Harry’s sunken bed comment

[Coffeecreams]

When describing how KC told Harry about the death of his Mum, Harry made a point of saying ‘that sunken bed’.

Given the fact that Harry obviously likes to come across as a poor ‘woe is me’ spare part of the RF, does anyone else wonder if this comment was just another one of his sly digs, designed to imply that he didn’t even have a comfortable bed when staying with his Father, and just slept on an old worn out bed?

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I can’t help thinking that he tries to use every opportunity possible to make people believe that, as he’s always supposedly had to ‘play second fiddle’ to William, William not only had the bigger room, but also would’ve had a more comfortable mattress to sleep on too, and not have to make do with a sunken bed like ‘poor Harry’ supposedly did.

Bless him, PP was more of a sound guy than he is ever given credit for. If I remember correctly he was beside William.
It must have been really tough for PP and brought be horrible memories for him too.

I agree, but you have to remember their own backgrounds and the time of their own birth. The RF was brought up never to show emotion in public.

The D of E had a terribly sad life- his mother was deaf and had schizophrenia and spent a lot of her life in psychiatric care. He was a refugee, pushed from pillar to post as a child and packed off to Gordonstoun to 'toughen him up'. He hardly had good role models to help him.

I did meet him in real life and he was lovely.

I also haven’t read it, so I’m going from articles but...

I took sunken to not be completely literal - because he writes about balmoral being the happiest he’d ever been, him and William going to bed that night and him being scared of the dark so he wrapped himself up in blankets in his bed, then Charles comes in and tells him his mum has died and he describes that as an internal shift and then he’s sitting on the sunken bed.

It’s imagery about the loss not a complaint about furniture...his safe cosy space is no more, because his mum was gone.

It didn’t need a parade through the streets.

I was in London at the time. It was - as a pp put it so well - like the nation had had some sort of collective breakdown. Utterly bizarre. There’s no way that anything other than a parade through the streets would’ve been acceptable to the Great British Public.

Agree with others re Duke of Edinburgh - he said he would walk with them if the boys walked. I don’t think there was any suggestion that they really opposed the idea and were forced to do it.

Lol Oliver Twist was the first thing I thought of 😁maybe he should rewrite the Monty Python sketch where they compete as to who had the worst life.

I would’ve thought he would’ve really only remembered his Father coming into his room to tell him the tragic news of his Mum.
OP, this suggests you've never been in a situation like this, thankfully. Years ago, my dad had to call me to say the doctors had said they didn't think my mum would live beyond that day. I remember very vividly, exactly how I curled up on the side of my bed when he hung up. I remember the food I put in the freezer before rushing to the airport, despite it being completely unimportant. I remember that in the minutes after she died it popped into my head that I had a date that week and that I hoped he wouldn't think it too bad mannered to cancel. All incredibly tiny, trivial detail given the gravity of the day but the brain does very strange things in grief and to me it makes absolute sense that he would remember that detail.

@Pugdogmom I beat a steak once, that's as close to slapping rump as I've got.

I can't remember now who decided that the sons would walk behind the coffin.

I've seen a few explanations of this but all seem vague. Some say it was to protect Charles from being jeered, others say it was the government's idea and Prince Philip actually told them to fuck off during a conference call between Balmoral and Downing Street. I think Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell know a lot more about it but they seem (for some reason) to remain silent on the issue.

I bet loads of the mattresses in the many rooms at the various castles are far, far beyond the state that most of us would accept in our houses. However:

1. He was a teenager and they can sleep on anything
2. He is posh so is used to huge, drafty, fairly uncomfortable old houses.

I suspect his non-aristocracy wife pointed out to him the madness that is the British top tier of society tearing around in ancient bone shaking land cruisers in 50 year old Barbour jackets where the dogs have more comfortable beds than the humans. That lot are rich but they'd be a lot less rich if they replaced their mattresses and redecorated every 10 years like the hoi polloi.

😂😂

Seems quite obvious OP hasn't read the book so is taking it out of context.

It was Charles who was sent to Gordonstoun to toughen him up. Phillip loved it there and was there when it was set up. He had previously been at Salem School in Germany run by the same headteacher and transferred with him to Scotland when the head opened Gordonstoun.

