Prince Harry: The only person spared by the spare is himself

As Professor Kehinde Andrews writes in his recent book The New Age of Empire, the "royal family represents all the problems of elitism in Britain and privilege given to mediocre White people, with their only claim to their position being that they were born to rule".

Disappointingly, the public discourse has largely fixated on the more salacious details: the manner in which Harry lost his virginity; the time he developed frostbite on his "todger"; the physical altercation with Prince William. Mostly, the book is a rebuttal of every major news story ever confected about him. At over 400 pages, this deeply egocentric perspective makes for a profoundly boring read.

The book's aridity also stems from the duty of the ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer, to approximate Harry's voice and intellect. Fittingly, the prose is shorn of any complexity and the childlike language (Prince William is consistently referred to as "Willy") implies that Harry remains frozen in time as a 12-year-old bewildered by the sudden loss of his mother.

This is somewhat effective, if annoying. Less effective, and more irritating, is the scourge of unnecessary capitalisation, with "Self", "Truth" and even "Memoir" granted proper noun status to reflect the hard work they are doing in the prince's pursuit of both self-actualisation and the moral high ground. The contrived atmosphere of the entire project is exacerbated by Moehringer constantly straining to find profundity in Harry's everyday experiences. Some of this narrativising, such as the repeated allusions to Hamlet, attempts to be artful, but even this degenerates into farce. At other times, the desperate search for meaning is simply cringe-worthy, such as when Harry professes to identify with cows on a remote Australian property because they "need their space".

In the opening pages, the ghosts of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor lurk around the edges of a 2021 meeting between Harry, William and Charles. These figures are not dwelt on (and the abdicated king's Nazi sympathies certainly aren't mentioned), but by name-dropping them, Harry implies that his exit from royal duties was the inevitable result of the family's penchant for scapegoating.

Harry's positioning as a scapegoat is reinforced by his strong identification as his mother's son. Unwilling to take a nuanced view of Diana, he buys wholeheartedly into the myth that she was an innocent victim, rather than a loving and empathetic mother who was, simultaneously, a manipulative and insecure press hound. Like Diana, he is willing to remain locked in a dysfunctional vortex with his family and the media, casting his relations as self-interested, backstabbing and maladjusted. Well, no surprises there. Which begs the question: why did this memoir need to be written?

The immediate answer, of course, is cash. Having professed their desire to lead "normal lives", the Sussexes have immediately set about attaining abnormal sums of money by flogging their life stories to Netflix and Penguin Random House. Granted, they have to pay for security, but given Meghan was reportedly paid US$50,000 for every episode of Suits and Harry inherited millions from both Diana and the Queen Mother, one would think they could lead normal lives many times over without baring all in the name of privacy.

It would be easier to brush Spare off as petty and self-serving if it hadn't been launched at a time when "normal life" has become a luxury for so many. While Harry whines about his lesser royal status from the comfort of his US$14.7 million dollar compound in Montecito, the NHS is facing the gravest challenges in its history, and the cost-of-living crisis has seen public spaces transformed into "warm banks" and pensioners trying to heat tins of baked beans with candles because they cannot afford to use appliances.

The hype around the memoir is also stealing oxygen from more important acts of reckoning regarding the British Empire, of which the royal family is the supreme symbol. In recent years, the British government has paid compensation to Kenyans tortured by colonial officials during the Mau Mau uprising and has been court-ordered to surrender its territorial claims over its last colony in Africa, the Chagos Islands. More recently, one of the Queen's former ladies in waiting was sacked for being racist towards a charity worker, and, as I was writing this review, news came through that the British government has backed away from three of the recommendations in the Windrush Report that they had previously agreed to.

How much can we expect a person who spent his youth attending "native and colonial" themed birthday parties to grapple with all this? Predictably, not much. He rightfully admonishes the racism some members of the royal family directed at Meghan, but glosses over his own prejudice. Admitting he once donned a Nazi uniform for a birthday party, he swiftly blames William and Kate, claiming they okayed his choice of costume when he ran it past them beforehand. When he is vilified by the press for referring to a fellow soldier as "my Paki friend", he claims ignorance as his defence but resents being portrayed in the media as "Prince Thicko". This is just one example of the contortions Harry performs in attempting to have it every possible way.

As is often the case with self-serving memoirs, it is the unspoken revelations that are the most significant. In his rush to put a literal and metaphorical ocean between himself and his family, Harry fails to contend with the ways in which he is a chip off the old block.

The spare doesn't call for the abolition of the monarchy, but rather gives a half-baked defence of it on the grounds of the tourist income royal sightseeing generates, while also implying that he would have stuck around had he got more out of it himself. Similarly, the Sussexes' pursuit of neo-colonial domination as humanitarian influencers neatly aligns with the imperial sentiment that the Windsor enterprise is built on.

Nor are the pair averse to flagrant breaches of political neutrality. In November, 2021, it was reported that Meghan cold-called two Republican senators to lobby for paid parental leave, name-checking herself as the Duchess of Sussex. Somehow this episode didn't make it into the book, but it bears remarkable resemblance to Charles's own meddling in 2004-5, when he wrote several memos to the Blair government lobbying for a variety of pet causes, from the availability of herbal remedies to the plight of the Patagonian toothfish. The royal family then waged a 10-year battle to keep these memos secret, arguing they were "personal" rather than "political".

Ironically, the fate of his children may be Harry's biggest blind spot. Although he regards his birthright as a burden, he is willing to pass that burden on to his daughter by naming her after Granny, even though she was born post-Megxit. As fresh starts go, this is a curious one.

But then, a fresh start was never the goal of the Sussexes. Rather, in true royal fashion, all they seek to do is preserve their privileged status quo.