The book is about hunting and being hunted. Harry hunted for the Taliban in Afghanistan and game in Africa and Balmoral — and love. When he killed a rabbit as a child, his nanny “blooded” him — smeared the animal’s blood on his forehead. When a teenage Harry killed a stag, his guide stuck his head in the carcass, giving him a “blood facial”.

Harry often identifies with the quarry. Once, when he was high on weed at Eton, he saw a fox and felt more connected to it than to his class-mates or his family. He loathes being hunted by what he terms the “sadists” from the tabloids, just as his mother was, to the point where he thinks both sanity and life are endangered, for him and Meghan.

This is a prince who needs a hug. He couldn’t get one from his “Pa”, who couldn’t get one from his mother. (Maybe that’s why Charles kept his tattered teddy bear into adulthood.) Harry’s brother, preoccupied with primogeniture, often kept his affectionate younger brother at arm’s length, oddly calling him “Harold” and earning a place as Harry’s “arch nemesis”.

So Harry married Meghan, a hugger, like his mother, and moved to hug-at-hello southern California where a stranger like Tyler Perry offered up his Los Angeles compound to the homeless couple and A-listers welcomed the former Suits actress to their ranks.

Heir and the spare - apparently we do care.

Listen | 25:44
Just when you thought there was nothing new to learn about Britain's Prince Harry's explosive memoir, it manages to generate even more headlines upon its release this week. 'Spare' is now the fastest ever selling non-fiction book in the English language. Even the Irish public is divided on whether the prince is a tragic, deluded character or an earnest rebel with a genuine public interest story to expose. Media columnist, Laura Slattery, and columnist, Finn McRedmond in London, join Aideen Finnegan to discuss the book, its revelations and the global reaction to it.

I have to admit, if it were me, I would have put up with a lot to live through history, to see the end of the Elizabethan era. I would have loved to be bouncing over the Scottish highlands with the queen in her Land Rover, nursing a thermos of Scotch and hearing anything she had to say about anyone.

When he got a chance to chat with his grandmother, he did not quiz Gan-Gan about her illustrious and notorious relatives

Harry, winningly self-deprecating in the book, recalled his moniker of “Prince Thicko” and concedes he was not literary. He feels intimidated that Meghan has read “Eat, Pray, Love”. He’s also so uninterested in history — even though it was his own family he was studying — that a teacher presented him with a wooden ruler engraved with the names of every British monarch since 1066. When he got a chance to chat with his grandmother, he did not quiz Gan-Gan about her illustrious and notorious relatives. He taught her how to say “Booyakasha”, Ali G-style.

He couldn’t get into Shakespeare, despite his father’s love of the Bard. “I opened Hamlet,” Harry wrote. “Hmmm: Lonely prince, obsessed with dead parent, watches remaining parent fall in love with dead parent’s usurper ...? I slammed it shut. No, thank you.” Harry is not an intellectual, like Hamlet, although he is aggrieved and obsessed with his mother and following what he thinks are the desires of his parent’s ghost, even if it leads to a collapse of the court.

Harry’s internal struggle was not “To be or not to be” but “To split or not to split”. He split, he spilled and now, as at the end of all Shakespearean tragedies, the stage is covered in blood and littered with bodies.

Harry told a Telegraph writer that it could have been worse and that he left out a lot of damaging material about his father and brother. He is just, he said, “trying to save them from themselves”. — This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

READ NEXT
LATEST STORIES