OP took it from what Harry was saying directly in an interview rather than a book written by a ghost writer. The interview is more likely to have given the context within which Harry considered it as well as the benefit of inflection.

Seems quite obvious OP hasn't read the book so is taking it out of context.

So we're not allowed to comment on interviews unless we've read the book? Do you work for the publishers?

Yes that is exactly the story he’s trying to tell/make up

Spot on. Not to mention the fact that Charles, Camilla, Kate, ‘Wills’ literally could not care less about you. Honestly, you mean absolutely zero to them. Yet so many of you are spending hours online defending their ‘honour’. It’s unbelievable.

I think Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell know a lot more about it but they seem (for some reason) to remain silent on the issue.

I think there are two explanations for their silence. Either it was their idea and they know it was a terrible one so were keeping quiet, or the family decided it and the Queen told Blair during the private audience (the contents of which no PM has ever publicly discussed iirc).

I think the most likely thing is that when the boys heard that their uncle (Earl Spenser) was going to walk behind the coffin they wanted to do it too. Whether the family should have said no is a different matter. At 15, William was old enough to make the decision that he wanted to grieve his mother beside her brother, his uncle - I think PP had done the same for his own sister at around 15yo. At 12, Harry was not old enough, but separating the brothers for this would be fraught with difficulty and cause a lot of pain to both of them. Despite how we now know the impact it had, and despite whatever their fall outs have been, Harry himself recently said he'd never have let his brother do it alone (and vice versa). The decision to let them walk but keep them flanked by their father and grandfather was likely a middle ground.

It is also worth remembering that the country (well, certainly London) was suffering some sort of mass hysteria at this point, the like of which nobody had ever seen here and so nobody knew what to do for the best, nor how horrific it would actually be. Plus, this idea of "those poor boys shouldn't have walked" is relatively recent. In the immediate aftermath the majority of people thought it was a good thing that they did.

Finally, walking behind the coffin from the funeral home to the church was considered a completely normal part of the grieving process for a long time and until relatively recently. Indeed, it continues today where the close family follow the coffin into the church or crematorium. Aristocratic families tend to be pretty keen on tradition, so it wouldn't have seemed as odd to them then as it does to us now. What made this different was the insane behaviour of many of the British public who (IMO) felt guilty for contributing to her death through constantly consuming the paparazzi shots of her while she was alive.

The Queen, PP and KC did their very best to protect the boys at the time of Dianas death. They wanted to stay in Scotland and look after them there. They were thwarted by the collective hysterical nervous breakdown being had by a large majority of the British people. Headlines such as "Your people need you Madam" meant they had to return as the mood was turning really ugly.
Most people only seemed to remember years later thatchers were two young people who needed them a great deal more.

Agreed there was mass hysteria and that the boys walking behind the coffin was not viewed as so problematic as now. There was an acknowledgment that allowing them or not was a choice for which there was no solution. These are the flowers outside Kensington palace.

The Queen, PP and KC did their very best to protect the boys at the time of Dianas death. They wanted to stay in Scotland and look after them there. They were thwarted by the collective hysterical nervous breakdown being had by a large majority of the British people. Headlines such as "Your people need you Madam" meant they had to return as the mood was turning really ugly.
Most people only seemed to remember years later that they were two young people who needed them a great deal more.

Yes I agree, which is why I tend to believe the Prince Philip shouting 'fuck off' version of the story.

The crowds also demanded to see the boys. The country was on the brink of civil unrest and they did a walk about to appease the crowds. I can imagine this horrified The Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles (as was). There is the famous clip, where Philip is told to look after the boys and he crossly replies, ‘what do you think we’ve been doing’.

I’m not a Harry fan but the comments taken out of context of the book change the meaning.

This X 1000000! Especially as the tabloids have tried to twist as many things as possible with sound bites taken out of context.

100%. You can call them Wills and gush over their children to the moon and back but your slavish adoration means nothing to them. They feel they deserve it anyway.

But if you are taking comments direct from the source in the form of an interview with Harry then they are likely to be MORE reflective of how he feels than a ghostwriter written book.

And yet a parallel discussion in this thread is about how the RF felt forced by public opinion to parade the boys in public following the death of Diana.