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.

That accounts for his paranoia.

Well, I know someone whose relation took a drug in his young life (I don't know which one) and, although off drugs later, I think there was an adverse effect. I hadn't realised that early dabbling and coming off them might still have repercussions.

He's in the right place for normalisation of weed. Many Americans of a certain age smoke it socially. Just needs to nip to the CBD shop in Cali.

Not a fan of the H&M pony show.
Meghan will move on more, Harry will end up in the shed at the bottom of the garden. Coming out occasionally to shout drunkenly and throw things.

Meghan will have him committed and ensure he stays in some rich mans pen forever. .
She won't divorce him. She will promote herself instead as loving yet lonely loyal wife.
Just a whimsical prediction.

Get the kids and get out Harry. Live at Balmoral. Invite some old army buddies to stay with you. Turn off the WiFi forever.

I'll say this once more - and to be clear I have no personal knowledge of Harry's drug taking other than what he has written of himself and other reports he likes a spliff. But I do know from very bitter personal experience cannabis can be pernicious and cause problems . I have tried to deal with a family member who became paranoid and delusional ( by which I mean literally - he asked me to phone the Vatican because the Pope would back him up ) So I don't like saying this but I do personally feel Harry may have indulged a bit much - but I would say addiction therapy where he lives must be so available to him ( and private, Ie he could do it without people knowing) . Even if it is residential and costs more. I think Meghan asked to go to a residential place in the US when she was still a member of the RF .

So my point is. I think Harry could be in need of proper therapy. Or he's just a self important twit who can't see his privilege . Or indeed both.

I am happy for any to report me for speculation ( which I don't like and have held back on - but there I've done it. ) So if it makes it easier to report me - I think Harry hasn't got the brains he was born with ( to quote a phrase of my Granny ) and those he has he's smoked largely away (if Spare to be believed)

I find it sad actually - increasingly - he can't wear his privilege lightly but he seems to have increasingly less to offer. I just wish he had a person who could speak some sense to him , it doesn't appear ( and I admit I do not know ) that he doesn't - Ach well - 🎻😊

ETA Private - re therapy)

The public perception of Harry as primarily a stoner was, it's rumoured, created by the Palace and the media in 2002 as a cover up for his rumoured predilection, which allegedly leant, shall we say, to the more confidence-boosting substances. I referred to it above, and it's a common PR tactic - if you can't deny or cover up the truth, you work with the media to water it down and turn it into something 'less' bad.

So, to take some real life and anonymised examples:

A coke habit and aggressive outbursts becomes weed and marijuana, handily 'cured' by a salutary visit to a drug rehab

A predatory fondness for using and abusing vulnerable young men becomes 'depression'...or you can just devote a whole programme to 'coming out as gay'

A devotion to drug fuelled orgies with much younger men while your husband is away on tour becomes simply unspecified 'cheating rumours'

Consistent rumours of child abuse and necrophilia and your bosses' cyncial commitment to covering them up become 'British eccentricity'

You have to wield a lot of media power to be able to pull this off because you have to negotiate direct with the editor, who may or may not be minded to agree. Sometimes, they play along but then the truth partially emerges anyway, as in my second example. Sometimes the subject dies and it's safe to tell some of the truth as in my fourth example.

Harry's problem is that, outside the Royal Family, he doesn't have the air cover he once had, and he clearly has neither the skills nor the power to properly manage the media (calling them all evil racists and taking them to court hasn't made them feel terribly benevolent to him either).

So, he's on thin ice. And he knows it.

@GiveMeSpanakopita that's very interesting, thank you.
What a difference since Harry has stopped being managed by "the men in grey". What a nasty, petulant, resentful, angry, incoherent man he's turned out to be.

He probably was that man anyway @MayaKovskaya but it was covered up by those same people he despises.

Exactly. Harry can't, and won't see it, because he still has ardent fans, but it's all crumbling now.

Those examples are mind-blowing, Spanakopita.

You say « you work with the média to water it down », but what can you offer the média to make it worth their while to drop such a scintillating story? And how many different outlets might you have to do this with (imaginons that more than one journal got wind of the same story)? Sounds full-on!

If so was M also ‘foxed’ ? Possibly he love bombed but hard to love someone that fragile & damaged from outset. Corey V & Trevor E seem alpha men, strong & stable.

Get divorced and move back to your family. I thought it would have happened long before now. If not then get on with your life as it is now and stop whining.

