With his memoirs published on January 10, Prince Harry has broken many of the golden rules of the Crown’s guide to good practice. By revealing the backstage details of his wealthy life, the son of Charles III has defied all protocols and abolished all forms of secrecy about the underbelly of royalty. But one breach of the rules in particular stands out.
His life from A to Z, delivered on a silver platter. In his impetuously titled memoirs, published on January 10, Prince Harry played it straight, leaving out no detail of his life, from childhood to the present. Readers around the world have learned how he lost his virginity, what drugs he used at an early age, how many Taliban he killed and how many drunken nights he spent with Courteney Cox. Throughout the 544 pages of his autobiography, the youngest of Charles III also breaks the golden rule of the Crown by clearly expressing his opinion on the Brexit. As a reminder, members of the royal family are supposed to remain politically neutral and refrain from giving their opinion on sensitive issues.
While he returns to the nickname “lazy Wills” once given by the British press to his brother, Harry evokes in his book the “temerity” of his eldest who, to the dismay of the national media, once made a speech “vaguely anti-Brexit”. It happens in 2016, during a visit to the Foreign Office. Prince William delivers a speech to British diplomats, saying that the nation’s ability to work with others is “the bedrock of [their] security and [their] prosperity.” The future heir to the crown also described Britain as an “outward-looking” country with “a long and proud tradition of seeking out allies and partners. In short: the exact opposite of the isolationist policy that will precipitate Britain’s departure from the European Union.
Was Prince William against the Brexit?
In his memoirs, Harry claimed that his brother’s speech was partly to blame for “the press’s relentlessness” against the Duke of Cambridge. “First, he got them all worked up by ceasing to play their game, by denying them unlimited access to his family. He refused several times to take Kate out like a prized racehorse,” Meghan Markle’s husband then pointed out, vigorously denouncing in passing the media treatment reserved for women who are part of the Firm.
“Then he had the temerity to make a vaguely anti-Brexit speech, which really infuriated them. Brexit was their bread and butter. How dare he suggest it was bullshit,” the Duke of Sussex also exposed. So even as he defends his brother and his futile attempt to save his country from Brexit – the cause of the financial crisis the UK is now facing – Harry is here disregarding a rule his late grandmother followed for over 70 years.
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