Spare

by Prince Harry

You can’t kill people if you think of them as people. You can’t really harm people if you think of them as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Bads taken away before they could kill Goods. I’d been trained to “other-ize” them, trained well. On some level I recognized this learned detachment as problematic. But I also saw it as an unavoidable part of soldiering.

I stuffed my Bergen full of dusty clothes, plus two souvenirs: a rug bought in a bazaar, a 30-mm shell casing from the Apache.

I’d met so many soldiers, so many young men and women suffering from post-traumatic stress, and I’d heard them describe how hard it was to leave the house, how uncomfortable it was to be around other people, how excruciating it was to enter a public space – especially if it was loud. I’d heard them talk about timing their visit to a shop or supermarket carefully, making sure to arrive minutes before closing time, to avoid the crowds and noise. I’d empathized with them, deeply, and yet never made the connection. It never occurred to me that I, too, was suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Which was essentially why the Court Circular was a joke. It was all self-reported, all subjective. Nine private visits with veterans, helping with their mental health? Zero points. Flying via helicopter to cut a ribbon at a horse farm? Winner!

Maybe it was the softly falling snow outside the windows, or the culmination of seventeen years of suppressed grief. Maybe it was maturity. Whatever the reason or combination of reasons, I answered her, straight-out, and then started to cry. I remember thinking: Oh, I’m crying. And saying to her: This is the first time I’ve … Cressida leaned towards me: What do you mean … first time? This is the first time I’ve been able to cry about my mum since the burial. Wiping my eyes, I thanked her. She was the first person to help me across that barrier, to help me unleash the tears. It was cathartic, it accelerated our bond, and added an element rare in past relationships: immense gratitude.

Indeed, the phone-hacking case first broke wide open because of poor Milly Dowler, a teenager who’d been abducted and murdered.

Wherever I went that week, people came up to me, shook my hand, told me their stories. Children, parents, grandparents, always with tears in their eyes, told me that these games had restored something they’d feared forever lost: the true spirit of a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, a mum, a dad. One woman tapped me on the shoulder and told me I’d resurrected her husband’s smile. Oh, that smile, she said. I hadn’t seen it since he got injured. I knew Invictus would do some good in the world, I always knew, but I was caught off guard by this wave of appreciation and gratitude. And joy.

I’ve had a broken back for five years, but after watching these brave men and women I’ve got off the sofa today and I’m ready to begin again. I’ve been suffering depression since returning from Afghanistan but this demonstration of human courage and resilience has made me see … At the closing ceremony, moments after I introduced Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, a man and woman approached, their young daughter between them. The daughter was wearing a pink hoodie and orange ear defenders. She looked up at me: Thank you for making my daddy … Daddy again.

young Ben, the soldier with whom I’d flown back from Afghanistan in 2008, the soldier I’d visited and cheered as he climbed a wall with his new prosthetic leg. Six years after that flight, as promised, he was running a marathon. Not the London marathon, which would’ve been miraculous on its own. He was running his own marathon, along a route he’d designed himself, in the outline of a poppy laid over the city of London. A staggering thirty-one miles, he’d done the full circuit to raise money and awareness – and heart rates. I’m in shock, he said on finding me there. You’re in shock? I said. That makes two of us. Seeing him out there, still being a soldier, despite no longer being a soldier – that was the answer to the riddle with which I’d been struggling so long.

Pa and Camilla didn’t like Willy and Kate drawing attention away from them or their causes. They’d openly scolded Willy about it many times.

Case in point: Pa’s press officer berated Willy’s team when Kate was scheduled to visit a tennis club on the same day Pa was doing an engagement. Told that it was too late to cancel the visit, Pa’s press officer warned: Just make sure the Duchess doesn’t hold a tennis racquet in any of the photos! Such a winning, fetching photo would undoubtedly wipe Pa and Camilla off the front pages. And that, in the end, couldn’t be tolerated. Willy told me that both he and Kate felt trapped, and unfairly persecuted, by the press and by Pa and Camilla, so I felt some need to carry the banner for all three of us in 2015.

