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?

I haven’t read ‘Spare’, but there was something in the Netflix doc about how ‘surprised’ they constantly were at kindness. When they mentioned they wanted a black soul choir at their wedding, Harry says something like ‘we were surprised there was very little pushback on this’, and that the Palace immediately began researching and putting together a super choir for them. It’s as if they are always looking for offence and almost disappointed when they don’t get a bigoted reaction.

I think the soap confusion would have offended Meghan because US soaps are daytime only and notoriously ridiculous plotlines, rather than the completely mainstream , schedule-dominating thing they are here.

Genuinely jaw dropping moment: that Harry appears to genuinely believe he was conceived to provide organs for transplant for William...

I was left wondering if the entire RF have a sweating problem. Andrew can’t sweat at all, apparently, whereas Charles and Harry can’t stop. Weird genes.

Plus twice he mentions shooting animals (once a deer, the other time birds - can’t remember if it was grouse or pigeons - but both times he makes reference to putting food on the tables of plebs (my word, not his!)in the village or on the estate. I was brought up in a village near Balmoral and still visit there a lot. Fortunately I never witnessed this feudalism in action. We bought our food from the local butcher or co-op. Just like everyone else really. The idea that we sat starving through the winter waiting eagerly to tug our forelocks for a bit of venison from m’lud made me both laugh and seethe in equal measure.

That outfit she wore when she did the whole foods jaunt and walked up and down past the DM until someone FINALLY noticed her… 😂

She was wearing fucking wellies. Beacon of style my arse. It’s like she thought she needed to look “country set”. Oh and the jute bags with the inscriptions “heal the world”, “look at me” and “please notice me”.

It stood out to me at the time because (I’m very old) and always found the whole welly-fashion thing utterly ludicrous and remember September 12th 2008 seeing a desperate fashionista wearing wellies in town. With shorts. It was 32 degrees.

As IF she was well-known in Botswana or Highgrove. Legend in her own mind that one.

The cover looks like something from a history programme where they produce one of those digital e-fits based on an historic skull.

His jealousy of William comes through very strong, and I'm surprised that he's been so open about it. Diana used William as her confidante and called him DDG (drop dead gorgeous) according to her friends. Obviously William very closely resembles Diana too, and I can't help wonder if the jealousy comes from feeling that W was Mummy's favourite, rather than the Heir/Spare situation.

Coucous 'Cold as hell'. Hell is generally thought to be quite hot.

I am not posh, I come from a long line of dockers in South Wales.

We don't hug or kiss eachother ever ....

I've not hugged my mother or grandmother since I was a child 😳

We are all very close, we holiday together spend a lot of time together, but hug? Nope.

I haven't read the whole book, but have listened to some extracts.
The bit about the Elizabeth Arden cream, his mother and his penis, seem a bit Oedipus complex, and I was surprised it was left in.
We have a free press in the country, which is appears he wants to supress. He fails to distinguish between facts and commentary. Also the media now, comsists of Netflix, which has a far wider range that the Daily Mail, etc.
Personally, I DO think there is a failure of upbringing, but not what he seems to think.
If we are to continue with a Monarchy, then I think ALL members (heir plus spares) should have some kind of career, in case they decide to 'opt out', as such.
eg Duke of Windsor opted out as well as P. Harry, except P. Harry is still 5th in line to the throne.
The problem is that Harry did not make any effort at school. He says somewhere when he met children in Lesotho, he regretted that. However, he obviously felt he had no need to make any effort at school. His future was 'determined' for him. At least William worked for a while as a 'Search and Rescue' pilot.
The result is that Harry has no real skills in which to earn his living, so earns his living by RF bashing.

Ah haha! Brilliant @Patineur -I knew I'd seen that image before!

Not reading the book because too many reasons but interested in this thread as an alternative to me reading it 😃

Stunned about the birthing drugs. What a bastard. That's some kind of entitled.

Also providing meat for the people of Balmoral. That's too funny... In a stupid and entitled kind of way.

I think whoever said this is evidence for Meghan in a divorce case makes a good point.

The odd thing about spare is I just wondered what on earth his ghostwriter was thinking.

It sounds like Harry thought he was having a "laugh with his mate" pub conversation where everything's a bit exaggerated for effect.

Did his ghostwriter encourage the word vomit, or was he trying to get him back on track with Harry saying "just hold on, you'll love this story?"

I would have thought that the ghostwriter would have known how Harry was going to come across and have tried to find different tracks that would have made Harry round more sensible.

My read of this was that he was accusing her of leaking the "tiara-gate" story (without actually coming out and saying it).

Harry looks nothing like his mother. At all, but working it for money makes more sense. He does look like that man some people m claim to be his father.

There was another time him and Willy shot a shit ton of pheasants in Spain and apparently that'll supply the surrounding villages with meat for months to come 🤣

Read the first two pages and got the part where he is meeting Charles and William and starts to describe Williams alarming baldness and any resemblance to his mother being long gone.

That was enough for me.

childish, bitter, jealous, zero empathy and just nasty.

I think he's very confused about what the royal family should be. I suspect in his heart he just thinks they should be gotten rid of, but equally they're his family and this situation of inherited power is all tangled up with a load of other stuff for him. In time I suspect he will come to argue for the monarchy being abolished.

It's all playing favourites, though. That's the heart of the primogeniture system. Guaranteed to screw people up. I've seen it happen with a family business that went to 'the boy'.

All these incidents - put them in a ordinary family context in AIBU, and people would rip both parents to shreds so small they'd go through a sieve.

Young Philip was very handsome.

Harry is not at all good looking and never has been.

he definitely doesn’t have Diana’s eyes. His are small and too close together.

My brother (rx forces) worked with Harry for a period of time. He described him as a grafter, one of the lads and with no airs and graces. My brother really liked him.

I've not read this book yet but am pondering on the role of the "spare" . It sounds like an awkward and unsettling place to be.

You are still at risk with your family but are not seen as important. It's no wonder we see the younger sibling struggle. Thinking here of Princess Margaret and her alcohol issues. Yes a privileged life but an odd spot to be .

I'd be interested to hear what my brother thinks of this book Harry has written. I suspect he will just shrug and say "up to him" without committing his thoughts and way or another.

I won’t be reading the book but his use of the word mummy seems very cringe. Unless he’s only using it when speaking as a child it’s very unattractive for a grown man to use the term.

It’s both very posh and very cringe, I agree. Like him, and his book.

He knows his link to his mother is where the money comes from, so he's linked everything and anything in his book to her, including his frozen todger.

My family are not huggers either. We’re pretty close but hugs just don’t figure in our dynamic. When hugging hello or goodbye to friends I found it quite uncomfortable and even now I still find I fake it for appearances. I did hug my children a lot though and they are still the only ones I feel natural hugging. I never hug my sister or brother it would be cringey to us.

The juxtaposition of ‘mummy told me so’ and ‘a hatred of all things posh’ 😂😂

He’s a posh bell end who comes across thick as mince and without a single shred of self-awareness. Can he really not understand that his entitled whining and oversharing is having the diametrically opposite effect to what he was intending?

Honestly, they’re all just awful 😂

😂 that is true. There’s no boundary he won’t bulldoze through for the filthy lucre.