When Prince Harry stepped back from life as a working member of the Royal Family and moved across the Atlantic to build a new home with his wife Meghan, he also took back control of the narrative of his life. From the couple's bombshell interview with Oprah in 2021, their record-breaking Netflix series documenting their love story and royal exit, to the Duke's bestselling memoir Spare - Harry has worked to set the record straight, and tell his own story in his own terms.
The Duke of Sussex has been especially candid about what it was really like for him to grow up in the spotlight that is perpetually trained on the Royal Family, and what life in the monarchy was like from his perspective. Harry shed a lot of light on what the private life of the Royal Family contained, including the heartwrenching reason why he was hesitant to hug his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth - even though they shared a close bond.
In his memoir Spare, Harry wrote that his dad, King Charles, was rarely physically affectionate with him, and even when his father told him the tragic news that his mother Diana had died, the extent he was shown by Charles was a pat on the leg. However, Harry explained throughout the memoir that this lack of physical affection was a common theme in the Royal Family and something Charles himself had gone through as a young boy.
The Duke of Sussex described one occasion during which he felt the urge to reach out to his beloved grandmother, the late Queen, and give her a hug, but immediately stopped himself. They had been watching a concert marking the late Queen's golden jubilee in 2002, where rock stars like Brian May and Paul McCartney had performed.
"To see her tapping her foot, and swaying in time, I wanted to hug her, though of course I didn't. Out of the question. I never had done and couldn't imagine a circumstance under which such an act might be sanctioned," Harry wrote, before retelling a story about an occasion when Diana had tried, and the late Queen had "swerved to avoid contact".
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After the release of his memoir, Harry took part in a live-streamed event with author and trauma expert, Dr. Gabor Maté, during which they discussed this aspect of his upbringing, leading Dr. Maté to assess Harry's memoir as emotionally being a "story of deprivation" despite the material privilege the prince grew up within.
"What struck me in that passage, as in so many other passages in the book," said the trauma expert, "is a lack of touching, the lack of a child being held. How at some point you want to hug your grandmother, but you held back because it wasn't done".
Harry explained that with his own children, he has worked to break this generational trend of formality, "As a father with two kids of my own, making sure that I smother them with love and affection, not smother them to the point where they are trying to get away [...] but in the sense that I, as a father, feel that huge responsibility to ensure that I don't pass on any traumas or negative experiences that I've had as a kid."
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