DAN WOOTTON: Prince Harry’s description of me as a ‘sad little man’ is perfect for him

Prince Harry has just scored the biggest own goal in publishing history.

Spare sheds light on a life of ultimate privilege and opportunity most human beings could only dream of, marred by constant paranoia, bitter resentments, and outright malice toward those who go out of their way to try to save them. save this male child from himself over and over again.

I needed to take a bath after reading what is without a doubt the most pathetic, self-serving, tone-deaf autobiography ever due to the amount of virulent and deeply personal jabs he takes at his own flesh and blood.

Nobody is safe.

Not even the late queen, who Prince Harry paints as cold, aloof and old-fashioned, rather than a monarch desperately trying to hold her wayward family together for the good of the institution.

What’s so disturbing is that even as he describes his version of events in such an obviously one-sided way, it was still clear to me that Harry is wrong about almost every minor grievance he weighs in on.

While his father King Charles and brother Prince William are unsurprisingly given their roles far from perfect, Harry’s stubborn intransigence leaves them stretched thin, especially once he’s so far gone. heavily influenced by a cabal of awakened psychotherapists and Hollywood Yes Men who work in cahoots with his controlling wife Meghan Markle.

Harry has spent the last two years claiming that all he wanted was the support of the Royal Family.

But Spare makes it clear that when they tried to offer help and solutions, it was never good enough for the Sussexes, who want their way all the time.

For example, they rejected the late Queen’s very sensible suggestion that Meghan should fly to Mexico to meet her father Thomas Markle in person and salvage their relationship. What a mistake it was to ignore that sage advice.

The new king can’t seem to do anything right, even drawing raucous criticism for laughing out loud during Shakespeare’s obligatory performance of Harry at Eton, which he believes was an example of his father trying to embarrass him in the same way as the Prince. Felipe once made out with a young man. Charles.

But what shines bright is that in the lowest moments of Harry’s life, his father always meets his wayward son, offering tender sympathy and support, for example, both for his embarrassment at dressing up as a Nazi and for his photo scandal. stripping in Las Vegas.

When Harry is 29, an age when most adults have stopped depending on their parents for funding or constant emotional support, Charles is so worried about his son’s mental health and panic attacks that he sends him to a doctor, though the duke eventually declines the offered treatment.

In any case, I came away thinking that his father needed to be much tougher at this critical time.

William is prepared to speak home truths when called upon, and as a consequence is embarrassingly portrayed as the villain of the play.

Even his older brother’s guffaws in an interview about Harry’s snoring and ‘sloppy’ behavior while living together during military training is taken as a major slight in retrospect, rather than a brotherly joke.

There is a clear lack of compassion for the limitations of being heir to both his father and his brother; not understanding that the pressure of that all-encompassing role could make them at times envious of Harry’s comparable freedom.

Wills and Kate are punished with the most strident invasions of their privacy.

For a man so angered by the publication of a letter Meghan sent to her father, Harry has no problem releasing to the world the private text messages Kate sent to Meghan during her infamous bridesmaid dress row.

Meanwhile, Harry only had to reveal, tabloid-style, that he was the one who ended his serious relationship with Cressida Bonas because he didn’t feel a lifelong connection, when the view has always been that the actress ended things because she didn’t want to. to cope with the pressures of real life.

Such hypocrisy is impressive, but it always goes completely over Harry’s head.

I have to admit I had some sympathy for William physically lunging at his brother, after pointing out Harry’s self-righteousness in complaining about press conferences just weeks after he and Meghan gave a revealing interview to Oprah Winfrey when the late Prince Philip he was on his deathbed.

In fact, Harry’s deranged obsession with the British media is actually a bit worrisome.

He describes a recent incident in which he laughed in his father’s face, who told him: ‘You must understand, dear boy, the institution can’t just tell the media what to do!’

Harry genuinely believes that his father has the power and ability to stop negative stories, which shows a fundamental lack of faith in the concept of a free press.

Unsurprisingly, after revealing a series of damaging scoops about the Sussexes, often accepting reports from Harry and Meghan’s staff, as I revealed in my column here yesterday, I come to take a beating, being described as “a sad little man.” to be revealed for the first time. Megxit’s story.

However, like much of the fiction and fantasy in Spare, Harry errs again by incorrectly stating that he “was probably working in concert with the Palace, whose courtiers were determined to get ahead of us and turn history around.” “.

Harry admits that he went to the late Queen with the information that he was about to tell her the story, so that the Sussexes would release a statement to get me, even though he had already given them more than a week’s notice.

But he adds: ‘We soon realized that it was not possible; we did not have time to publish our statement first. We open a bottle of wine. Come on, sad little man, come on. He did.’

It’s called journalism, mate, something you clearly don’t believe in, given the inaccuracies littered throughout your book.

What Harry also depicts on virtually every page is a life of great luxury: growing up in castles, extravagant jet ski vacations, a clothing allowance for fancy clothes, footmen serving fish fingers on china plates topped with silver domes. , his father’s chef stocking his fridge with fancy meals as an adult, yet somehow still tries to paint himself as some sort of victim at all times.

In these times when a very real cost-of-living crisis is forcing some Britons to consider how they can put food on the table, everything feels chronically out of place.

Meghan’s voice also seems to be everywhere throughout the book.

I can see her making notes with her calligraphy pen on the manuscript, as has been rumored.

For example, when blokey Harry makes a reference to a page 3 girl, he adds in parentheses afterwards: “That was the accepted, misogynistic, objectifying term for the young women who appeared every day on page three of The Sun of Rupert Murdock”. Hardly his language.

Harry expresses an embarrassing naiveté throughout his relationship with Meghan, who we must remember is an actress.

He swallows his new girlfriend’s assertion that she never Googled him or the royal family, using a moment in which he doesn’t recognize Prince Andrew as evidence that he must be telling the truth.

In general, Harry’s demeanor as a man is largely weak and dire. That was summed up for me as he bragged about beating up his loyal bodyguard on another drink and drug filled night.

In fact, your mistakes are always someone else’s.

Harry claims that he is looking for peace in Spare, but what he has really given himself is a lifetime of permanent emotional turmoil and chaos.

The only ‘sad little man’ is the guy who has so publicly thrown his own flesh and blood under the bus.