Best advice for Harry going forward?

[SandyThumb]

I have all the same initial reactions as many others on MN regarding Harry i.e. whiner, grifter, stupid, entitled etc and it's easy to dole out the criticism.

However while I wouldn't say I have sympathy for him, as so much of his situation is of his own making, I actually do have some underlying feelings of concern for him and his future (and children).

He reminds me an awful lot of a relative of mine who is neurodiverse with a mild learning disability and a tendency to be self-absorbed with an overdeveloped victim complex - always lashing out, blaming others, seeing conspiracy where there is none etc.

Harry is clearly a damaged man, with childhood trauma and issues which continue to plague his mental health.
As with my relative, he has grown up with a support network which has probably quietly managed and enabled his passage through life, but when big outbursts happen (as have happened in our family too) everyone backs off and 'grey rocks' him until he has calmed down. Some people just give up, too exhausted by the constant drama of it all.

Spot on, and it's very obvious from the second Oprah interview, the NF docu, and this latest BBC debacle.

Harry's lexicon, phraseology and concepts are all markedly Californian. I don't think he's smart enough to have picked this all up himself. It's almost like when someone you love joins a cult and one minute they're normal, with their normal personality and hinterland, and the next, they've washed all of their past away, declared it a time of sin and misery, and are spouting new, weird ideas which sound nothing like the real them.

I hear you, Coffee, and am sure you’re right… but at the same time didn’t M want to be BFF with K? I remember particularly that moment when the Fab Four came on stage and M was trying to hold hands with K (K managed to wriggle her arm out of M’s grasp).

Not everything computes, it seems.

Good advice, @GiveMeSpanakopita .
Unfortunately, Harry is determined to continue as a senior royal, and won't let his status go. I think therefore lying low is something he could never do. He seeks publicity and seeks outlets for his royal status.

I thought that when he started to talk about racism and unconscious bias. I thought - that's peculiar, coming from him.

I mean, fwiw, I think his obsession with recovering IPP status might also have to do with the fact that, as I understand it (not a lawyer, might be wrong), it offers a level of diplomatic immunity. I have no doubt that Harry during his wild and misspent youth might have done things that he's now worried could come back to haunt him. I think most of it is about perceived status, as you say. But I think the protections Harry is after extend beyond mere physical security in the UK.

And yes, re his woke progressive shibboleths. He parrots them but obviously doesn't understand what those concepts mean and imply (ultimately most woke concepts are communist identitarian at root and don't even get me started on the obvious contradiction between communism and identity politics; in communism individualism is subsumed, but anyway), because when pushed, he tends to walk the concepts back as though he's shocked by what they really mean. "Unconscious bias", sure, but no, my family's not racist and I clearly don't want to dismantle the RF because I still want to be a part of it!

He's repeating phrases by rote without understanding what they mean, basically. Which makes him a pretty dangerous loose cannon, and definitely not someone you'd want representing the UK on any level whatsoever.

I think he should be seen be to be checking in to a mental health/substance abuse treatment centre, disappear for 3 months, come out relaxed and smiley and do an interview where he profusely apologises to his family for all the hurtful behaviour/interviews/books.

He can blame it on his breakdown/addiction, start again with a clean slate and work towards forgiveness and reconciliation with his family as part of his recovery.

This video is a good overview of the campaign against Catherine:

Meghan would not be on board with that. She doesn’t want reconciliation, doesn’t want to have anything to do with the RF or Britain. So he’d be on his own.

Yeah, you're right. Would only work if they had already separated. Which will never happen. He's buggered.

1. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
2. Holding hands and the like means that Meghan wouldn't have to walk behind Catherine. It makes them "equal". I am sure MM hates all those press photos of her walking behind Catherine.
3. Demanding unreasonable things of Catherine that Meghan claims "friends" would do (shopping, holding hands, sharing lip gloss, hugging) before they even really know each other and can be called close serves a number of uses: crashing into Catherine's personal barriers to wind her up; portraying her as cold and stuck up rather than reserved and cautious; creating a narrative that the RF didn't fall in love with Meghan because they are racist, and these petty things demonstrate it.
4. Copying and demanding closeness to somebody who doesn't want it is stalker behaviour. What Meghan wanted (bff) is rather less important than what Catherine was willing to give. Did MM back off? It doesn't sound like it. She was demanding Catherine sort out her mental health issues if Scobie is to be believed. Why?
5. They must all be very wary of new people around them that they don't know they can trust and won't leak stuff to the press. And in MM's case they were correct to be wary. There was an interview I saw recently with an American journalist for the Daily Star. She said BP was a tight ship until MM came along. Afterwards - leaks galore.