I’d once heard a courtier say that when you were fifth or sixth in line you were “only a plane crash away”. I couldn’t imagine living that way.

I embarked on a four-month fact-finding trip, to educate myself about the truth of the ivory war. Botswana. Namibia. Tanzania. South Africa. I went to Kruger National Park, a vast stretch of dry, barren land the size of Israel. In the war on poachers, Kruger was the absolute front line. Its rhino populations, both black and white, were plummeting, due to armies of poachers being incentivized by Chinese and Vietnamese crime syndicates. One rhino horn fetched enormous sums, so for every poacher arrested, five more were ready to take their place.

Poachers had shot the mother. She and her baby had run. The poachers chased them to this spot. The mother was still able to defend or shield her baby, so the poachers hacked her spine with axes, immobilizing her. While she was still alive, bleeding out, they’d taken her horn.

The typical Brit, I asked for a gin and tonic. Hell no, the Americans said, laughing. You’re in the States now, pal, have a real drink. Have a tequila. I was familiar with tequila. But mostly club tequila. Late-night tequila. What I was being offered now was proper tequila, fancy schmancy tequila, and I was being schooled in all the many ways of drinking it. Glasses were floating towards me containing tequila in every form. Neat. Rocks. Margarita. Splash of soda and lime.

I’d travelled the world, from top to bottom, literally. I’d hopscotched the continents. I’d met hundreds of thousands of people, I’d crossed paths with a ludicrously large cross-section of the planet’s seven billion residents. For thirty-two years I’d watched a conveyor-belt of faces pass by and only a handful ever made me look twice. This woman stopped the conveyor-belt. This woman smashed the conveyor-belt to bits.

She was American, I was British. She was well-educated, I was decidedly not. She was free as a bird, I was in a gilded cage. And yet none of these differences felt disqualifying or even important.

The Daily Mail took the lead. Its headline: Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton. Subhead: Gang-scarred home of her mother revealed – so will he be dropping in for tea? Another tabloid jumped into the fray with this jaw-dropper: Harry to marry into gangster royalty?

A day or two later the Mail weighed in again, this time with an essay by the sister of London’s former mayor Boris Johnson, predicting that Meg would … do something … genetically … to the Royal Family. “If there is issue from her alleged union with Prince Harry, the Windsors will thicken their watery, thin blue blood and Spencer pale skin and ginger hair with some rich and exotic DNA.”

I looked around. Hang on. You mean … after all that … you still made lunch? I wanted to feed you before I left.

Leave us alone! For God’s sake, I’m with my children, can’t you leave us alone? Trembling, pink-cheeked, she got back into the car, slammed the door, rolled up the windows, leaned her head on the steering wheel and wept while the paps kept clicking and clicking. I remembered the tears falling from her big sunglasses and I remembered Willy looking frozen, like a statue, and I remembered the paps just firing and firing and firing, and I remembered feeling such hatred for them and such deep and eternal love for everyone in that car.

think she’s been in my life, Harold. Guiding me. Setting things up for me. I think she’s helped me start a family. And I feel as though she’s helping you now too. I nodded. Totally agree. I feel as though she helped me find Meg. Willy took a step back. He looked concerned. That seemed to be taking things a bit far. Well, now, Harold, I’m not sure about that. I wouldn’t say THAT!

The first six in line to the throne had to ask permission. The Royal Marriages Act of 1772, or the Succession to the Crown Act of 2013 – he was going on and on and I could barely believe my ears.

It was suddenly clear to me that this wasn’t about money. Pa might have dreaded the rising cost of maintaining us, but what he really couldn’t stomach was someone new dominating the monarchy, grabbing the limelight, someone shiny and new coming in and overshadowing him. And Camilla. He’d lived through that before, and had no interest in living through it again. I couldn’t deal with any of that right now. I had no time for petty jealousies and Palace intrigue. I was still trying to work out exactly what to say to Granny, and the time had come.

