Strangest bits in Spare…

[Motorcycleemptyness]

i haven’t quite finished it yet but I wanted to read a thread about some of the weirder bits of Spare, and I haven’t seen a thread where people were discussing those without the ‘H&M’ vs the rest of the RF debate. There are definitely some parts which have made me really question why they were included, and I was wondering if anyone else had any similar thoughts.

The inclusion of the imagery of the poppy fields, and how heroin funds the Taliban. Fair enough. We all know that. The rest of the book is one long ode to posh people taking drugs. Does Prince Harry think the cocaine he takes is gently knitted by fairies and delivered to him by unicorns? Do the drugs he takes not contribute to war and terrorism and misery across the rest of the world (and indeed misery and crime in the UK, where he is 5th in line to be monarch!) I found this quite a strange passage and I was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts, or am I just over thinking it?

Elizabeth Arden cream. ‘Mummy’s lips’. ‘Todger’. Why? But really, why? Why was this included? Why did anyone think it or commit it to paper, and then publish it? Why did I read it? Why am I typing it here? ARGH.

What he actually thinks the relationship between the royal family and the press should actually be. Only reporting true things? Someone had a photo of him taking cocaine. Dressed as a nazi. Calling his colleague a ‘P*ki’. He wasn’t happy, but it was all true. Should journalists not be allowed to report true things? Or should they only be reporting things he wants them to report? Does Andrew get to choose that too? What about everyone else?

What the actual royal family should look like. This was mind bending. He seems to be perfectly happy with the idea of the monarchy, an institution which is predicated on the idea that they’re inherently superior to the rest of us, and that’s their birth right, but seems to massively struggle to apply that to himself and William. If a monarchy is the best system, why shouldn’t the heir be treated differently to the spare? (I don’t believe it is the best system and wish we could abolish them all but I don’t understand how one can believe one but not the other!).

Anyone else have any interesting thoughts?

Aside from the weird mummy stuff, when he talks about being stoned and having a weird connection with a fox. Also when he uses the word "climaxing" about five times in the chapter about his mum's funeral.

Absolutely. Poor Pat the matron absolutely ridiculed for not being hot. I would LOVE to hear her side of the story. Total absence of any evidence of women being friends. Really odd about all of his relationships with women. Am not even going in to the Diana aspect as I imagine there will be plenty of dissertations about it in the next ten years

Also picked up on a festering resentment that Charles referred to suits as a soap. Meghan clarifying it was on cable tv, about legal stuff. As if that made it sound more elevated.

Honestly I laughed until there were tears running down my face at that bit. I wish I could have seen it j real time. M saying actually it was a drama broadcast on cable in the evening about lawyers, LOL. Harry said he was DUMBFOUNDED that Charles had said it, when he spent the whole book outlining his da’s r interests in literature, theatre and classical music!!!! Talk about taking yourself too seriously. He also was shocked no one recognised her in a Waitrose as ‘loads of Brits watched Suits’, except of course Harry who hadn’t and didn’t even know about it despite his brother and sister in law being ‘super fans’ 🤣🤣🤣 I genuinely think it’s hilarious.

Oh on the suits note Harry’s only reference to watching the show was Googling Meghan’s sex scenes in it. Not only just admitting googling ‘Meghan sex scenes suits’, he just admitted he hasn’t watched the show!!!!!

Harry looks nothing like Diana! Her has small, close together, narrow eyes.
I saw Diana's eyes in person, they were beautiful.

Edit ''He has small , close together eyes''

Yes he does look like a young Prince Phillip.

may favourite laugh out loud bit was when he describes Meghan having a "wild joy and playfulness about her". Literally Meghan's words about herself (describing the characteristics a future actress playingbher in the crown should include)

Haha yeah that part also didn’t compute. He hasn’t watched the show himself but thinks everyone else is into it. Would also have loved to have been a fly on the wall. Can just imagine the knowing secretly shared smirks and raised eyebrows. Maybe they’ll make it into a soap. Sorry, a drama on cable tv in the evenings about the ancient basic unit of society, aka family 😏

The book gave me cognitive dissonance. A good distraction whilst recovering from the most painful bug I’ve had in ages.

