Various British television channels churn out these weird royal documentaries on a regular basis. In the past six years, those documentaries are something of a cottage industry, especially since so many of the docs are centered on royalsplaining the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Well, there’s a new one and it’s called Prince Harry in Therapy. LMAO. Yes, Harry got serious about therapy about six months after he fell for then-Meghan Markle. He described the breaking-point moment in Spare – he apparently raised his voice at Meghan and spoke “cruelly” towards her. She was like, nope, this is unacceptable, you need therapy. And he went to therapy and it changed his life. Does this documentary focus on that? Or is it about repressed British people blaming Meghan for changing their laddish prince?
Prince Harry is ’embarrassed about his pre-Meghan life’ and ‘laddish’ behaviour in the army, royal experts have claimed. Speaking in a new Channel 5 documentary, Prince Harry in Therapy, which aired on Saturday, author Tom Quinn said that the Duke of Sussex – who was once dubbed ‘the party prince’ and came under fire for using a racial slur to describe a fellow soldier from Pakistan – ‘would be horrified’ by his past self.
‘He’s completely shifted now,’ Tom explained. ‘He wouldn’t dream of using a racial slur. I’m pretty certain he’s embarrassed about his pre-Meghan life. I think Harry would be horrified now if he looked back at times when he was completely a part of the sort of laddish army, old Etonian world.’
In 2009, Harry apologised after footage emerged of him using the slur to describe his Sandhurst colleague Ahmed Raza Khan. Harry said he had used the term without malice after the recording, taken in 2006, was released. In his memoir, Spare, Harry said he ‘heard many people use the word’ as a child and ‘had not seen anyone wince or get upset’ and that he had not considered them to be racist.
He added: ‘And I didn’t know anything about unconscious biases either. I was twenty-one years old, I had grown isolated from the real world and wrapped in privilege, and I believed that word was the same as ‘Yankee.’ Harmless.’
The Duke said people accused him of learning nothing from the Nazi debacle in 2005, saying that he was ‘worse than stupid’ or a ‘partyboy,’ and that he ‘was racist.’
He said he was in Highgrove watching the scandal unfold as leading politicians blasted him on national television, and that he was unable to process it. Harry claimed that his father’s office issued an apology on his behalf and that he had wanted to issue another one, but palace aides advised against it. ‘Not the best strategy, sir’, he claims they told him, to which he said: ‘F*** the strategy.’ Harry said he contacted Ahmed directly and apologised. He said his comrade told him he knew he was not racist and that ‘nothing happened’. However the Duke wrote that ‘it did happen’ and that his friend’s forgiveness only made him feel worse.
Journalist Bidisha Mamata also told Channel 5: ‘On the one hand, you could say he’s evolved enormously, he’s a man of the 21st century, so different from his army days. You could also see this as the Harry of now, of being just as susceptible to outside influences.’
‘Sometimes individuals assume the mantra and the philosophy of the individual they’ve married,’ historian Dr Tessa Dunlop added. ‘I think that happened to an extent with Harry and Meghan. It’s like he sees the world through a different lens, he has had an epiphany. Probably all this stuff was beneath the surface, and she’s validated it.’
They needed a whole documentary and a cadre of royal experts to say that… Harry matured and he’s learned how to be much more thoughtful and woke with his words and actions? I think Harry has regrets, of course, but I also think writing Spare was the best thing he ever did for his mental health – it was a chance to set the record straight, discuss his own regrets and screw-ups and own everything, both good and bad. But…but… but Meghan changed him! She made him woke! Why isn’t he still the fun, racist lad now??
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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