Meg would often phone her father, urge him to remain calm. Don’t speak to them, Daddy. Ignore them, they’ll go away eventually, as long as you don’t react. That’s what the Palace says to do.

No good. We did it there. Right, right. St Paul’s? Too grand. Plus Pa and Mummy did it there. Hm. Yes. Good point. He suggested Tetbury. I snorted. Tetbury? The chapel near Highgrove? Seriously, Willy? How many does that place seat? Isn’t that what you said you wanted – a small, quiet wedding? In fact we wanted to elope. Barefoot in Botswana, with maybe a friend officiating, that was our dream. But we were expected to share this moment with other people. It wasn’t up to us.

Meg evoked so much in him, qualities I’d rarely seen. In her presence Pa became boyish. I saw it, saw the bond between them growing stronger, and I felt strengthened in my own bond with him. So many people were treating her shabbily, it filled my heart to see my father treating her like the princess she was about to – maybe born to – become.

Granny, please, may I, for my wedding, keep my beard?

When I informed him that his opinion didn’t really matter, since I’d already gone to Granny and got the green light, he became livid. He raised his voice. You went to ask her! Yes. And what did Granny say? She said keep the beard. You put her in an uncomfortable position, Harold! She had no choice but to say yes. No choice? She’s the Queen! If she didn’t want me to have a beard I think she can speak for herself.

Ah – there it was. After he’d come back from an assignment with Special Forces, Willy was sporting a full beard, and someone told him to be a good boy, run along and shave it. He hated the idea of me enjoying a perk he’d been denied.

Make sure, she added, that you practise putting it on. With your hairdresser. It’s tricky and you don’t want to be doing it for the first time on the wedding day.

A bestselling book describes the day Special Forces came to our house, grabbed Meg, put her through several intense days of drills, pushing her into back seats and car boots, speeding away to safe houses – all of which is utter nonsense. Meg wasn’t given one minute of training.

There was video of Meg’s father meeting the pap at an internet café. There was a series of farcically staged shots, including one of him reading a book about Britain as if studying for the wedding. The photos, reportedly worth a hundred thousand pounds, seemed to prove beyond all doubt that Meg’s father had indeed been lying. He’d taken part in this fakery, maybe to make some money, or maybe they had some leverage on him. We didn’t know. Headlines read: Meg Markle’s father a con artist! Staged candid photos for money!

I’d reminded him that this was our tradition, that we’d had dinner before his wedding, that we’d gone together and visited the crowds. He held fast. Can’t do it. I pushed. Why you being like this, Willy? I was with you the whole night before you married Kate. Why you doing this?

The present dissolved, the past came rushing back. Our first tentative messages on Instagram. Our first meeting at Soho House. Our first trip to Botswana. Our first excited exchanges after my phone went into the river. Our first roast chicken. Our first flights back and forth across the Atlantic. The first time I told her: I love you. Hearing her say it back. Guy in splints. Steve the grumpy swan. The brutal fight to keep her safe from the press. And now here we were, the finishing line. The starting line.

The archbishop reached the official part, spoke the few words that made us The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, titles bestowed by Granny, and he joined us until death parted us, though he’d already done similar days earlier, in our garden, a small ceremony, just the two of us, Guy and Pula the only witnesses. Unofficial, non-binding, except in our souls.

She returned from the trip glowing. We bonded, she told me. The Queen and I really bonded! We talked about how much I wanted to be a mum and she told me the best way to induce labour was a good bumpy car ride! I told her I’d remember that when the time came.

Willy and Kate were apparently upset that we hadn’t given them Easter presents. Easter presents? Was that a thing? Willy and I had never exchanged Easter presents. Pa always made a big deal about Easter, sure, but that was Pa. Still, if Willy and Kate were upset, we apologized.

