I think it's a silly comment about being brought up as a spare with no role. We all just live. We create a destiny of our own through our actions, and if you're the grandson of a monarch, that means doing whatever you like and people telling you you're fantastic. In Harry's case, enjoying himself, chatting up any woman he fancies, then being shoe-horned into his steps at royal events, pushed and guided. Then being in the army. (William wouldn't have been allowed to serve overseas in the army - nor to commit as many indiscretions. )
The mistake the royals have made is to cut down the scope and number of the working royals. You need a lot more of them so that if one comes forward with a feel for civic duty, an interest in people and a resilience, then they can do a lot of the jobs, and people who don't like it, or who are sensitive can step back . Photogenic ones who like being in the papers can be pin-ups.
Royal life isn't toxic to everybody; some people have liked it. I think Prince Philip liked it.
But fame is a very strange thing. There is no rhyme or reason why people get popular...the ones who can't sing or act. If you can't sing or act or play football, you're an influencer. If you influence, you have to strike a chord with what people think. You're judged. Sorry, but judged on how valid your judgements are. Even seventeen year olds on Tiktok can strike a chord - some of them. Who knows what's a bit special beyond what another pretty seventeen year old miming has got. That's celebrities.
If you go on media spouting your banal views, you are going to have people judging you as an influencer because that's your job now. You're being paid for saying things. If people analyse your comments and critisize them, they are not being horrible about you, they are booing, like people boo a comic; or voting you off, like audiences do with contestants on Big Brother, or to someone who used to be a singer but now they're a talker, on 'I'm a Celebrity..' Harry used to be a serving royal. Now he's a contestant on the popularity contest that is 'A' class celebrity life. Instead of burrowing in soil for termites to eat, it seems like he's burrowing for nuggets of dirt to sell about his family. If he isn't and he's got a great, life-enhancing purpose, then he'd better start putting his message across a little better because it's not hitting home with people.
Is it really surprising that people say the odd critical comment about Harry.
As for judging people's views and saying they strike a chord or don't: saying we can be anything we like and much better than a princess is illogical because if you even think about being a princess and what it means, you are never going to have a better life. You can only have a charmed life if you don't care about any of that because you care about integrity and kindness and can therefore stick two fingers up at life's vicissitudes. Any life you go out and try to make can be shot down by providence: illness and a wrong choice can break any flourishing career or marriage. This whole notion of just going out and making a life you want is like just 'driving systemic change, one act of kindness at a time': you can't have that kind of agency over your own life or the collective experience.
And, what sphere of logic or reasoning calls admitting to the public on prime time TV that there was an actual row with your sister-in -law over bridesmaid dresses kind? That is never going to be a kind act to Kate. And if you want to be kind, turn the other cheek. Don't do tit for tat and say "She was mean first" and then think you've found some innovative way of creating a pure press.
But speaking of comedians and popularity, that Hugo Rifkind fiction of a book on ' Dads' was a piece of humour which would get a lot of laughs.