This is such an interesting take, thank you.
I watch the “Harry and Meghan show “ and am aghast how it is playing out. I kinda feel sorry for them ( I know they have brought in on themselves etc) but it really is unreal how they lurch from one crisis to another, just flip flopping around with no game plan really.
I believe that Harry is very unwell now, hope he gets the help he needs.
i have had a family member with substance issues, it really sucks and has a ripple effect on the whole family.
From my perspective it looks like Meghan is trying to keep the show on the road.
Maybe public sympathy will change, I don’t know, but it would need a hell of a PR exercise and they would both really need to listen and maybe eat a little humble pie.
I actually wish them well and hope things turn a corner for them. The dream certainly hasn’t turned out as they both wished it had, but they’ve got two children, so they need to make some peace with themselves and others at least.

Harry earns a reputed $1m per year as CHIMPO of a mental health charity. He's in a better position than just about anyone to get the help he needs. The problem is, his form of chosen therapy is not to put his demons to rest and learn/move on with his life, but to just keep ripping the scab off and crying about his victimhood. And the more people no longer buy his victim narrative, the greater his sense of injustice. He's not a great advert for what he's selling.

He should leave Montecito, move to a ranch and work in /try to find some niche in Polo - it’s prob the only thing he knows anything about. As an aside I had a cousin who fried their brain with use of weed in their teens - they had been super bright and capable, it’s a very sad waste (their life is pretty bleak now). I hate that people think both it & coke should be normalised.

But M tells us she’s in a ‘honeymoon’ phase & never happier in her whole life & adored?

Smoke and Mirrors I guess, we will never know.

It's a negotiation. Say you're a PR person and your client has been discovered by the Sun to be a coke addict who's into dogging and seducing young vulnerable women whilst his spouse sits patiently at home with their children, whom your client regularly parades on the cover of Hello magazine as a lucrative example of a 'happy family'.

You take yourself over to London Bridge Street and have a heart to heart with the editor. Maybe you can do a deal. The Sun will sit on the material they've got, and in return, you will offer your client to give an exclusive picture interview in which he opens up about "My Drugs and Depression Hell", complete with an insistence that he is now recovered, and pics of him and his spouse looking chastened and humble but also positive and very, very much in love (and styled to within an inch of their lives of course). Doesn't matter if he's still snorting lines and she's seeing a divorce lawyer, the story has been successfully managed. And, because you know that the Sun still has the evidence of the worse story locked away in their infamous basement vault, you're going to be extra nice to them and give them further exclusives, both on this and other clients too. You'll do that for as long as it takes for the debt to be repaid.

Whenever you see a tabloid splash in your local newsagent on a Sunday with a celeb bravely confessing to 'my drink / drugs / sex addict hell', you can be assured something like what I described above has played out.

The alternative is to go nuclear and tell the editor that your client is suicidal and will most probably do something stupid if the piece comes out. This is very rarely true but since Caroline Flack (actually, probably since Diana) this cynical suicide-baiting does sometimes tug the editorial heartstrings.

If your client's sins and abuses have been (allegedly!) many and long, there is a third (expensive) option open to the client. They can do a Hugh Grant / Steve Coogan / Tom Watson and try to bring the whole structure down, framing it as a brave campaign for justice rather than the actuality, which is that you're shit scared about all the ugly stuff the tabs have got on you. I think Harry's brave campaign against the tabs might have flavours of this.

Get the kids and get out Harry. Live at Balmoral. Invite some old army buddies to stay with you. Turn off the WiFi forever.

I have been thinking along these lines for a long time. Head back to the UK, hole up somewhere like Balmoral, get out in the countryside, spend time with old friends and dogs, mend some bridges (perhaps literally, not just metaphorically, as lots of outdoor, physical work would be good), go to bed tired (instead of wired). But the man seems to love his wife, so there you have it. The current situation will continue indefinitely. <Shrugs> I just hope he sorts himself out. He doesn't seem content with his lot.

Oh yeah, sorry, and with your other question, I'm talking about scenarios in which one media outlet has managed to get a mind blowing exclusive scoop and are jealously guarding it from other media rivals. If the 'thing' in question is widely known to all media then you're buggered and it's time to go into damage limitation mode. Checking your client into The Priory is a fairly common initial course of action.

Go back to The US, enjoy your lovely life there and forget you were ever a Royal.
Look around you and see how lucky you are and drop all the bitterness, keeep out of The Public Eye, apologise to your family and stop talking about them and hope that one day you can have a relationship with them again

Post-interview, Harry has decided he needs to shore up Meghan's 'we're on our second honeymoon' narrative. I'm guessing she's not happy that he's looked so miserable lately. Oh, and check out the hat!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14698177/Meghan-Markle-dances-night-away.html

And what have those of us in NE Scotland done to deserve that whinger in our area ??

I don't think Harry went to Balmoral much even before he left the UK.

I think you are spot on here, Harry has gone for the last option of brave cavalier. The media machine is huge and without the royal family “firm” machinery behind him, the odds aren’t great.
He played his hand and lost.
Not great for his reputation (or wallet)
Hunker down in Cali, lick his wounds and seek help.