The Royal Family is not among my fandoms. I watch “The Crown” because I love an expensive-looking soap opera (see also: Dragons, Thrones) but for the most part, I consume the various Windsor Situations like I do most celebrity coverage — culturally illuminating, yes, but I’m not personally involved. Harry and Meghan walking away to build a new life in California strikes me as simply a rational rejection of an untenable life. We each get precisely one of those, after all.
Sometimes, shedding an old life means telling the truth about it, and Harry’s big swing on that front, after Oprah and the Netflix show, is his forthcoming memoir, “Spare,” from which brutal little anecdotes have leaked through the press in recent weeks in advance of its publication on Tuesday.
Harry is no underdog by any honest definition of the term. What he is doing — burning it all down, or what’s within arm’s reach, at least — I would not classify as brave, exactly. He has a play to make in this game, that’s all. By the Camp North Star theory of what really matters, he decided not to defer to institutional power without a fight, even if the outcome won’t change the ultimate order of things. Even if Harry wins — ha! — will The Firm reform itself from within, abolishing the practices that make leaving the only valid option to avoid splitting yourself into two separate personas: a real self mangled by deception, and a public self distorted to grotesque proportions? If it didn’t after Diana, I’m guessing it won’t now. Will having its treatment of Meghan held up to the light lead to reforming its racism and demanding the same of its press corps? Sadly, I doubt it.
As a detached observer, I have to tip my hat to his methods. What does The Firm fear but a lack of control over its image? The monarchy is an absurd construct. Its entire life force is image. The second people stop clapping their hands to demonstrate their belief in its validity it dies and leaves behind just another vastly wealthy and incredibly unhappy family.
What is sad about this on a human level, though, is how Harry and Meghan couldn’t quit the family business without also losing their place in the family. There’s not a tidy public and private split for the Family as an institution: The public-facing role shapes the family internally.
I’ve only seen the same leaked tidbits as everyone else, but one thing that’s stood out to me as heartbreaking is the strained relationship between Harry and William. Neither of them really had a chance to be free of the influence of the institution they were born into, but I think it is regrettable they aren’t fighting harder to stay loyal to each other. Nobody else in this entire lonely world has their relationship, marked by their very specific loss. No matter how close a relationship anyone else may have had with Diana, only two sons buried their mother that day. Strip away all the other nonsense and rivalries and pressures, and that tie should have been more important to them than anything, worth preserving at all costs.
Growing up after my father died, I don’t know what I would have done without my brother, my oldest and closest friend. Nobody else has our exact bond, two kids who lost our father at a young age. Maybe this is just a younger sibling talking, but I do think William, as the older brother and the all-important Heir, could have made Meghan’s way safer for her, and easier for his brother. Maybe he doesn’t yet realize there’s no price you can put on being understood implicitly in the way only Harry really can. That emotional shorthand, born of their unique loss, is more valuable than any crown. At least it would be to a plebe like me.
So, will I be reading Harry’s life story? I mean … who doesn’t want to see what J.R. Moehringer does with that material?
North Star Energy here:
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