Tucked in the world news is the story that Harry and Meghan are returning to England where there children Archie and Lilibet will attend school. Not much is known about where they will actually live or why they decided to move from California. There has been much chatter in England where such intrigue is a bit more important given Harry’s relation to their king.
Most of the talk is somewhat negative, asserting that neither Harry nor Meghan have much to offer since they will not be participating in the service of the royal family the way William and Kate are doing. Their exit from the royal family a few years back led many Brits to angrily ostracize Harry while growing ever closer to his older brother. There is a great deal of bad blood and misunderstanding that needs to heal because both Harry and Meghan were quite vocal about the insults and insinuations that drove them away in the first place.
I suppose because of my experience of suddenly losing a father in a car accident I have always felt a kind of kinship with Harry. I have garnered from his comments that he has never truly overcome the loss that he felt when his mother died. I believe that to a very large extent her death has never been resolved for him and as such he has been searching for a sense of peace that he believed he found in Meghan.
Harry may have been young but he saw the emotional turmoil unfolding between his mother and father. He witnessed his mother’s sorrow and anxiety and somehow understood that the ultimate tragedy of her life came because of the hounding of the press that never ceased. She was like a bug under the microscope of publicity that made her life a kind of mockery. Everyone knew about her husband’s calls to Camilla. None of it was secret. She was followed everywhere and those who knew her saw the toll it was taking on her. All the while she conveyed her motherly love to her sons and Harry fondly remembers her devotion even as he struggles in knowing how difficult life was for his mother.
I suppose that Harry has been searching for his own identity for much of his life. He was not trained to be anything other than a prince who attended events and smiled to keep the royal family in favor. He seemingly enjoyed his time in the military more than anything because when he was there he had a purpose. Eventually he met Meghan and he took her camping in Africa where he found peace and joy. I suppose that he never imagined how much the public would focus on his marriage and how it would remind him of the furor that had haunted his mother.
Meghan is an American. We do things differently here. She did not truly understand her duties or how she was supposed to act. Nobody really helped her to understand and when she made mistakes they held her accountable. The clash of cultures was amplified by the rules of royalty and the fact that the wife of a prince is not supposed to do and say certain things. It was not only a repressive life style but it was invasive as well much in the same way it had been for Diana. Eventually Harry became very defensive for his wife no doubt because as a little boy he had seen what ultimately happened to his mother.
I have often wondered how it is possible for William and Harry to love their father knowing how tragically he treated their mother. The fact that the woman who broke Diana’s heart is now the queen consort has to be a thorn in Harry’s side and yet he has tried to stay as close as possible with his father. He is no doubt torn in his emotions. He needed his father after his mother was gone and the two of them formed an attachment to each other. Nonetheless the feelings that Harry expresses in his book and in his interviews all point to unresolved sorrow, something that the general public seems unwilling to understand.
The royal family in England has a history of imperfections and that incudes the most recent monarchs. Queen Elizabeth’s uncle fell in love with a married woman and abdicated rather than pushing her away. Queen Elizabeth was a faithful and dutiful monarch without much room for welcoming nontraditional ways of living. I suspect that the entire family would have benefited from counseling given that even Prince Andrew is an embarrassment to the crown. Their unwillingness to face the emotional cost of pretending that nothing is wrong has resulted in the chaos that still haunts the family. Perhaps it is finally time for the whole group to modernize and work out the many issues that have plagued them for decades. Welcoming Harry and Meghan just as they are would be a great start and might even inspire the press and the citizens to have compassion for their humanity instead of expecting them to bow in perfection.
It is time for a more modern approach to royalty. Right now they are a business firm that exists in a world of publicity and public opinion that is incredibly uncomfortable. Diana attempted to make this known and now Harry is doing the same thing. It would be nice if everyone in Great Britain would embrace him and Meghan just as they are, respecting their attempts to live the way they wish. It really is all that any of us want from life.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 