Harry’s version. Now the “spare part” prince has decided to say it all – Corriere.it

This report by the London correspondent of Corriere della Sera, Luigi Ippolito, was published in issue 7 on newsstands on Friday 6 January. We offer it online for Corriere.it readers

Harry with his mother Diana in a park of English amusements in 1992: the prince was 8 years old, the princess 31 «An heir and a replacement», an heir and a spare part, say the British, indicating that it is always better to have two children, a firstborn and a spare, in case something happens: and really Replacement is titled Prince Harry’s memoir, due out next week. A title already defined in London as “provocative”, which alludes to the trauma that the youngest son of Charles and Diana has been carrying around since birth, the shadow that has accompanied him throughout his life: being destined for a second-row role , always behind William, the future king.

Margaret’s Syndrome

The subtitles of the foreign language versions are even more explicit: The Surplus, The Reserve, In The Shadow . A fate that somehow overwhelms all the younger sons of the royal dynasties: the “Margaret syndrome”, we could call her, that is, Elizabeth’s younger sister, condemned to unhappiness, cornered by the fate that had befallen her only to be born after. But now the “spare part” has its say: and the royal family is preparing for the worst. Because the memorial presents itself as a work of “raw honesty”, a “frank” and “personal” storythe same publishing house, Penguin Random House, has made known: and at Buckingham Palace it is feared that he will be «critical of everyone and everything», especially towards Carlo and Camilla.

The cover of the book «Spare, the minor». It will be published simultaneously worldwide on 10 January: in Italy the paper and digital version is by Mondadori

From trauma to healing

None of the royals were able to preview the manuscript — nor their lawyers — and therefore did not have the opportunity to prepare an eventual reply to what Penguin defines as “a publication full of revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love and mourning”. Compared to the first announcement, made more than a year ago, the tone seems to have changed: then it was illustrated as “a human story of inspiration and courage”, now it is “a moving personal journey from trauma to healing”. As if Harry had become even more bitter and resentful in the meantime. (continue reading after the links and the photo)

HARRY IS A VERY WOUNDED MAN. FROM HERE COMES THE FURY AGAINST THE FATHER, THE BROTHER WILLIAM AND THE “STEPMOTHER” CAMILLA

The memorial comes in the wake of the documentary that Harry and Meghan filmed for Netflix and which was broadcast in December, immediately after the fifth season of
The crown who pointed out the disintegration of the marriage between Charles and Diana and the consequences on their two children. And on TV, the Dukes of Sussex gave a taste of what could be the “bombs” contained in the book: from the attacks on William, who terrifies his brother with his outbursts, to Kate who is too cold, to the father who “says things that are not true”shadows even on the queen, depicted as an impotent old woman and maneuvered by her courtiers.

The father wanted a little girl

But on the other hand, life for Harry – although muffled by privileges – was not easy from the beginning: his father wanted a girl and, when he was born, he seems to have exclaimed “Oh God, it’s a boy! And he has red hair too!”. And even Diana, when she called the cook of Kensington Palace to help her look after the little ones, she said: “You take care of the heir, I’ll take care of the spare part”. Compared to his more serious brother, Harry was “the brat,” admitted the princess, the one who climbed the parapet of the palace to throw snowballs at the policemen on guard duty. But even then she was contemplating revenge: she was four years old when she told her brother that “one day you will be king, while I can do what I want!”. And in her way, he lived up to his promise.

The separation of the parents and the death of Diana

Childhood traumas affected Harry’s personality. He was only eight years old when the parents separated acrimoniously and was little more than a child, a twelve years old, when he was forced to walk behind his mother’s coffinunder the eyes of the world: an image that remained engraved in the collective conscience and that dug a furrow in that of the young prince. Diana’s death, he later revealed, led him to spend “a long time with his head in the sand”, thinking that “I don’t want to be Prince Harry, I don’t want this responsibility, I don’t want this role”. But most of all it was then that he acutely felt the ‘Margaret syndrome’, as William’s future was carefully drawn while he remained relegated to the shadows. And so while the older one grew sociable and full of friends, the younger one became more and more introverted: once they saw him spend an entire afternoon alone, bouncing a ball against the wall for hours.

