Dear Reader,
In Spare, the Duke of Sussex writes of his frostbitten penis, “[A friend] urged me to apply Elizabeth Arden cream. My mum used that on her lips. You want me to put that on my todger? It works, Harry. Trust me. I found a tube, and the minute I opened it the smell transported me through time. I felt as if my mother was right there in the room. Then I took a smidge and applied it…down there.” Many critiques of this book have argued that Prince Harry and his ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer, included too many personal details. It does feel distressing to view the royal family through such an intimate lens. The book refers to King Charles III as “Pa,” as though Harry’s ghostwriter was Laura Ingalls Wilder. There’s such a standard of behavior for princes that there’s even an adjective for conduct unbefitting of a prince: unprincely.
Harry isn’t some anti-monarchy activist. He and his wife didn’t step back from the monarchy because they had a fundamental issue with the institution. They stepped back because 1) Meghan Markle faced unbearable, deeply racist harassment from the press and 2) the Palace left them to the wolves. Throughout the book, he reserves most of his loathing for the press, despite the fact that he says, “Pa’s office, Willy’s office, enabling these fiends, if not outright collaborating.” Harry has never advocated for an end to the English monarchy; he literally writes, “My problem has never been with the monarchy, nor the concept of monarchy.” At no point is he willing to suggest that the monarchy profits from a system of oppression.
Furthermore, the book indicates that Harry doesn’t understand the systemic nature of bigotry. He understands that individual members of the royal family can be racist, and he writes about studying British history, but he doesn’t ever conclude that racism is inherently intertwined with the British monarchy. He understands that the tabloids wrote about his wife in a vitriolically anti-Black manner, but he doesn’t discuss the fact that these journalists’ attitudes are rooted in a broader system of racism in the United Kingdom. He briefly dwells on the 25 people he killed in Afghanistan, but doesn’t question why Great Britain has been fighting wars in Afghanistan periodically since 1839. If he were a reader, he might mention that John Watson fought in Afghanistan in the original A Study in Scarlet (1887) and John Watson still fought in Afghanistan in the modern Sherlock (2010-2017). Even on the individual level, not the systemic level, it’s concerning that he abdicated responsibility for his wearing a Nazi uniform to a “Native and Colonial” costume party in 2005—as though William and Kate forced him to wear the uniform.1 Who would’ve thought that it might be difficult for an English prince to unlearn a thousand years of bigotry?
Idolizing Harry would be a mistake.2 He isn’t a godlike savior who will singlehandedly dismantle the monarchy or demolish the entire system of racism in the Commonwealth. Nor is he a godlike robot who can walk behind his mother’s casket in a highly public procession at the age of 12 and remain unaffected. Why does the public expect this impossible, inhuman standard from members of the royal family? Doesn’t this standard originate from the monarchy itself?
As I read the book, a couplet from “As I Walked Out One Evening” by W.H. Auden kept repeating in my head: “O, look, look in the mirror, / O look in your distress.” This is from the antepenultimate stanza, a word which here means the third last stanza.3 The poem’s conclusion suggests that even though time brings everything to a mortal ending, “life remains a blessing.” At first, I didn’t understand why my subconscious kept pushing this couplet to the forefront of my mind; the poem has nothing to do with the royal family.
It’s distressing to come to terms with the fact that the royal family are just messy human beings. It’s undignified for a prince to say that he put Elizabeth Arden cream on his penis. It’s indecent for a prince to set the record straight on his circumcision. It’s improper for a prince to air so many private family details, like the fact that his father, the King of the United Kingdom, carried a childhood teddy bear everywhere as an adult. Many people aren’t comfortable hearing personal details in general, but it feels especially uncomfortable to hear so many intimate details from a prince. It’s unprincely.
Examine that discomfort, and lean into it. O look in your distress. The monarchy does everything it can to deny the humanity of rulers and maintain a pretense of saintly perfection. In this process, the monarchy maintains its power. What kind of system would make a 12-year-old feel shame at “violating the family ethos” when he cries at his mother’s grave?4 What kind of system would abandon responsibility for colonizing half the world in the name of one family?
Our distress also stems from the fact that Harry is giving voice to these intimate details; we aren’t reading these stories thirdhand from tabloid journalists. Harry writes, “I was royal and in [journalists’] minds royal was synonymous with non-person. Centuries ago royal men and women were considered divine; now they were insects. What fun, to pluck their wings.” And it’s worth mentioning that this book isn’t a statement carefully crafted by faceless members of the Palace to serve the monarchy’s goals. The Palace maintains the illusion of saintly perfection so that the monarchy can survive, while the press dredges up details of their lives so that we view these people as celebrities—deserving of a spotlight—and we forget that they’re ordinary strangers. It’s instinctively distressing when a member of the royal family has their own voice, which is worth examining.
If a child has to parade behind his mother’s casket after she’s chased to her death by the press, should he remain voiceless forever? If a man has to watch his wife harassed to the point of suicidal ideation, should he remain voiceless forever? Why do we expect royal figures to maintain a highborn facade of polished holiness, when the truth is that they’re just complicated strangers profiting from a system of oppression? We should ask ourselves what the monarchy and the tabloids both have to gain from this standard of princely behavior.
Love, Lily
The way he writes about his subsequent visit with the Chief Rabbi of Britain is a little odd, too. The rabbi aimed for Harry to rectify his wrongs in a process like teshuvah, and rabbis don’t act in persona Hashemi. However, Harry uses words one might use in the context of Christianity: “To the extent that he was able, and qualified, he absolved me. He gave me grace.”
Can we just appreciate the irony that I can’t use a last name in this sentence, I have to refer to him as Harry or his title?
Sorry! But if I see the opportunity to reference Lemony Snicket, I’m going to seize it.
This is genuinely quite heartbreaking: “I began to sob uncontrollably into my hands. I felt ashamed of violating the family ethos, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer. It’s OK, I reassured myself, it’s OK. There aren’t any cameras around.”