A princes wholly truthful memoir could go one of two ways
So, whatâs this about a royal memoir?
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex is writing one that will come out late next year. âIâm writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become,â heâs said. It will be âthe definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape himâ, according to Random House, which is publishing the book. Harry has added that it will be âa firsthand account of my life thatâs accurate and wholly truthfulâ.
Prince Harry, pictured with wife Meghan and first-born son, Archie, will release his memoir next year.Credit:Getty Images
No! Really?
Whoa. You think weâre going to find out why he once wore a Nazi uniform for a costume? Or put his âcrown jewels on displayâ while participating in a game of strip billiards in a Las Vegas hotel? Maybe. Itâs more likely that the memoir will shed further light on how heâs dealt with the racism he and wife Meghan have faced regarding their son, Archie, and the âgenetic traumaâ he recently accused his father of having passed on, says Cindy McCreery, a cultural historian and expert on the British royal family at The University of Sydney. âI suspect heâll be quite candid,â says McCreery. âYouâre not going to [reach many people] if you disguise a cloak on the past... I think what he needs to do now is to kind of show thereâs no smoke without fire.â
So not just a swing at the press and the Firm, then?
Why are you so angry?
About those âlife lessonsâ, though.
We get it. Heâs worth a squillion dollars and heâs never had to scrub the grout off a shower stall. âOn the other hand, grief is grief is grief,â says David Blaazer, associate professor of history at the University of NSW and an expert on Britain. âDepression is depression is depression. Being estranged from your brother is being estranged from your brother. There will be some chords of emotion that other people will presumably be able to recognise.â
But Fergieâs memoirs...
Youâve been burned. My Story. What I Know Now: Simple Lessons Learned The Hard Way. Finding Sarah: A Duchessâs Journey To Find Herself. The many self-help tomes by Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York have set the expectation that we will be hunkering down to read, as one critic wrote facetiously of one of Fergieâs books, âhomespun wisdom sure to be passed down from generation to generationâ. (Excerpts from her books, which addressed everything from her mother leaving the family for an Argentinian polo player to facing near bankruptcy: âWhen you lie down with dogs, you canât be shocked to get fleas.â Also: âI need healing.â)
Itâs different this time.
The British royals do have a storied history of helping regular people navigate some of their most stressful times. When King George VI refused to leave London during the Blitz in World War II, and instead visited areas of the city that had been heavily bombed in a bid to show sympathy and solidarity with his fellow citizens, he helped build morale in a way that boosted mental health at the time, says Blaazer.
âWhat they were expecting was a kind of collapse of morale, fear, and that people would be committing suicide; well they didnât,â says Blaazer, saying part of the reason was that the English people felt connected to each other as part of a common cause. âAnd the King is part of this, this really important message, âYouâre connected to me, Iâm connected to youâ.â
While King George VI, pictured right, was heralded for how he inspired ordinary people, the Duke of Windsor, left, was pilloried for spilling his heart in his memoir.Credit:Getty Images
Well, damn.
And Harry has long advocated to end the stigma surrounding mental health issues. Not to mention the release earlier this year of the multi-part documentary on mental health he made with Oprah Winfrey, The Me You Canât See, in which he revealed the fears and anxiety he suffers as a result of his motherâs death in a car crash in 1997.
So, really, no strip billiards is what youâre saying.
The juryâs out. But we could get his advice on romance. âIt would have been very difficult for him dating, as we know, in the public eye, so I think there are lots of interesting things to learn,â says Juliet Rieden, author of The Royals In Australia, and editor-at-large of The Australian Womenâs Weekly.â And Harry having âthe courage to stand up for what he wanted and for what he wanted for his own lifeâ â" he and Meghan left the royal family last year, and moved to California â" âis something everyone can learn from, whether youâre a prince or a pauper.â
Could this usher in a new era of well-received royal advice?
âThe kind of triumph over adversity, âWhat I learned from my mistakesâ, this is very much the spirit of the age [now],â says Blaazer, noting that this wasnât the case either in 1951 or 1956 when, respectively, memoirs by The Duke of Windsor and his wife, The Duchess of Windsor, for whom he abdicated the British throne, came out. (âHis reputation was already trashed,â says Rieden.)
Still, there will always be some resistance to taking advice from the rich and the ultra-privileged. As Blaazer points out about King George VI: âIn George Orwellâs diaries of the war, he did note that when the King did go to the East end [of London to show solidarity] on one occasion he was booedâ¦. Everybody knew well that [unlike them] he wouldnât be sleeping in a bloody underground station that night.â
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Samantha Selinger-Morris is a lifestyle writer for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
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