Writing here on Three Kings Day I think of a prince. Yes, yes, there are many more people that one should feel sorry for on these dates, like Mario Vargas Llosa, or the victims of the war in Ukraine, or those ten percent of humanity who live in extreme poverty and do not have access to water drinkable and doesn’t know what it’s like to use a toilet. But let us be generous, let us extend our mercy, let us shed a tear, in these times of love and peace, for the prince who lives in exile in California in a mansion that has 16 bathrooms.
I mean an aristocrat born in the UK, the poorest country in Europe (well, he’s on his way), where hospital and ambulance and train staff are on strike, where the health system has collapsed, where inflation breaks historical records, but where there is only one topic of conversation, only one story of general interest, that of the exiled Duke of Sussex and his wife, better known as Harry and Meghan.
You know, they left their English gilded cage to flee from the media and since then they have not stopped appearing in the media of their own free will: first a television interview with the Queen of the United States, Oprah Winfrey, then a podcast, then a documentary in which they starred. on Netflix and now, this week, the publication of Harry’s memoirs, entitled Spare in English, En la sombra in Spanish. Life is too short and I haven’t seen, heard or read any of these products – for which the dukes have received over a hundred million dollars – but I feel as if I have.
The media harassment that they say they have experienced is suffered by me. I read the British and American newspapers every day and it has been impossible for me to ignore the details of the lives of these two, especially after the tsunami that the publication of Spare has caused in the English press, which means surplus, the one that is left over, the number two to the throne.
One would have to live on Mars not to have found out about the latest revelations, added to the previous accusations of racism and various sins against the family of the late Elizabeth II. But just in case, here goes:
–According to Harry in his book, William, his older brother and future king, called his wife, Meghan, “difficult” and “abrupt” and then “grabbed her by the neck”, broke her necklace and threw her to the ground . Harry fell into a bowl of dog food.
–Harry lost his virginity at the age of 17 in a meadow behind a pub. Far from celebrating the event, Harry writes that it was “a humiliating experience.” The woman in question, older than him, treated him “like a young stud” and at the end of the meeting she slapped him on her ass.
–Charles III, the current King of England, once joked that he was not his biological father, which redheaded Harry found “extraordinarily unfunny” given rumors that his real father had been one of the lovers of his mother, the redheaded military man James Hewitt.
–Harry turned to “a woman with powers” ??to communicate with his late mother, Diana. It worked. The medium passed her a message from beyond the grave: “You are living the life that she could not. You’re living the life she wanted for you.”
This apparently includes dressing as a Nazi and killing people. Spare tells us that the famous episode in which Harry, aged 20, dressed up as a Hitler acolyte for a party was the fault of his brother and his brother’s wife, Kate. They encouraged him to do it, he says. On the other hand, Harry reveals that when he fought in the war in Afghanistan he killed 25 Taliban fighters, but the memory of it does not cause him any remorse. They were “chess pieces,” he says, not human beings; it was a matter of “eliminating the bad guys before they could kill the good guys.”
There is much more, but let’s leave it there. What is clear is that Harry is going to pay a high price for what he has told in his book. Although he says that he wishes to reconcile with his family, it is clear that this is impossible; His British subjects loathe him, mainly because of the general perception that airing dirty family laundry “isn’t done”; the British tabloids will start a hunt for the woman who seduced him at the age of 17, which could end in an unpleasant scandal for both parties; and, worst of all, he has been harshly criticized by his former military colleagues, several of whom have denounced him for having fallen into the folly and dishonor of stipulating the number of deaths he caused in war.
The highest price he may pay is for the Taliban, who have already declared themselves offended by what he wrote, to offer money for his head, à la Salman Rushdie.
Harry, in short, has been foolish and ridiculous. And he has done it as a consequence of not obeying the number one rule of royalty that his grandmother articulated: “Never complain, never explain yourself.” So why do I say you have to pity him? The cynics will say that he, on the contrary, he is going to make a fortune and he knows it well. Okay, so being silly and ridiculous gets you far in America. Not only does it help you earn money, but it is a factor in your favor if you intend to reach the White House or the House of Representatives.
But I don’t see it that way. I consider Harry a hero, who has sacrificed himself for a noble cause. What is England for? How does it benefit the world? Two things. Football, the sport that England invented and with which it entertains hundreds of millions every week in the Premier League; and the English royal family, a reality soap opera that gives half of humanity a topic of conversation, and that’s without adding the series The crown, which has provided so much joy across all continents.
With everything he’s done and said and written since he went into exile nearly three years ago, with the reputational damage he’s so stoically suffered, Harry has not only kept the soap opera alive but added juicy spices that people will be talking about, and the writers of The crown will benefit, for many years to come. At great personal cost, his book is his Kings gift to the world. Thanks Harry. God bless you. And may Allah protect you from his own.
