Amidst the stir caused by fiery revelations in Prince Harry’s memoir, its author, the Duke of Sussex, has now said that he had no intention of damaging the British royal family.
AP
However, reconciliation at present seems a far-fetched dream after he painted a critical picture of his relatives and settled decades-old scores.
“I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back,” he said in an interview with UK channel ITV ahead of Tuesday’s publication of his memoir “Spare”, adding he was “100 percent” convinced a reconciliation could happen.
Notably, no one, including Harry, has been spared in the drama surrounding the book’s release.
Harry’s accounts in the memoir cover his adolescence phase, which was admittedly marked by drugs and alcohol. This reveal and his decision to publicly air his family’s secrets have made his popularity in his homeland spiral downward.
Moreover, Harry’s autobiography entails attacks on his father, King Charles III, brother William, stepmother and now Queen Consort Camilla and his sister-in-law Kate.
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Reconciliation chances seem difficult
Charles is due to be crowned on May 6, but “I can’t really see how” a family reconciliation is possible, Pauline Maclaran, a professor at London’s Royal Holloway University and author of a book on the monarchy, told AFP.
“He’s come out with so many things that are obviously offensive to members of his family, personal details that many people are arguing he didn’t need to put across,” she said.
“If he had any empathy, or indeed compassion, which is supposed to be at the root of the Archewell foundation (created by Harry and his wife Meghan Markle), it’s kind of gotten lost in all this,” she added.
In the book, Harry touches on how his father did not embrace him as he broke the news of the death of his mother, Diana, when the prince was 12 years old.
Instead, he seemingly left him alone in his room. Harry claims the king was “not cut out” to be a single parent.
William the ‘arch-nemesis’
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But most of his vengeance is saved for his “beloved brother, my arch-nemesis” William.
Presented as bad-tempered, Harry claims William never gave his wife Meghan a chance, considering her to be “rude and abrasive”.
Things came to a head during a 2019 argument in which Harry claims his brother threw him to the ground, smashing a dog bowl.
Harry also describes a life-long rivalry between William, “the heir” and himself, “the spare”, laying bare the brutal reality of royal hierarchy.
‘Divide couldn’t be greater before this book’
AFP
Harry admitted he had not spoken to his brother and father “for quite a while” and ruled out returning to work for the royal family.
He similarly declined to say whether he would attend his father’s coronation.
“The divide couldn’t be greater before this book,” he has said.
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