(I’m enjoying everyone’s contributions on this thread - this would be a good book club book 😂)

Ha ha ha ha!!! I am ill too! That’s why am on here all the time! It was the fact she said it’s actually about lawyers that put me over the edge, you wonder does she even realise she ISN’T a lawyer. Bizarro. I bet camilla nearly wet herself. I mean I’m no royalist but tbf to Charles the British soaps like Corrie are shown around the world and even now have what 12 million viewers in the UK alone!?? Suits has never gotten anywhere near that 🤣🤣🤣 and apparently camilla is a soap fan who convinced Charlie to go on easties so it was hardly an insult. Just so funny to see their pompousity deflated by what they perceived as an insult. I hope harry does release the info he says he has held back in a second volume because if it’s more petty shit like this, I am here for it!!!

Right. She wasn't exactly booked into a Premier Inn the night she died. Come on, does he think we are stupid? And why did a posh-hater scheme from her mid-teens to join the royal family?!

I don't see this in the book - anyone have a reference? All I found was from Section 3, Chapter 17:

'We all went into a large sitting room. Along the way Pa asked Meg if it was true, as he’d been told, that she was the star of an American soap opera! She smiled. I smiled. I desperately wanted to say: "Soap opera? No, that’s our family, Pa." Meg said she was in a cable drama that aired in the evening. About lawyers. Called Suits. "Marvelous", Pa said. "How splendid.”' Later they talk about how acting is a difficult career, but there aren't a lot of details and it seems amicable. I also didn't find "dumbfounded" anywhere in the book and he doesn't seem to mention Charles and Suits together anywhere else in the book.

As for the discussion: Suits was always classified as a drama. Initially it
was a fairly classic episodic drama; it would be a stretch to call the first few seasons a soap opera although I can see some limted elements. It was criticised for having morphed into more of a soap or a relationship-based drama around Season 3 or 4, when single cases ran for several consecutive episodes and the relationships started to get more attention than the legal and firm-politics-related storylines.

But it remained classified as a drama rather than a soap opera, which drives everything from the media that covered it, the listings, the ratings and distribution, the marketing and PR, and the awards available to cast and crew. It's not a matter of one type of programme being "better" or more prestigious than another, it's just the way the industry is organised. Charles was not wildly off (and Harry comes across as a bit immature), but it would have been stranger if Meghan had NOT made the clarification. I think anyone who works in US TV professionally would likely do so.

I also read the Waitrose episode differently. Harry had been worried/annoyed earlier on their secret trip to Botswana when the cabin crew wanted a picture with Meghan and said they were Suits fans; he was afraid someone would post it on line and they'd be harrassed by the press on their trip (which seems reasonable given his previous experiences). He also wrote about how he'd had anxiety (possibly literally) about going to the supermarket because he'd sometimes be hassled by the press. To me, he seemed almost envious that Meghan wasn't hassled, and was puzzling out why.

There's also a later bit, after their relationship was public, in which one pap corners her in the supermarket pretending he's a Suits fan and asking for her autograph then snapping pics, and she's shaken up by it. I think he thought that as a working TV actress she'd be more used to publicity than she was, and he seriously underestimated how much more intense his experience with the media had been than hers.

OMG this is too lol if anyone is ever allowed to actually question harry about this he will of course say it’s just another sign how in sync they are!!!

Guess she was just fed up looking at the massive ancestral home and grounds, when not in her central London flat (working part time as a nursery helper), and just fancied a similar massive ancestral home but handier to Kensington. If her time at finishing school taught her anything it absolutely was class war

There's also a later bit, after their relationship was public, in which one pap corners her in the supermarket pretending he's a Suits fan and asking for her autograph then snapping pics, and she's shaken up by it. I think he thought that as a working TV actress she'd be more used to publicity than she was, and he seriously underestimated how much more intense his experience with the media had been than hers.

i watched Suits, and I had seen Meghan before she got engaged to Harry, but she was not prevalent in the US media at all. She wasn't somebody that you saw on entertainment shows or award shows or anything like that. She was just a supporting actress in a moderately popular television show.