This is from a NY Times piece about Meghan's claim to be ignorant about Harry and the RF in general. She wrote it in her blog, The Tig, just after W & C got married:

“We’re definitely not talking about Cinderella here,” Markle wrote of the royal wedding.
“Little girls dream of being princesses. I, for one, was all about She-Ra, Princess of Power,” she said, in reference to the fictional superhero in the Masters of the Universe franchise. “She-Ra is the twin sister of He-Man and a sword-wielding royal rebel known for her strength.”
Markle’s manifesto continued: “Grown women seem to retain this childhood fantasy. Just look at the pomp and circumstance surrounding the royal wedding and endless conversation about Princess Kate.”

All very ironic when you consider that Meghan was very much into the whole 'princess dream' - when it came to her own wedding, and on behalf of her children.

Oh dear - I meant to quote and respond to TheHerboriste's question with that last post but only my bit appeared!

It was in response to a request about Meghan's comments on the 2012 royal wedding...

Ooh - I think that was a power play!! I'm sorry to be such an old cynic, but that was all about 'look what a meanie Kate is - she won't hold my hands, and I'm such a warm, affectionate hugger!' I've seen this trick played by manipulative people a few times. They're trying to put their 'victim' in the wrong.

PPs have reminded me about the horrible slur that W only married Catherine because she was compliant - not because he really loved her. I'd forgotten that. What a horrible, horrible thing to say. And I'd put a lot of money on that originating with Meghan. Men like Harry just don't think in that way - they don't analyse relationships at all. He's not very bright but he's very suggestible.

Defnitely. It's pretty much all he's got left now. Even if he's still besotted with Meghan, I don't think she is with him. It's part of H's character - totally un-analytic and unable to reflect, that he genuinely could not imagine life outside the RF. He didn't take on board the implications of leaving - he sees himself as a royal prince and is gradually having to grasp the fact that that designation is now pretty meaningless. He's going to cling on with his fingertips, though.

There's still just the tiniest bit of royal kudos attached to him in his involvement with Invictus,possibly, but OMG he's skating on thin ice with all the charity scandals and other bad publicity. He's almost used up all that royal 'capital' now.

Another insightful comment. Forcing physical closeness on someone before they really know you is absolutely a show of dominance, even if it's done in the name of 'affection'. In fact, even more so. It's observed in primates and absolutely happens in humans too.

There's a certain type of 'PR lady' who does this, I've known a few. Fluttering all over you, swooping in for two kisses and overwhelming you with their liberally applied perfume. Insincere compliments on your outfit, delivered in a high fluty voice with ridiculously elongated vowel sounds. They are invariably absolute sharks who will turn around and cut you down over the faintest imagined slight.

I clocked this exact aura in Meghan in the first engagement interview.

Oh and also there's plenty of good research out there on the heightened susceptibility to manipulation of those with below average IQs or substandard education (of whom Harry is surely one).

I'm not sure I entirely believe it, I'm more with Orwell's observation that "Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals will believe them."

But who am I to argue with empirical psychoanalytical research? I will say that cult leaders, gurus and charlatans of all stripes always seem to know exactly who will fall for their charms and their crackpot theories.

1. Holding hands and the like means that Meghan wouldn't have to walk behind Catherine. It makes them "equal". I am sure MM hates all those press photos of her walking behind Catherine.

I agree, Randy. She tried this on at Wimbledon - presumably so she wouldn't have to walk behind Catherine. Catherine refused - I guess she knew that it was her job to walk in first and stuck to protocol.

