I am genuinely worried for Harry's mental health now after this

[Squabbledee]

Give it another week of worldwide chewing over his words and all the drama it's creating, I'm genuinely worried for Harry. How can you go anywhere and hold your head up after you've opened yourself to such ridicule? He might want an un-royal life but he is a prince non-the-less. Where's the dignity? He really, really needs help. I sincerely hope it gets it. The fallout from this won't be forgotten in a hurry. And to top it off, how can he make his family truly secure now?

MM has it all planned. She turned her back on her family so that she can say to Harry, look we’re the same but we’ve got each other, so Harry has started to lean and depend on her the most. The last time I think I saw him totally happy was pre Meghan and it was him wills and Kate absolutely in stitches about somEtching they were very close before he got caught by Meghan. I thought he might have married pippa at one point!

thought he might have married pippa at one point

lol wut?

@Ladybird69 Pippa apparently didn’t like Harry in a romantic manner. Now that more is known about him, this isn’t unbelievable.

My iPad fubar odd phrases btw

Pippa may not be Harry’s type too.
He may not have been attracted to her.

I would rather be in Pippa’s position than Kate’s. Pippa married a very wealthy man and doesn’t have all the scrutiny that Kate has?

He seems to have been working quite hard as does Sophie.They're both very unassuming and seemed to have been closely involved with the Queen's daily life up until her death.

It seems H is trying to goad W into responding by talking about his children in this way.
I hope he maintains a dignified silence.

I’d be very upset about the comment over his children. He seems to think he’s some sort of saviour for them to turn to when they inevitably realise how mean and awful their own parents and George are and turn against them, whilst just miraculously realising how amazing their fun loving down to earth Hollywood star aunt and uncle are at the same time. Very ominous, I’d be furious.

Yes I would never forgive it. It’s really over stepping the line.

One of the things which seems to be overlooked is Diana’s parenting style and its legacy on her children, particularly Harry. Im not a monarchist, and I never thought Diana was a saint, but there’s so much focus on how Charles’ alleged selfishness has harmed Harry, that Diana’s failings seem to be ignored. Harry is obsessed with his mother, but his image of her seems to be a very distorted one. His world is a very polarised space. Saintly Mummy, neglectful Daddy. In the years preceding Diana’s death she had spent quite a lot of time pursuing her various love interests [some of which involved married men] and campaigning against her in laws. Im sure she felt perfectly justified in seeking love elsewhere, but her children were the ones who suffered and had to endure endless comments about their Mum and her various lovers etc etc. It must havre been a very humiliating experience and the boys had endured a lot of commentary over Charles and Camilla. I can remember watching an interview with Christopher Hitchens when Diana died, and he was brutal in his assessment, he thought her a dreadful superficial phoney. I wouldn't go that far but Diana’s death occurred in Paris when she was gallivanting around with a very unsuitable playboy, and had sacked her official protection team. She wasn't wearing a seat belt and she appears to have spent her last evening playing cat and mouse with the media. Staying with Dodi and having supper at the RItz was designed to create a lot of publicity. Dodi knew that and so did Diana. Her death was entirely avoidable. I wonder how Harry has reconciled all of these things? Is there a tremendous amount of suppressed anger towards her and her lifestyle choices? Or has he decided to deal with his grief by elevating her to sainthood and blaming all the people who survived [except of course the late Queen…Harry isnt entirely stupid]. He appears to be obsessed with ‘his family’s safety’ and the need to be seen as Meghan’s protector.

I agree @Weonlyhavealoanofit

Poor William must have been mortified by her behaviour at times, the panorama interview and chasing around with Dodi and other lovers before that. And she involved her sons in her intrigues with her lovers. I'm pretty sure I remember photos of her introducing the boys to Will Carling, I think he gave them some rugby shirts. And Will was one of the honourable ones who has never spoken about her, but his wife (to whom he had been married for a very short time) publicly blamed Diana for the break up of her marriage.