The tone of the suits ref to Charles very much read to me like Harry was annoyed. I think most people would read it that way. What’s the significance of the cadence the writer has given the following: ‘Meg said she was in a cable drama that aired in the evening. About lawyers. Called Suits.’? there is a separate sentence to clarify that it’s a show about lawyers. Another to give it’s name. A really friendly way of writing that would be to say for example ‘Meg laughed warmly, smiling broadly at P, and said ‘Well I wish we were as popular as Coronation Street and went on as long, that’s for sure! I’m in a show called Suits which is a drama on cable about a corporate law office. It’s a great show and I love being in it.’ Can you see the difference in tone?
Listen, it’s up to you if you sincerely believe that Air Botswana air hostesses recognised Meghan from Adam and were dying for pics. I don’t buy it. I’d heard about suits because I am a lawyer and a corporate solicitor friend of mine loved it for her Friday night brainless binge with a glass of wine. But it’s totally mad to say it was very widely known globally at that time. In fact do we even know if there were broadcast rights for Netflix to show it in Botswana at that time? That would be interesting.
Finally, the easiest thing in the world for a reporter to do at that time to get close to Meghan undercover or not would have been to say ‘I love suits’ because it flattered Meghan and her ego. Meghan had a lifestyle blog before meeting harry and relentlessly networked with charitable organisations to raise her profile. You are stunningly naive to believe that Meghan did not want exposure.,

You reminded me, there's a bit where Harry mentions Meghan walking to wholefoods and explicitly describes her outfit (wellies, baseball cap, bag)...She was snapped on that walk, photo was everywhere.

Now, I took it with a huge pinch of salt at the time (and still do) but I read that she walked up and down past the newspaper offices several times that day and it was only after several walk bys that the journalists took out their cameras to get her to stop, much to their reported amusement. I don't know how true this is, its anti meghan gossip after all, but I thought it interesting that Harry chose to get very detailed about that outfit and that route in the book.

Inhaling all the gas at Archie's birth surprised me. Picturing 'Aibu to be upset that DH regarded the birth of our child as an opportunity to get high on the drugs I needed?' I think so much in his life has been excused as being cheeky when it is actually entitlement and often misogynistic.

While I have sympathy for some of it, what I’m noticing is just the contradictions and how he’s always on the Eeyore side of things.

For instance, the army bend over backwards for him, he’s handed the presumably somewhat elite assignments - culminating in just being handed the chance to train as an Apache helicopter pilot. At one part of his training he gets to live with William who now can’t go to the front lines and is instead going to be a search and rescue helicopter pilot. They do a joint interview and he gets upset with William making jokes about his snoring and being messy. H says:

“I laughed as well, because we often bantered like that, but when I look back on it now, I can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t something else at play. I was training to get to the front lines, the same place Willy had been training to get, but the Palace had scuttled his plans. The Spare, sure, let him run around a battlefield like a chicken with its head cut off, if that’s what he likes. But the Heir? No.”

He’s actually got what he wanted but it’s still a bad thing because they’re only apparently letting him because he’s a spare and doesn’t matter. So he gets what he wants and what he intimates W wants but it’s still a bad thing to be the spare, even when it’s a good thing?

Precisely. That’s what makes all the suits talk so funny. Genuinely Rita Sullivan from Corrie would be much more likely to be recognised in any of these situations than Meghan as she has starred for decades in a show broadcast at prime time on national tv networks in not only the UK and Ireland, but Australia, NZ, Canada for definite and I think many other former British colonies. It is mad the way people try to make out Meghan was widely known before her relationship with Harry, she really wasn’t.

The paparazzi definitely had little, if any, interest in her prior to her engagement to Harry.

I noted that too because several journalists have reported what you said - not all daily mail btw. Although the daily mail did do a breakdown of the spoofs, sorry inadvertent inaccuracies in the book, the other day and it was intriguing that they said despite harry describing endless rows of papers and mags all with Meghan’s face on the front page, the shop she was in, whole foods, does not sell newspapers at all and the only magazines it sells were described as niche lifestyle ones I.e. wholesome cooking/veggie/vegan/well being. Not any kind of publication with disparaging headlines about Meghan on it.
Anyway I am a glutton for punishment and I cannot stand the agitators on these threads! Please can we stick to the strange aspect and not have the H and M defenders derail another great thread!!!

Ha ha ha I know! Who the hell would admit to that! The LTB responses would have been off the scale if it had made it to a thread here!!! You are 100%!correct re misogyny. Harry has a weird way of relating to women.