This week we are discussing Spare by Prince Harry, Part 2.
Content Warning!!!Before reading this book please be aware it contains contains situations and subjects related to: death, death of a parent, and harassment (media).
Spoiler Warning!!! This post is full of spoilers for Spare by Prince Harry.
Discussion:
Jacilyn: Hello friends and welcome to our second discussion of Spare by Prince Harry. I’ll be honest, this section was not a fun read. Part of that is because I have no interest in war. The other part is because I felt like a lot of this section was drawn out unnecessarily. While the little details are sometimes interesting, there’s a lot of bits that were similar enough to others that they didn’t really feel like they were moving the narrative along at all. They didn’t provide any further insight into Harry.
Part of my dislike of the war recountings is due to the heavy discomfort I feel in regards to the otherizing of the Taliban. I appreciate that Harry briefly recognizes the issue with that strategy, and understand why that’s the way soldiers are trained…. But the war on terror is incredibly complicated, and simply isn’t as cut and dry as good guys versus bad guys. I also felt like Harry’s motivations for going to war are heavily influenced by his trauma. He didn’t need war, he needed a therapist. Frankly, he has probably needed a therapist since even before Diana died. Once he came back from war, he needed it even more.
I’m also shocked that they even let him serve in active combat zones. Not only for his own safety, but for those around him as well. It’s unfair to him, I know, but there’s really not much that could be done. Even when he was there secretly, he eventually got outed.
Michaela: I really struggled with this section. While I thought the first section was really interesting and I found myself constantly wanting to keep reading, this second section I felt like I was forcing myself to read it. And it truly was just way too long, there was so much that felt like repetitive points. A lot of the comparisons and experiences he wrote about his service was a lot the same to me as a reader. For his lived experience they would have been incredibly poignant and individual, but it wasn’t written in that way which brought the sections down.
The parts of his service that I found really scary and concerning was that his locale was outed on more than one occasion by the media trying to get pictures of him. That is absolutely insane. I was not surprised they let him serve in active combat, with what I know of the British Royal Family history it’s normal for a member of the family to serve. It’s one of those ‘if the people don’t think I’m willing to fight for my own country then why should we expect them to do the same’ things. We have a similar thing in the U.S. in that celebrities were still drafted or volunteered service despite their fame status which could bring risk to them and those who serve near them, such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Norris, or quite recently in South Korea members of incredibly internationally popular K-Pop groups serve as part of their citizenship. I think war is one of those things where if you want to serve then you usually get to serve in some way no matter how famous you are.
I think most of the intriguing points made in the sections were before and after his service. In this part we get a lot of Harry commenting on things in his past that show us he is pretty self aware of his past mistakes and of the mistakes of the establishment. In his reflection of the Hitler costume he said “...failure of education. Not just school education, but self-education.”. Later he talks about understanding that otherizing the Taliban isn’t right but at the time he and other soldiers had to do so to make it through. Then reflecting on his mother’s funeral and having to walk behind her coffin he says “...we’d trailed Mummy’s coffin. Why did the adults do that to us?”
We also get a lot of Harry’s commentary on the inner workings of not only his relationships with his family members but simply how the family works in ways that he does not understand. He talks about how he moved closer to William and Kate and spent a lot of time waiting for them to invite him over but they never did. Harry wanted to do charity work based on his relationship with Africa but William fought him on it because, as Harry saw it, William still felt he needed to rival Harry because they were still the Heir and the Spare to the family. Right at the end of the section Harry talks about how Charles and Camilla hated sharing the limelight with William and Kate “Pa and Camilla didn’t like Willy and Kate drawing attention away from them or their causes”. All of which I find unsurprising but fascinating, this family is so broken by their proximity to the duty of the establishment. I don’t think someone like Harry, who needed and wanted love, affection, closeness, and fun, could have ever survived. Which I think we’ll see a lot more of that side of things in part 3.
Jacilyn: I would love to hear the perspective of William when it comes to the Africa charity stuff, honestly. Something that fascinates me is that even in the positions they are in, in an incredibly unconventional family setting, that typical sibling rivalry still exists. Sometimes it seems fairly innocent, and in other ways it’s exacerbated significantly by their positions. The entire dynamic of the family both fascinates me and breaks my heart. Nobody gets to choose who they’re born to, and I can’t imagine growing up with the kind of pressure on their shoulders that these kids do. I hope that, as the generations continue, that the kids get raised with more and more compassion and empathy, and less decorum and rigidity. It’s the least they deserve.
I can’t imagine trying to date in their positions. It’s no wonder Harry has had the troubles he’s had in his love life. I can’t imagine many women would want to be in that position when the media and the family itself can so easily make their lives hell. I’ve always known the way in which the media harassed the family, but hearing about it from his perspective, in his “own words,” hits entirely different. It’s terrifying. It’s even more trauma. I just cannot imagine it.
On top of all of that is the pressure Harry is under to marry by a certain age and produce heirs. I thought it was fascinating when he said you aren’t a fully vested member of the family until you were married and had your own household. That’s not something I ever really thought of.
Michaela: I appreciate that Harry is willing to let his relationships end when these women find that they can’t handle the things he has to go through. A lot of people would try to make them stay but he respects them, and I think his mother’s death has a lot to do with that.
We see a lot of comparisons or references to his mother in this section despite it being about his service. Harry’s relationship with the paparazzi is a constant subject throughout this entire book but it makes me think that Diana must have had similar experiences to Harry’s that we don’t know about. They were far more physically aggressive with Harry, most likely because he was a man, at one point Harry says “Around this time they began hitting me with their cameras, deliberately, trying to incite me”, and at one point Harry has to hide in the trunk of a car to keep from being seen by the paparazzi “I didn’t tell Billy that this was something mother used to do”. Even though Diana got her own experiences with the family out to the public, there must be so much we don’t know about her experiences with the media because she was so focused on exposing the family for their issues. Harry talks about being chased by paparazzi on motorcycles, one crashes into his own car to get a picture, they hit him, they exposed his location to the Taliban while he was serving, then they report constant lies or fabrications from Harry’s perspective as well. It truly blew my mind that when William and Kate had their first child the media was obsessed with Harry being jealous rather than excited to have a nephew. Like what the hell?
I think the most heartbreaking but important part of this entire section was when Harry had a taxi driver take him through the tunnel Diana died in. ‘Going through the tunnel at 65mph. “The exact speed Mummy’s car had supposedly been driving, according to police, at the time of the crash. Not the 120 mph, as the press originally reported”... “the bump that supposedly sent Mummy’s Mercedes cheering off course. But the lip was nothing. We barely felt it”’. That part, weirdly, shook me. Not only did it border on that suicidal ideation line we know Harry tends to toe, it put his body guard and the driver in danger, but it also proved to Harry that his mother was dead. He had so much denial in his heart until he drove through that tunnel, you would have expected it to keep the denial going considering that he said he barely felt the bump at that 65 mph but he says “Instead, that was the night all doubt fell away. She’s dead, I thought. My god, she’s really gone for good.” I think he needed that realization to move forward with his grief process but goddamn what a way to reach that point.
I think that’s where we’ll end this discussion. I’m looking forward to getting away from the war and more into Harry being happier, hopefully. Until next time friends!
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