Meg asked: For what? You hurt my feelings, Meghan. When? Please tell me. I told you I couldn’t remember something and you said it was my hormones. What are you talking about? Kate mentioned a phone call in which they’d discussed the timing of wedding rehearsals. Meg said: Oh, yes! I remember: You couldn’t remember something, and I said it’s not a big deal, it’s baby brain. Because you’d just had a baby. It’s hormones. Kate’s eyes widened: Yes. You talked about my hormones. We’re not close enough for you to talk about my hormones! Meg’s eyes got wide too. She looked genuinely confused. I’m sorry I talked about your hormones. That’s just how I talk with my girlfriends.

Towards the end of summer 2018 we went to Scotland, the Castle of Mey, to spend a few days with Pa. The bond between Meg and Pa, always strong, grew even stronger during that weekend. One night, over pre-dinner cocktails, Fred Astaire playing in the background, it emerged that Meg shared a birthdate with Pa’s favourite person: Gan-Gan. August 4. Amazing, Pa said with a smile.

Then a work of fiction about Meg making her staff miserable, driving them too hard, committing the unpardonable sin of emailing people early in the morning. (She just happened to be up at that hour, trying to stay in touch with night-owl friends back in America – she didn’t expect an instant reply.) She was also said to have driven our assistant to quit; in fact that assistant was asked to resign by Palace HR after we showed them evidence she’d traded on her position with Meg to get freebies. But because we couldn’t speak publicly about the reasons for the assistant’s departure, rumours filled the void. In many ways that was the true start of all the troubles. Shortly thereafter, the “Duchess Difficult” narrative began appearing in all the papers.

One day it was: Yuck – Meg’s bra strap was showing. (Classless Meghan.) The next day: Yikes – she’s wearing that dress? (Trashy Meghan.) The next day: God save us, her fingernails are painted black! (Goth Meghan.) The next day: Goodness – she still doesn’t know how to curtsey properly. (American Meghan.) The next day: Crikey, she shut her own car door again! (Uppity Meghan.)

I reached out to Pa and Willy. They’d both sued the press in the past over invasions and lies. Pa sued over so-called Black Spider Letters, his memos to government officials. Willy sued over topless photos of Kate. But both vehemently opposed the idea of Meg and me taking any legal action. Why? I asked. They hummed and hahed.

Meg’s difficult, he said. Oh, really? She’s rude. She’s abrasive. She’s alienated half the staff. Not the first time he’d parroted the press narrative. Duchess Difficult, all that bullshit.

There was a script here and I had the audacity not to be following it. He was in full Heir mode, and couldn’t fathom why I wasn’t dutifully playing the role of the Spare.

He walked to the front door. This time I followed. Before leaving he turned and called back: You don’t need to tell Meg about this. You mean that you attacked me? I didn’t attack you, Harold. Fine. I won’t tell her. Good, thank you. He left.

I’d spent my life dealing with courtiers, scores of them, but now I dealt mostly with just three, all middle-aged white men who’d managed to consolidate power through a series of bold Machiavellian manoeuvres. They had normal names, exceedingly British names, but they sort more easily into zoological categories. The Bee. The Fly. And the Wasp.

My wife has become one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences – a ruthless campaign that has escalated over the past year, throughout her pregnancy and while raising our newborn son … I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been … Though this action may not be the safe one, it is the right one. Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself … I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.

But it didn’t happen. People didn’t freak. They didn’t stare. They didn’t reach for their iPhones. Everyone knew, or sensed, that we were going through something. They gave us space, while also managing to make us feel welcome, with a kind smile, a wave. They made us feel like part of a community. They made us feel normal. For six weeks. Then the Daily Mail printed our address. Within hours the boats arrived. An invasion by sea. Each boat bristled with telephoto lenses, arrayed like guns along the decks, and every lens was aimed at our windows. At our boy.

I’d run the idea by Granny once before. She’d even signed off on it. And I’d run it by Pa, at Clarence House, the Wasp present. He told me to put it in writing, which I’d done immediately.