Spare

“Billions of miles off, and probably long vanished, Earendel is closer to the Big Bang, the moment of Creation, than our own Milky Way, and yet it’s somehow still visible to mortal eyes because it’s just so awesomely bright and dazzling. That was my mother.”

Here, the author figuratively compares his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, to the star Earendel. The metaphor expresses his sense that his mother is still present and that her positive influence lives on after her death. In addition, Harry’s comparing his mother to a celestial body illustrates his tendency to idealize her.

“Whatever the cause, my memory is my memory, it does what it does, gathers and curates as it sees fit, and there’s just as much truth in what I remember and how I remember it as there is in so-called objective facts.”

Early in the memoir, Harry acknowledges the subjective nature of his narrative and the genre of memoir. He frankly admits that memory records events according to individual bias and perception. Nevertheless, he asserts that his perspective on his life is as valid as “so-called objective facts.”

“The Heir and the Spare—there was no judgment about it, but also no ambiguity. I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. I was summoned to provide back-up, distraction, diversion and, if necessary, a spare part. Kidney, perhaps. Blood transfusion.”

This passage draws attention to Harry’s position within the royal hierarchy as the “Spare.” Harry presents his inferiority to Prince William in this hierarchy as a straightforward and undeniable fact. While claiming “no judgment” in it, Harry’s memoir demonstrates the negative impact on his self-esteem.

“I wasn’t a human being to them. I wasn’t a fourteen-year-old boy hanging on by his fingernails. I was a cartoon character, a glove puppet to be manipulated and mocked for fun.”

Once Prince Harry reaches age 14, he becomes the target of derogatory newspaper stories. He suggests that reporters justify treating him as a figure of ridicule by dehumanizing him in their minds. The author emphasizes the harmful effects of press persecution on a teen already traumatized by his mother’s death.

“No matter how much you might love someone, you could never cross that chasm between, say, monarch and child. Or Heir and Spare. Physically, but also emotionally. It wasn’t just Willy’s edict about giving him space; the older generation maintained a nearly zero-tolerance prohibition on all physical contact. No hugs, no kisses, no pats.”

A recurring theme in Spare is the impact of royal restrictions and protocol on family dynamics. Here, Harry highlights the barriers to intimacy among his family. Royal hierarchy affects how they relate to one another, while protocol restricts affectionate physical contact.

“In this, as in most things, the Palace stuck fast to the family motto: Never complain, never explain. Especially if the complainer was an eighteen-year-old boy.”

The Palace’s policy of dignified silence when attacked by the press is a constant frustration for Prince Harry. The author often interprets the royal family’s strategy as a failure to defend him or even as a sign of cooperation with the stories. The memoir manifests Harry’s determination to speak out despite his family’s motto.

“I became Spike, when I wasn’t Haz, or Baz, or Prince Jackaroo, or Harold, or Darling Boy, or Scrawny […] Identity had always been problematic, but with half a dozen formal names and a full dozen nicknames it was turning into a hall of mirrors.”

Throughout the memoir, Prince Harry is addressed by various names, from affectionate nicknames to formal titles. Here, the author refers to the recurring motif of nicknames, pseudonyms, and codenames. Each name represents a different version of himself. Harry must unite these alternative identities into a coherent whole to become a fully-rounded individual.

“That click, that terrible noise, from over my shoulder or behind my back or within my peripheral vision, had always triggered me, had always made my heart race, but after Sandhurst it sounded like a gun cocking or a blade being notched open. And then, even a little worse, a little more traumatizing, came that blinding flash.”

Harry often uses warfare vocabulary to describe press photographers’ aggressive and intrusive behavior. His military training and Afghanistan combat experiences accentuate his feeling of being under attack, hinting at post-traumatic stress.

“How would I be remembered by history? For the headlines? Or for who I actually was?”

When Prince Harry is deployed to Afghanistan, he contemplates his historical legacy if he dies. His anxiety about the influence of the tabloid press in forming popular opinion is evident here, as he expresses the fear that future generations will accept negative headlines as the truth.

“This was important work, patriotic work. I was using skills honed in the Dales and at Sandringham, and all the way back to boyhood. Even to Balmoral. There was a bright line connecting my stalking with Sandy and my work here now. I was a British soldier, on a battlefield, at last, a role for which I’d been preparing all my life.”

Serving his country gives Prince Harry a sense of purpose that has been missing from his life. However, concerns over what is safe for him to undertake as a royal repeatedly limit the fulfillment he experiences in active duty.

“I was also Widow Six Seven. I’d had plenty of nicknames in my life, but this was the first nickname that felt more like an alias. I could really and truly hide behind it. For the first time I was just a name, a random name, and a random number. No title. And no bodyguard. Is this what other people feel like every day?”

A focal character trait of Prince Harry is his craving for normalcy. Here, he describes his sense of freedom when using his radio call sign, “Widow Six Seven,” in Afghanistan. For the first time in his life, he’s entirely anonymous, and colleagues treat him like an average person.

“My mind flashed back to Eton. The fox I’d glimpsed, when stoned, from the window of the loo. So, he really had been a messenger from the future after all. One day you’ll be alone, late at night, in the darkness, hunted like me…see how you like it.”

Hearing himself referred to as “Red Fox” on the radio, Prince Harry realizes he has become a target for the Taliban. His associating this moment with a fox he saw years earlier reflects his tendency to see animals as messengers or omens.

“I was twenty-one, awash in isolation and privilege, and if I thought anything about this word at all, I thought it was like Aussie. Harmless.”

