This has to be the strangest book ever written by a royal.
Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, is part confession, part rant, and part love letter.
At times it feels like the longest text message ever sent by an angry drunk.
From an inward look, he calls his life a “surreal fishbowl” and an “endless Truman show.”
It is candid and intimate, showing the sheer strangeness of his often isolated life. And it is the small details that give an idea of how little we really knew.
There are glimpses of him as a frequent drug user, smoking a joint after dinner and worrying about the smoke going into the house of his neighbor, the Duke of Kent.
What other royal account would cover virginity loss behind a pub, or go into such lengthy detail about a frozen penis? In fact, this appendage receives more lines than many of its relatives.
The prince also says that he was very aware of girls with “throne syndrome”, those who “visibly put on a crown the moment they shake my hand”.
He also tells the story of being at Buckingham Palace during the Golden Jubilee concert and listening to Brian May play, noticing that his grandmother Queen Elizabeth wears earplugs.
His life before he met Meghan Markle, when he lived in London, was full of luxuries, but in the midst of it, the prince feels as if he is hidden by his own life.
Harry suffered from horrible panic attacks, terrible for anyone, but debilitating for someone like him who had to speak and appear in public.
He describes his life at home as lonely, self-medicating with psychedelic drugs, drying his clothes on a radiator, and planning shopping sprees like military raids: disguised and at top speed.
It speaks of a profoundly strange way of living, moving suddenly between moments with a lack of glamor and others shared with international socialites.
Her mother’s death
The book, made by “ghost” writers, is a fast-paced, fast-paced tale that looks from the inside, always aware of the bodyguards outside the door and the cameras waiting to catch him.
At the very center of this story, which permeates almost every page, is the enormous trauma that seems to have distorted the rest of his life: the death of his mother, Princess Diana.
He adored her unreservedly, and an overwhelming sense of unresolved grief is at the center of all his other anxieties.
She really hates the press, blaming them for persecuting her mother so relentlessly, even on the night that led to her death in Paris.
Fights with his brother, Prince William, are often framed by references to the closeness they had previously had with their mother.
Her crippling anxiety and self-destruction also seem to be consequences of the loss of her mother, which took away an emotional anchor that, until she met Meghan, she could never replace.
The exterior world
There is also something of an obsession with death. Walking into Westminster Abbey for his brother’s wedding, he thinks happily of the 3,000 people buried in the church over the centuries.
What is missing from the book is a sense of awareness of the outside world. It’s like he’s been blinded by the paparazzi’s flashlights. No one cares about paying gas bills in this book. He goes back and forth from Africa as if he made a few stops on any London Underground line.
Although that would have been more exotic for him because he says the only time he ever got on a subway was on a school trip.
While he’s highly intrusive about the real-life interior (yes, he describes his father doing physical therapy exercises in his underpants), he remains eerily silent about any views on the outside world, even though he’s no longer a member of the royalty.
There are some glimpses. Harry talks about Prince William making what he calls a “vaguely anti-Brexit speech” that seems to annoy the tabloids.
The king
So who will be more upset by all these revelations in his book?
Netflix mainly. They paid a prince’s ransom for six hours of TV chatter and smug content on an Instagram feed, while the book crackles like a flaming log on nearly every page.
Much of the book will also irritate people, particularly their self-absorption.
Leaks of the book have focused on family conflicts and Harry’s resentment of the lack of support for him and Meghan.
But as a whole, beyond the excerpts, a much warmer image of his father King Charles emerges, even when it seems as if the narrator is giving him a hard time.
Carlos is seen walking around in slippers, listening to his audio books, obsessed with Shakespeare, wearing Dior perfume and falling asleep at his desk.
His father tries to provide Harry with emotional support after Diana’s death, sitting with him until he falls asleep at night, but it seems his good intentions had to jump through some tough barriers.
Carlos leaves him notes trying to say nice things, but Harry questions why he can’t say them in person. He goes to see Harry in a school play and laughs out loud and then his son criticizes him for laughing in all the wrong places.
And when the adult siblings squabble, Carlos begins to sound like some sort of Shakespearean figure, King Lear, begging his sons not to make their old age a misery.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-64230394, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-01-10 21:20:05
Sean Coughlan
BBC News royal correspondent
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