Harry was younger and probably doesn't remember so much of this.

I think sending eight year old boys to boarding school is pretty awful for all boys but some will cope with it better than others. Harry was clearly not suited for that, think how young he looks in the funeral photos, a couple of weeks shy of his 13th birthday and he had already been at boarding school for four years.

After the separation Di and Charles scrupulously split holidays 50/50 , add in school terms and the actual number of days H would have spent with Diana over the last four years of her life is tiny.

Say 16 weeks school holidays a year, Diana got 8 = 56 days a year give or take a few weekends out etc.

William being older will have seen TV and newspaper reports documenting his mother's escapades whilst he was at school but Harry would have been kept away from all that at his prep school. He worships her memory but the reality is he probably knows very little about her life.

I always thought William got a raw deal because Diana apparently leant heavily on him for emotional aupport.A boy becoming a teenager - especially one away at boarding school-shouldn't have had that burden to bear.Does Harry ever consider the downsides of his older brother being the allegedly more sensible one.I guess that may have fuelled his jealousy more ? Plus is being the spare so dreadful? All those perks and privileges yet not the onerous years of having to be the most responsible one.I think Charles has been keen that William and Kate have some time with their young growing family whilst they can.His brother skipping off to find freedom to raise his own family in America.Fair enough.But saying he still supports the monarchy whilst flinging so much personal stuff around and making Charles and Williams jobs even harder?I honestly don't think his adored mum would have been impressed.

Diana and Will

Say 16 weeks school holidays a year, Diana got 8 = 56 days a year give or take a few weekends out etc.

That's really not a lot of time. I can really see how for Harry it left like, she was 'just not there' rather than actually dead.

Sometimes a sudden death can feel like that, the house feels 'normal' like the deceased is 'just out at work / golfing' wherever they'd often spend time.

Lots of unpleasant posts about Diana on this thread. She wasn’t a saint or the perfect mother but she did a hell of a lot better than her own parents while enduring huge pressures. And that’s all any of us can hope to do.

I don’t believe that the saint like goddess that was placed on Diana has helped Harry in the past or now. From the inappropriate language surrounding Diana in his marriage, his inability to see the Elizabeth Arden comments. The villain comments to Camilla (Diana was the same) to the unrealistic pressure of other people to ever live up to Diana’s legacy especially his brother, Charles and maybe ultimately Meghan. Finally his drive to control the press narrative in his mind to stop history repeating itself which could be his biggest relapse into his mental health. I do think it’s time for Harry to start remembering Diana for who she was which was amazing and flawed

It was all generated by the press anyway. Diana certainly didn’t think of herself as a saint. There’s a clip of her larking about and joking saying she did charity work because she didn’t have anything else to do! You can accuse her of many things but she wasn’t pompous.

In reality it was all very mercenary and cruel. The press built her up to sell lots of newspapers so they could tear her down and sell even more.

It was after her death the narrative of her life changed. There was for a time guilt, rightly so from the press but her death did cleanse her public appearance and the darker side, the flawed side. But there are now problems, Camilla ripped apart on social media for having an affair, even blamed for Diana divorce and ultimately death. By a generation who have heard only the good stuff. Harry himself scornful of the other woman with no hint of hypocrisy when he talks about Diana. Camilla needing a redemption arc. Therapy should have been able to help Harry grieve, remember but have boundaries especially in his marriage and the intimacy parts of his marriage. No one can live up to the Diana in Harry’s head. Diana had both a love/hate relationship with the media and the royal family

All the "spares" over recent years have had issues. Prince Harry, Prince Andrew and Princess Margaret.

It must be difficult to perceive your elder sibling as being so obviously favoured!

Talk about revisionist history!

And why shouldn’t Harry love his own mother unconditionally? Especially as she died when he was twelve!

Camilla did have a large part to play in the failure of their marriage. Camilla did not exactly behave well persisting with an affair when there were young dc involved.

