Prince Harry and Prince William have chosen very different paths. Photo / Getty Images
Prince Harry and Prince William have chosen very different paths. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
It must frustrate Prince Harry that his own popularity has become so obviously inversely proportional to his brother's. They had a highly competitive relationship before Harry and Meghan decided to throw a grenade under the Queen and the Royal family in favour of earning Kardashian cash in the US. It often appeared that a large part of the Sussexes' beef with the monarchy was that they constantly felt in the Cambridges' shadow.
Yet their bid to seek "financial independence" in California has cast them completely in the shade in the minds of the majority of Brits, many of whom would prefer it if they disappeared from view altogether.
The more they have accused the "racist" royal family of "total neglect", the more they have succeeded in encouraging the British public to throw their support behind the institution – as shown by a YouGov poll last week finding six in 10 people want them to be stripped of their titles or to stop using them.
The better William and Kate perform, the worse Harry and Meghan look for breaking up the Fab Four in the first place. The Yanks might not see it like this, but Brits do because, unlike naive Americans prone to endless psychobabble, we were never under any illusions about the dysfunctionality at the heart of the royal family (or any family, for that matter).
In his latest outpouring for his new Apple TV documentary series, Harry voiced his resentment at being told to "play the game" to make life easier in the House of Windsor.
"I've got a hell of a lot of my mum in me," he boasted. "The only way to free yourself and break out is to tell the truth."
Yet, ironically, the one person in The Firm who "played the game" better than anyone else was Diana, Princess of Wales. That was until she took the disastrous decision to pour her heart out to deceitful Martin Bashir – albeit under what we now know were false pretences.
By continuing to stoke the flames of publicity with his smug, self-pitying and at times, spiteful rhetoric, Harry shows he has actually learned nothing from his mother's experience.
For in trying to emulate her doe-eyed confessionals to speak his "truth", he is repeating her mistake of squandering popularity for the sake of evening the score. While there's no doubting Harry's noble intentions in wanting to raise awareness of mental health issues – let's make no mistake here, like Diana deciding to air her dirty linen on the BBC, this is a man out for vengeance.
With his team of officious LA-based PRs and unwillingness to appear on any platform that actually offers a right of reply to the people he trashes, he's hypocritically playing his own, one-sided games.
Exactly like his mother at her lowest ebb, Harry seems to think the world is out to get him.
Yet far from it being personal, there is a word for what has happened to him over the years. It's called "life".
While he was a 12-year-old walking behind his mother's coffin in 1997, there were literally hundreds and thousands of other children also coming to terms with the loss of a parent.
Around the same time, I was a teenager, scraping my alcoholic mother off the pavement. As any therapist worth their salt will tell him – you can either hold onto the past and let it dictate your future, or let go and truly "find your freedom".
William has had to endure exactly the same fate as Harry. In fact, as the elder brother and "heir" rather than "spare" it has arguably been even more difficult for him.
As his dignified statement on Thursday night made clear, he vividly remembers "the fear, paranoia and isolation" of his mother's final years. It was his shoulder upon which she cried about the breakdown of her marriage.
Prince Harry and Prince William have chosen very different paths. Photo / Getty Images
It was he who promised her, after she lost the HRH style, that he would "give it back to you one day when I am king."
As the child of divorced parents myself, I know all too well that while every child is adversely affected, the oldest is often at the coalface, shouldering most of the burden.
Despite this, and having to come to terms with being tethered to a life mapped out at birth, William has borrowed from the best of his mother's playbook.
He has resolved to serve others, rather than himself. Instead of growing up to resent the rules of the game, he has used them to his advantage, realising – as all the best royals do – that it is never really about "them", but about "us".
Unlike Harry, who has misinterpreted the Queen's "never complain, never explain" mantra as a gagging clause – William has used it as it was intended, as a protection order to ensure the lines between the professional and the personal do not become too blurred.
Like the mute button on Twitter, he has silenced his critics not by taking them on, but keeping calm and carrying on regardless. And in stark contrast to his brother, William has shown he understands the press as well as Diana did.
By actually reading the newspapers (rather than obsessing over the online comments like Harry), the second-in-line to the throne has come to the sensible conclusion that the media, while imperfect, can be used as a considerable force for good.
While his brother was using Lord Dyson's report as a stick with which to once again beat the tabloid press, William was mature enough to acknowledge if it wasn't for the newspapers, Bashir would have got away with his rogue reporting for even longer.
"Public service broadcasting and a free press have never been more important," he magnanimously declared.
Harry's nonsense claim that "practices like these – and even worse – are still widespread today" only serves to highlight just how unqualified he is to act as referee on matters as serious as the First Amendment, which he described as "bonkers" on a recent podcast.
Both these royal brothers are playing a game – but only one of them is winning.
