Best advice for Harry going forward?

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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.

Some very interesting posts.

Any chance of a link to the video, @CoffeeCantata?

I can tell you where to find it on reddit if you like. Not sure we are supposed to link to stuff off there.

It absolutely reeks of jealousy. How pathetic.

I think this is the clip @CoffeeCantata is talking about. Unfortunately I can only find the whole clip within this fellow's commentary (which I am not endorsing). Note that H&M are ultimately led away by QEII's equerry - the same gentleman who gets slated by Omid Scobie in Endgame.

I don't think it's a question of morals, as far as I can discern, the aristocracy have never been particularly bothered by sexual activity in or out of marriage. It's just about reputation management. You know, like if you get selected to stand as an MP and you get all those long forms from your party chair's office where you have to declare, essentially, what kompromat might exist on you, anything in your past that might emerge and embarrass the party.

And if you then reach the heady heights of Cabinet minister, you have to go through the whole process again with MI5, only this time it's a lot more thorough and unpleasant. And that's not because MI5 give two hoots about whether you're in a loveless marriage with a wife who can't stand you, or you're secretly gay and go cruising and have a wife-beard (to give two pertinent but anonymised examples). They just want to know, because they're worried about you getting kidnapped and bribed. And your boss the PM needs to know so that any embarrassing skeletons you have can be appropriately covered up and managed with the media, either through flattery or legal threats. Because the grey men of MI5 are just like the rest of us: they don't want to be surprised by nasty tabloid headlines over their breakfast weetabix.

So I don't think the RF had any moral qualms about Meghan. They were very happy to varnish and burnish her - remember in the early days, how the press portrayed her as a gifted actress and skilled humanitarian? It was only when she started making false allegations of racism and implying that the RF were mistreating her that the RF got properly worried. And let them both go / pushed them out. Because in a closed circle, it's marginally better to have someone standing outside your tent and pissing in, than still in the tent and trying to set it on fire.

Study for an online degree. Enjoy quiet hobbies like reading, painting etc.

One of Harry's problems is that he doesn't have the intellect to do any of those things. He seems to have no inner life and no personal interests beyond playing polo. He has nothing to take his mind off his grievances.

He could learn a trade and go and help rebuild some of the areas destroyed in the wildfires. A proper 9-5 job where he's treated like everyone else and the press never hear of it.

If Catherine had gone on that shopping trip with M, what's the betting they'd have been papped by some photographer who just happened to be on the spot?

Agree, but surely he has enough intellect to paint or read? If not we are really into Windsor spoof territory.

He could help with mansion kitchen refurb if money tight too.

In times past H would be running family estate farm or sent to tropics.

Neither of them seem to have any inner life or personal interests. Making money and being seen seem to be their shared agenda. What a deadening existence.

H couldn’t run a trolley down a supermarket aisle on his own. Certainly couldn’t run an estate.

And to think he wanted William and him to share the Duchy ! Or maybe just the proceeds .

A few centuries even further back and he'd be a shoo-in for Deputy Chief Abbot of some ginormous wealthy monastery. Sure that's what they used to do with useless/dim second sons. A lack of religious faith/intellectual ability didn't matter in the High Middle Ages...some of them could barely read.

He'd have had plenty of time to rub as much lotion on his todger as he liked. Alas that he was born to our unforgiving modern era!

Sorry, Puzzled - I've been out this afternoon. I think other pps have kindly linked it (haven't checked yet but if not, I'll try).

Quite. Didn't he complain when they asked him to go on a tour because he was "tired"?

Is that true? You’d would have thought he’d have sussed out who gets what in the family by the time he was married.

Well, he doesn't have appeared to have sussed much at all, really.

He strikes me as someone who has gone through life just not thinking very deeply about anything. The definition of a shallow person.

His art teacher got in trouble for finishing his art project at Eton. His history teacher at Eton tried in vain, to get him to read some history.

His court cases have left him "exhausted", bless.

@GiveMeSpanakopita What a great post at 15.35.

I recently read a biography of Guy Burgess ( by Andrew Lownie author of up coming book about the Yorks) Apparently he got away with a great deal because he was so openly rackety , gay - in those days a case for concern , very heavy drinker if not alcoholic , but never hid any of it. So it was unlikely he could be blackmailed and his lifestyle was clear to most who gave him jobs.

Anyway sorry a derail there & not exactly to your point. It does sound like vetting in those days though was maybe a bit less rigorous ( & I speak of MI5 here )

He would have had his head chopped off long ago 😂

I mean LOADS of people in high politics are function/semi-functional alcoholics, it comes with the territory, you're operating at high levels of adrenalin and it can be very difficult to 'calm down' when you get home. And you have to sleep, because you've got to get up the next day and do it all again. Whisky to the rescue!

Sometimes it can be a boon - I reckon that the only reason Churchill refused to take the (actually much more sensible, because we would have been allowed to keep our empire) option of agreeing peace with Germany in May 1940 was because he allegedly spent that entire month half-cut due to the stress of it all.

One of my very first jobs as a baby PR gal was accompanying a news crew to Downing Street for an interview with Maggie T, then nearing the end of her reign. We waited for ages; eventually she tottered down the stairs, listing notably to starboard. She STANK of gin. It was 11am.

Seriously tho everyone has a hinterland, right? Especially when you get to your mid 30s. Meghan had one; the Palace managed it. She owes a lot to the Palace for the reputation they built for her as a humanitarian - she never had that before (The Tig was more interested in wine than women's rights). And it's that reputation that enabled her to get some of the gigs she got after Megxit. Her ingratitude is staggering in its obtuseness. She not only looked the gift horse in the mouth, she punched it in the lip and tried to knock out its teeth.

Didn't she just. She wouldn't be famous or rich if it wasn't for her opportunities presented by her marriage into the RF.

@GiveMeSpanakopita "Seriously tho everyone has a hinterland, right? Especially when you get to your mid 30s. Meghan had one; the Palace managed it. She owes a lot to the Palace for the reputation they built for her as a humanitarian - she never had that before (The Tig was more interested in wine than women's rights). And it's that reputation that enabled her to get some of the gigs she got after Megxit. Her ingratitude is staggering in its obtuseness. She not only looked the gift horse in the mouth, she punched it in the lip and tried to knock out its teeth."

😂 and 👏

Yes, I would say both she and H are ingrates . & it lasted them a while complaining about their lot. But they needed something to back them up & thus far all I can see is the titles. I agree M is working hard to make something stick but even she must see BH ( before Harry ) she wouldn't have got near some of the opportunities she has been given. & I don't think she has the talent to make the most of them I think she had the world beyond her dreams thrown at her and didn't know quite how to cope. Harry doesn't seem to be able to get over the Diana's son , son of the King , I am born Harry thing. And ignores the choice he has made as a grown man.

I do just wonder in time there will be the appetite for at least taking away HRH. Which frankly I don't think most people care about but it might make a point. On the other hand - it could look petty. At the moment I think the give them enough rope strategy is working.

I don't know if Harry ( who has admitted his own drug use ) is still smoking marijuana , If he has though , as a step 1. I would encourage him in the strongest way to stop. It might be legal , it might be recreational but a close member of my family can attest to the affects. & it took proper psychiatric care and therapy to come out of the other side. But I don't know if he is , so anyone who think this veers into armchair diagnosis , please report.