Diana had affairs too but she did not expect her fiancé to be in love with someone else. Or walk down the aisle knowing that she loved another person. Nor did she invite her lover to the wedding! She entered in to marriage in good faith, which is more than can be said, it would seem, of her former husband.

What was done to Diana as a very young woman was a huge injustice. The RF letting the marriage go ahead knowing that it was a disaster waiting to happen was morally dubious too. But they got their heir and a spare.

No one cares about the affairs as much as the deceit afterwards. The RF expected Diana to live a lie and pretend it was all happy families! I was born within a few years of Diana and although there were rumours about affairs no one believed it to be true until Andrew Morton released his book. We were all quite shocked. The world was a very different place back then and it was easier for the RF to control the narrative.

And Camilla’s image did need rehabilitating. Prince Charles’s spent £150,000, a large sum back then, on the services of a PR bigwig Mark Bolland to achieve this. Sadly, allegedly, according to
Diana’s private secretary, some of his techniques involved trashing the image of Diana in order to elevate that of his client Camilla.

And what Harry is arguing is that not a lot has changed as the staff of various senior royals have chosen to brief favoured friends and journalists to spread derogatory stories about H & M in order to elevate their own senior royal’s standing.

I agree that Margaret and Harry had/have issues. Andrew perhaps doesn’t have “issues” per se, he’s just an arrogant prick who thinks he’s above the law.

Anne and Edward are also “spares” and seem pretty balanced-yes, Anne had a failed marriage and Edward struggled to find a career path, but they seem to have got through it.

I’m not convinced that so-calked “spares” are destined to have problems, but it’s interesting that Margaret lost her father relatively young (21) and had a sister who took her duty as the heir very seriously-perhaps even put the monarchy before family?

Her situation has some parallels to parallels to Harry’s situation, except he was far younger when he lost a parent and would have been even more affected.

Question.Why do the Spencer family rarely get mentioned with regards to Diana marrying Charles so young ?It seems to me she was offered up like the sacrificial lamb and already had multiple problems emotionally resulting from her own upbringing and what seems to have been unhappy childhood. Of course marrying an older man with whom you have little in common other than an aristocratic pedigree ,and who is still in love with another woman was a huge mistake.But I rarely see any criticism of her family.

I agree that Margaret and Harry had/have issues. Andrew perhaps doesn’t have “issues” per se, he’s just an arrogant prick who thinks he’s above the law.

Andrew may have been a spare, but he was better looking than Charles as a young man, had more freedom, and was clearly his mother's favorite. As such, I think he had little resentment about his situation - until his exploits were revealed.

Harry is less popular, less intelligent, less attractive, and a spare. No wonder he's bitter.

Great post. It’s actually unhealthy how he has turned his morher into a saint.

What a sexist post! Why do only women “gallivant”?

And I doubt Dodi would have arranged a dummy car to be set up at the back of the Ritz to draw journalists away if they were trying to attract attention.

It is well documented that Diana found it very problematic to find places where she could take the boys on holiday where the security was good and they were protected. That is what brought her in to contact with the Fayed family in the first place.

And I don’t think what the palace wanted - for the boys to be part of one big pretence that their parents were in a happy marriage and to act this out in public - would have been healthy psychologically for them
either!

Diana wouldn’t have had so many affairs in the first place had her husband not lied to her and been deeply in love with another woman when he walked her down the aisle?

Diana came from a very dysfunctional family herself and she improved greatly on the parenting that she received as a child.

And Christopher Hitchens was a notorious misogynist who used to say that his love life had deteriorated to the point where only women would sleep with him! I would take anything he has said about any woman with a very large pinch of salt tbh.

You've got that right Diana came from a very dysfunctional family, Di & Charles had an arranged marriage, why did her family think it was a good idea to marry her off to Charles? ££££ and status.

They only met 7 times before the engagement and 12 before the actual wedding. If the average 19 yo came home saying they wanted to marry an older guy they'd only met a month ago, assuming 2 dates a week, their parents would be going off their heads.