In rehab for joints

Harry as a teenager began to do weed and when the newspapers found out, Carlo sent him to a rehabilitation clinic: the problem however was that the young William was just as “smoked”, only that the Palace built a wall to protect him. It was then that Harry began to resent his brother, when he realized that the future king’s reputation was the top priority, while he was just collateral damage to be fed to the public. The school was no help. When he arrived at Eton, he was preceded by a reputation for dunce: “Now I’m calm – was the joke that went around among college mothers – my son is not the dumbest in class!”. At high school he brought only two subjects instead of the usual three or four: art (where he got a 7 because the teachers did the drawing for him) and geography (where he didn’t pass). So he left Eton with the nickname of “Harry the Copycat”, without the necessary grades to go to university: and while William studied at the prestigious St Andrews, he danced and got drunk in London nightclubs.

Anxiety attacks before official commitments

Harry himself later admitted that his time in his twenties was “a total mess”. He began to suffer from anxiety attacks before official engagements and on William’s advice he resolved to visit a psychotherapist. He too took up boxing, but the real salvation came from the army: e many are convinced that it was precisely his military service that prevented him from going completely insane. In 2007, despite government resistance, he managed to get sent to the front, in Afghanistan, where he spent ten weeks: and to everyone’s surprise, he turned out to be a brilliant soldier. Harry trained to fly Apache helicopters and, as one military source put it, “it may sound like nonsense, but Harry is genuinely proving to be one of the best young Apache pilots this country has ever seen.” Upon his return, he was celebrated as a hero: «From good for nothing to warrior prince», headlined the
Times . But in reality, the playboy prince continued to simmer beneath the surface: he went to Las Vegas and made the front page photographed naked playing strip poker with a group of girls. They packed him up and sent him back to Afghanistan: for him, finding a balance seemed really impossible.

The long line of succession

To make matters worse, in 2013 came the birth of William and Kate’s son George: and privately Harry began to obsess over slipping further and further down the line of succession. To the “Margaret syndrome”, one can say, he added the “Andrea syndrome”: even Carlo’s brother, like Harry, was second in line for the throne at birth, but then he gradually fell behind, condemned to become increasingly irrelevant over the years. And that’s why Harry had made up his mind that he had to do something important before George was 18, when his “downgrading” would become irreversible. But a military career at the highest ranks was precluded to him, given his obvious limitations: and royal commitments left him frustrated, because all the best opportunities were obviously reserved for William and Kate. “There’s a hierarchy in the royal family,” he grit his teeth in the Netflix documentary: nice discovery! So Harry had begun to talk about the desire to find a wife “to share the pressure”: but his girlfriends had always been short-lived, crushed by the difficulty of sustaining the gaze and scrutiny of the public and the press.

“A celebrity will be able to withstand the pressure of the court”

So Harry was telling his friends that he should marry a celebrity who could handle so much pressure. And so in 2016 the blind date arrives, at Soho House, with Meghan Markle: who really wasn’t a celebritybut still she was an actress on TV. And, unlike her previous girlfriends, she was always looking for more publicity. According to royal biographer Robert Lacey, “William sensed Meghan’s ambition, and he didn’t trust her.” Even friends thought that Harry was going too fast, while William advised him to “take as long as necessary”.

Meghan’s real role

Harry didn’t take it well. His relationship with Meghan was the final nail in the coffin of his relationship with his brother: on the one hand it crystallized his frustration with his role as a “spare part”, on the other hand it seemed to offer a way out. So Meghan wasn’t really the cause of breaking up with the royal family and fleeing to California: she was just the catalyst. Harry is a deeply wounded man, there is so much repressed anger in him, so many unresolved traumas: from here come the arrows against the brother, the fury against the father, the contempt for the “stepmother” Camilla. Somehow, Harry has managed to make his paranoia real: he is convinced that the monarchy has conspired from day one to destroy his marriage and now, relentlessly attacking the royal family, he makes a reconciliation impossible. This is not a soap opera, as many think, it is the stuff of a Greek tragedy. “So much of what Meghan is,” says Harry, “she’s so like my mother.” In her the prince has found her peace, a version of the mother he lost as a child, a protector, the only one able to understand him. It’s his chance for happiness: and he won’t let it go, no matter what. If then he will be able to silence the demons of his soul of him, there is only to be hoped.