I think it was a conscious or subconscious attempt to wear down these protocols which show the hierarchy. All part of the huggy, Californian vibe, but also with the aim of blurring these differentiations. And all of a piece with the 'we are collaborating with the Queen' line, too. Meghan saw herself as at least equal in status to Catherine and even the Queen. If she could have been top-dog, though - then I'm sure her dislike of formality and hierarchy would have disappeared pretty quickly.

And H😂arry certainly shows signs of being in a cult sometimes!

OK, now that you have brought up the C word, does anyone get cultish vibes from all the goings on around H&M? I'm talking about that Godmothers book shop lot all dressed in white, spouting all their self help drivel and talking about things being god's will or a divine intervention and the like; I'm talking about Jamie KL and her evangelical aura, who also interviewed Oprah who talked about her presence there being god's will; even the latest podcast guest, the coffee company woman seems to have a bit of that going on. And it all seems to revolve around Oprah, whose name keeps coming up again and again - Meghan has mentioned her in every podcast as her mentor, Jamie's mentor, there's an Oprah connection with the coffee company. Oprah has always been quite credulous of some oddballs who have claimed god is giving them powers, like disgraced faith healer, John Of God, to whom she gave her massive platform. And then Harry's CHIMPO for an organisation that has vibes similar to the types of org that have been discredited as MLM based cults, like NXIVM.

If she could have been top-dog, though - then I'm sure her dislike of formality and hierarchy would have disappeared pretty quickly.

Oh we can already see this in play! Clearly the only way she can claim superiority over her more successful "friends" like Jamie Kern Lima is to shove an HRH down their throats. She's not interested in being equals with anyone.

Sounds to me like jealousy.

Brilliantly observed. The kind of women whose alpha status means they want less attractive - as they see it - gushers to fawn socially on sidelines. Vibes in recent Jamie K Lima podcast.

The superior star & then other, lesser, females can only bask in glory. All very ‘fat friend’ & Regina George.

That said ‘ class’ is endlessly fascinating & many in William’s set terrible snobs. Kate had to endure this, ‘doors to manual’. I felt Kate was aware M socially inferior, working class, as she saw it, a bit possibly this vibe at wedding & there was a certain air of superiority. A relief she might now not be only one in cross hairs in this regard?

Also I think the Queen thought M unsuitable for role & Harry too hasty. When asked Queen if he had her permission to marry M she replied rather coldly, to paraphrase ‘I suppose I must’. That hurt him.

Many of us clocked the same thing, GiveMeSpanakopita, and that was without your deep PR knowledge

I suppose a certain amount of it's instinctive and that sometimes the fakery's so obvious it's hard to miss, with what's happened since simply confirming the original impression

That said ‘ class’ is endlessly fascinating & many in William’s set terrible snobs. Kate had to endure this, ‘doors to manual’. I felt Kate was aware M socially inferior, working class, as she saw it, a bit possibly this vibe at wedding & there was a certain air of superiority. A relief she might now not be only one in cross hairs in this regard?

Whilst I don't disagree with the snobbery of the huntin shootin and fishin set, I disagree that classism was at the root of Kate's coolness towards Meghan. Kate's well travelled and culturally aware enough to know that the British class strata simply do not map onto Americans (nor do their social strata map onto ours, which is why critical race theory simply doesn't apply to UK culture and history and anyone who pretends it does is a grifter after your coin).

I think there was snobbery because she was an actress, but I also think Kate simply had her number as a bit of a charlatan. We also have to bear in mind that William via the 'men in grey' will be aware of things in Meghan's past which may have made him suspicious; it was apparently after he received their report (which is done on all outsiders entering the RF of course) that he had the ill-fated conversation with Harry in which he implored him to 'slow down' because 'how much do you really know about this girl'.

A conversation which, to hear Harry tell it, ended with him lying on the broken shards of a dog bowl, with his little necklace of beads cruelly snapped and scattered. Quelle horreur!

I'm aware of the He-Man/She-Ra universe because of a much younger sibling who adored it. I can't really imagine She-Ra having hissy fits about tiaras, hurt feelings about lip gloss and getting into arguments about tights for little bridesmaids, let alone having much use for flower sprinkles.

There's a real disconnect between how she (and Harry) want to be perceived and what they actually do and that gulf is getting deeper all the time.