The unethical behavior of the British media should not be overlooked, especially as they report on Prince Harry’s many lawsuits against them. Instead of merely bowing out of trial coverage given the fact that Harry is literally suing all of them, the British media is instead willfully misrepresenting Harry’s lawsuits and statements and publishing screed after screed about how he’s going to lose, how he can’t “prove” that they’ve done anything to him, how he’s wrong to bring up all of these “old stories.” What’s worse is that I keep seeing the American media pick up parts of those same arguments. So it is notable (I guess) when the New York Times publishes a column about how Harry is actually quite noble for his war against Britain’s press machine. This was written by Tanya Gold, a British journalist who has worked for Harper’s, The Spectator and other outlets. Some highlights:

Harry is not a panda: Harry is determined to define himself, and not to be, in Hilary Mantel’s description in her essay “Royal Bodies,” a “panda”: “expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment.” In this refusal to be the prince we wanted, or deserved, he has become something far more interesting.

An instrument all his life: Like his mother, Princess Diana, Harry has been an instrument all his life. The Windsor family is Britain’s national pantomime and he was cast at birth — long before he could give consent — to be the shade to the sunlight of his brother, William. The newspapers chronicled his childhood; his parents’ love affairs, late-night telephone calls and hatred. They photographed his mother as she lay dying in a tunnel in Paris. They filmed Harry as he, aged 12, walked behind her coffin at her funeral, his presence necessary to protect his father’s reputation. Even the British media wouldn’t heckle a faithless husband in front of his son.

Finally, someone admits the press’s treatment of Meghan: Then he married Meghan Markle, and when she was abused by the British media — which happens to all women who marry into the family, but this was a racist, classist and xenophobic variation — he did something sensible and loving for his new family: He left Britain.

Gold hopes he gives up his title: Since then his redemption has been sequential. There was the interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which they described his family’s concern about the skin color of their unborn child. There was a Netflix documentary. There was his memoir, “Spare,” in which he described how his father, probably smelling of flowers and gunpowder, sat down on his bed to tell him that his mother was dead. Now there is the litigation and, eventually, I hope, the day when he lays down his title, accepts that some things cannot be reformed and is redeemed by the application of self-knowledge.

Spare was a whistle-blower’s account: I read “Spare” as a portrait of an abusive childhood and an act of whistle-blowing, but most of the British media did not. They mocked him for writing about a youthful sexual encounter — how crass to mention it, now we must find the woman! — and for his affinity for Stewie, the infant prodigy in “Family Guy,” whom he described as “a prophet without honor.”

Brave Harry: Even to the sympathetic, Harry can seem ridiculous. He is a panda, and pandas don’t usually fight back. And for the moment he thinks he can be meaningfully feminist and antiracist while embodying inherited wealth and power as a royal duke, which is absurd. But Harry is brave, and he has found his battlefield. I think if he could, he would bring it all down — the monarchy, the media, the whole awful dance. We did not have his consent. For that, he will have his revenge.

[From The NY Times]

The thing I agree with the most is that Spare is a survivor’s account of his abuse, and a witness’s account of watching the women he loves be abused. It was also a whistle-blower’s account of the dysfunction and cruelty of the whole institution. What was still so brilliant about Spare though is that… now it’s a historical document. It’s Harry reclaiming his narrative and saying no, it happened this way, all of it without hiding behind palace insiders or royal sources.

Now, all that being said, I don’t really get this stuff: “eventually, I hope, the day when he lays down his title, accepts that some things cannot be reformed and is redeemed by the application of self-knowledge” and “for the moment he thinks he can be meaningfully feminist and antiracist while embodying inherited wealth and power as a royal duke, which is absurd.” Embodying wealth and power… when he literally had to flee his country to protect his wife and children? When his father yanked his security and left him for dead? This idea that “Harry’s “power” comes from his title or the money his dead mother left him in trust” is absurd at this point – people couldn’t care less about his title – what his supporters care about is his journey, his survival story.

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Photos courtesy of Netflix.