Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(46)
Harry flew to Lesotho and was photographed with an orphan named Mutsu Potsane, Harry speaking of his deep shock about the impact of AIDS on the country. The trip was followed up by royal aides helpfully releasing a letter he wrote to patients in a hospital unit dealing with the victims of rape and abuse. It was a classic public relations exercise, using Harry’s evident personal qualities—an easygoing manner, fundamental decency, and sense of fun—together with his mother’s humanitarian legacy to project a different narrative about a young man best known for his nightclubbing.
For many years this was the go-to template for the prince, any nighttime indiscretions more than compensated for by his charity work and his life as a professional soldier, serving for a time in Afghanistan before training to fly Apache helicopters. In Prince Harry’s world there has always been someone to do the sweeping up. When he dressed up in a Nazi uniform for a Colonials and Natives fancy dress party shortly before Holocaust Memorial Day in 2005, his minders accepted that it was a “poor choice of costume” but that there was no malice in his decision. Similarly, when he was caught on video referring to a fellow officer cadet at Sandhurst as “our dear little Paki friend” and another as looking like a “raghead,” a pejorative term for an Arab, once again his PR minder Paddy Harverson came to the rescue.
If Meghan had been in his life at that time, she would not have been impressed by his casual racism. Nor were others. “He was a very lost young man,” a former royal official told me. “Harry was deeply troubled, unhappy, and immature, imbued with the slanted, quietly racist views of those from his class and background.”
Perhaps the low point in Harry’s party lifestyle came in 2012, when he was pictured cavorting naked in a Las Vegas hotel room during a game of strip billiards with a bunch of strangers, some of whom had camera phones and uploaded his antics for the startled world to watch. “Too much army not enough prince,” was his rueful response.
In spite of the uproar, by and large the prince retained the affection of the public, who instinctively sympathized with the emotional difficulties he and his brother had gone through with their parents’ bitter divorce and their mother’s untimely death. The difference was that William’s more grounded temperament and later on having the support of a sensible and stable wife helped to see him through the dark nights of the soul. The younger brother found a curious respite from his demons and a sense of purpose during his time in the Army. He is not the first nor will he be the last person who has been given direction and discipline by the military.
One episode in particular has had a profound impact on the course of his life. At the end of his first tour of duty in 2008, on a flight home from Afghanistan, he traveled with the coffin of a dead Danish soldier, which had been loaded on board by his friends, and with three British troops all in induced comas who were being transported with their missing limbs, wrapped in plastic.
“The way I viewed service and sacrifice changed forever,” he recalled. “I knew it was my responsibility to use the great platform that I have to help the world understand and be inspired by the spirit of those who wear the uniform.” That flight set him on the trajectory that would culminate in the Invictus Games. His mother would have been proud.
The prince’s idea was to combine his royal connections, his lifelong interest in the Armed Forces, and his passion for humanitarian causes into one focused event. The Invictus Games are an international multisport jamboree in which sick, wounded, or injured servicemen and women compete in a variety of sports, such as indoor rowing and wheelchair basketball. In September 2014, after a year of planning and meetings, the first games, which involved three hundred army personnel from around the world, were held in London. The games were a triumph, giving the prince, who was due to leave the army in 2015, new focus and impetus. He was fully committed to using his unique position to help and encourage those who were at the sharp end of modern warfare, veterans who had been damaged and injured but who were prepared to fight on, albeit on a basketball or tennis court. The Invictus Games were the making of Harry. “Since then he has become the man he is today,” observes a former royal courtier. “It has not been an easy process. He has become more open and developed into someone who genuinely cares about social issues.”
The experience opened up something in Harry, and increasingly, he became happy to talk about his personal hopes and dreams, too. His conversations, public and private, were peppered with talk of the princely problem of finding a partner, of settling down and raising a family. It was clear that he had reached a crossroads in his life and that his days of sowing wild oats were coming to an end. As the rest of his friends were settling down and starting families, it seemed that Prince Harry was in danger of becoming the last man standing. He had seen his brother enjoying the simple joys of family life and wanted that experience for himself.
At a birthday party in February 2016, he told TV presenter Denise Van Outen: “I’m not dating and for the first time ever I want to find a wife.” It became a familiar refrain. Three months later when he was in Orlando, Florida, for the Invictus Games, he again brought up the subject of love and marriage. “At the moment my focus is very much on work, but if someone slips into my life then that’s absolutely fantastic. I am not putting work before the idea of family and marriage. I just haven’t had that many opportunities to get out there and meet people.”