Here, Prince Harry addresses his use of a racial slur as a cadet—one of several incidents in his youth that caused public outrage. While acknowledging his shame at the incident, the author explains that it demonstrated “unconscious bias” rather than racism. The episode leads him to confront the extent of his ignorance.

“You can’t kill people if you think of them as people. You can’t really harm people if you think of them as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Bads taken away before they could kill Goods. I’d been trained to “other-ize” them, trained well. On some level I recognized this learned detachment as problematic. But I also saw it as an unavoidable part of soldiering.”

Prince Harry’s frank description of killing Taliban fighters caused considerable controversy when Spare was published. He was criticized for his dehumanizing targets as “chess pieces” and “Bads.” In this passage, he acknowledges that his detachment is “problematic” but suggests this attitude is a necessity of warfare.

“It went to the whole underpinning of the monarchy, which was based on marriage. The great controversies about kings and queens, going back centuries, generally centred on whom they married, and whom they didn’t, and the children who issued from those unions. You weren’t a fully vested member of the Royal Family, indeed a true human being, until you were wed.”

During Prince Harry’s quest for love, he feels that he’ll never gain his family’s full respect until he has married. He suggests that societal pressures to marry by a certain age are intensified within the monarchy because its continuance depends upon marriage and producing heirs.

“I considered all of the previous challenging walks of my life—the North Pole, the Army exercises, following Mummy’s coffin to the grave—and while the memories were painful, they also provided continuity, structure, a kind of narrative spine that I’d never suspected. Life was one long walk.”

In trekking to the South Pole with wounded veterans, Prince Harry experiences an epiphany. He sees his physical discomfort in the context of other painful walks he has undertaken, including the one behind his mother’s coffin. His ability to find a pattern and meaning in his pain echoes his creation of a coherent life narrative.

“I felt helpless, and this, I realized, was my Achilles heel. I could deal with most things so long as there was some action to be taken. But when I had nothing to do…I wanted to die.”

Prince Harry’s memoir establishes that he feels most purposeful when he can take meaningful physical action. He recognizes this trait as a fatal flaw when the paparazzi chase Meghan in Canada while he’s thousands of miles away. His impotence in the face of press harassment (largely resulting from the Palace’s intervention) is a recurring source of frustration.

“But this panda crack always struck me as both acutely perceptive and uniquely barbarous. We did live in a zoo, but by the same token I knew, as a soldier, that turning people into animals, into non-people is the first step in mistreating them, in destroying them. If even a celebrated intellectual could dismiss us as animals, what hope for the man or woman on the street?”

Here, the author refers to Hilary Mantel’s critique of the British monarchy, which compares the royal family to pandas. Prince Harry finds the observations particularly disturbing because the source is respected for her intelligence. He observes that if insightful writers like Mantel feel licensed to dehumanize the royal family, the rest of the population won’t hesitate to do so.

“The point was, love took a decided back seat to law. Indeed, law had trumped love on more than one occasion.”

Highlighting the theme of The Monarchy as an Institution and Machine, Prince Harry wonders whether the Queen will approve his marriage to Meghan. Aware of historical precedents in which royals were prohibited from marrying their partners of choice (including Princess Margaret), Harry can’t be sure of receiving approval.

“I’d spent my life dealing with courtiers, scores of them, but now I dealt mostly with just three, all middle-aged white men who’d managed to consolidate power through a series of bold Machiavellian manoeuvres. They had normal names, exceedingly British names, but they sort more easily into zoological categories. The Bee. The Fly. And The Wasp.”

The courtiers’ role in the memoir reemphasizes the theme of The Monarchy as an Institution and Machine. Harry believes that they deliberately obstruct his access to his grandmother, preventing him from reaching a private agreement with her about his future as a royal. His contempt is evident in his refusal to acknowledge their “normal names.” Using the same dehumanizing technique he criticizes in Hilary Mantel’s article, he figuratively presents them as buzzing insects.

“All my life I’ve heard people saying the monarchy was expensive, anachronistic, and Meg and I were now served up as proof. Our wedding was cited as Exhibit A. It cost millions, and thereafter we’d upped and left. Ingrates.”

Harry describes the negative press he and Meghan received after announcing their departure from Britain, because it was perceived as a betrayal and a threat to the British monarchy’s continued existence. The reference to their wedding’s cost emphasizes the pressure on the royal family to offer value for taxpayers’ money.

“I felt fatted for the slaughter. Suckled like a veal calf. I’d never asked to be financially dependent on Pa. I’d been forced into this surreal state, this unending Truman Show in which I almost never carried money, never owned a car, never carried a house key […] Sponge, the papers called me. But there’s a big difference between being a sponge and being prohibited from learning independence. After decades of being rigorously and systematically infantilized, I was now abruptly abandoned, and mocked for being immature? For not standing on my own two feet?”

In this passage, Prince Harry expresses his sense of abandonment when Prince Charles cuts his royal funding. Figuratively identifying himself as “a veal calf” raised for “slaughter,” he outlines how royal life deprived him of his independence.

“There was always a but with him when it came to the press, because he hated their hate, but oh how he loved their love. One could make the argument that therein lay the seeds of the whole problem, indeed all problems, going back decades. Deprived of love as a boy, bullied by schoolmates, he was dangerously, compulsively drawn to the elixir they offered him.”

Harry describes his father’s love-hate relationship with the press, suggesting that though Prince Charles dislikes negative press, he’s driven to gain the media’s approval—and his conflicted feelings result in reluctance to antagonize the press.