Harry only tried to protect his wife from the same public scrutiny Princess Diana had suffered from.
A lot has been said about the decision made by Prince Harry and his wife, Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle to cut away from the royal family. They wanted a more peaceful life away from the media scrutiny but instead garnered negative press by their sudden move. They became a hot topic of discussion around the world by their unconventional move of stepping down as senior royals. While it could be stemming from the exact reason they had cited, there could be deeper reasons that even the prince may not have been consciously aware of.
Tina Brown, author of The Diana Chronicles, in an interview with The New York Times, said that Harry was deeply affected by his personal loss, the tragic death of his mother Princess Diana in 1998. And that he has been unable to move from her death. The 66-year-old author said that the prince has "deep wounds" from his past that never healed and there was something making him dissatisfied.
"And his sense of his role as the second son, the fact that he loved his military career but then left and didn’t have that sense of purpose — all of that came together to make him a very unhappy man," said Brown.
In another interview, the royal biographer said that while their decision to move away from the royal family was inevitable it was surprising that it came as early as it did. They seem to have "ripped off the bandaid," Brown said. She told CBS This Morning, that the royal family knew that the sabbatical they had taken from before Thanksgiving to January was about them pondering over their future. "They may have been surprised by the timing before the details could have been worked out," she added.
She had also said that Prince Harry had felt that he was no longer a part of the senior royal members when the Palace released the photograph of the Queen and her heirs: Harry's father Prince Charles, brother William, and nephew George. She told the Today show that Harry never found his true place in the family and had been "unhappy" since leaving the army in 2015.
A new image of the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge and Prince George, taken by the photographer Ranald Mackechnie in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace last month, to mark the start of a new decade. Only the second official portrait of the Queen and her heirs. pic.twitter.com/KNggBxtKIa
— Roya Nikkhah (@RoyaNikkhah) January 3, 2020
"He has felt that he's this big alpha guy and doesn't really have a place to land... And what's happened now is that Prince William and Prince Charles - you've got two heirs, well actually... it's very crowded at the top right now! - and we're in the twilight of the Queen's reign, let's face it, she's not going to go on forever, and they're on this really accelerated flight path now to get ready to be the King and the Prince of Wales," she said.
She also added that Harry has felt that he was "edited out" of the family and the Queen is "desperately trying to find a way to keep the doors open" for the couple. "And I think that he did mind that [portrait] very much, and I think [Meghan] also minded it. So I think his feeling has been, 'Look, I'm being edited out, therefore I want out.'"
Brown also weighed in on the future of the monarchy and said that Prince Charles was ready to sit on the throne. "I do think that Prince Charles’ handling of these crises — and Megxit — has shown that he’s ready to be king," she told New York Times. "He has rather risen to the occasion… he has managed to walk the line between being a father who cares about the mental health of his son and being someone who understands what the monarchy has to do to be self-preserving."
While the initial announcement of their decision to step back caused a stir, things seem to be settling down now, with all concerned parties having ironed out most of the details. Both Harry and Meghan are wrapping up their remaining royal engagements and in the most recent development, Harry met his grandmother for lunch for the first time since returning to the UK, according to Harper's Bazaar.
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