Of course, everyone wants to read “Spare,” Prince Harry’s candid account of his life, encompassing love, tragedy, the nightmare of living as a member of the Royal Family and more details about frostbite than you would expect. That makes sense.
Everything that I know about myself can be related in less than 4 minutes and 18 seconds, and that is with a lot of repetition built in. I don’t remember my childhood. I don’t know where I was born or who my parents were. To the best of my knowledge, I lack a first name — and a second name. All I know of myself is that I am a prince (one of two), and I adore you. I knelt before you for some time. Maybe I am still there now.
I say I have a future and a family tree, but I can only guess I do, by contrast to the other prince. Indeed, all that I know of myself, I know by difference to him. Sometimes, in my bleaker moments, I think, I am his shadow. Then, other times, I think, He is my shadow. Still other times, I think, The singer wants to marry you himself, and both of us princes are distractions.
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I should start where you expect this story to start. The side of me that everyone knows.
So there I was, a prince, kneeling before you.
It was uncomfortable to kneel because my pocket was full of diamonds — or was it bread? I touched my pocket to be sure. No, it was diamonds. The bread must have been a figure of speech.
But then I saw with horror that I was not kneeling alone. I should have expected the other prince. He was always there, my sinister double, my brother, as full of dreams and promises as I was full of bread/diamonds. Marry him, or marry me? That was the question. There were also other questions, about calling one of us baby or telling us “maybe” (about what?), but those came later.
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I remember I made a point of wearing my best jacket, with the biggest seal on it. I remember how big the seal was. It was not in my head, how big the seal was. If someone had to ask himself the question, “Is it in his head, how big this jacket seal is?” there could only be one answer: “Ain’t in his head, now.”
Any father who looked at someone in that jacket would have said to himself, “I condone the marriage of my child to that guy! By contrast, if my child tries to marry the other prince, instant disownment!” The other prince later confided to me that he believed that if you married him in preference to me, your father will “eat his hat now.”
It’s strange, now, to think in what detail I thought of your father’s reaction, and how little I remember wondering what you thought. Maybe that was what doomed my suit. Or maybe it was the racket.
I know I had a racket, too, though I don’t know many details. It was princely. That much I know. I tried to ask a follow-up (“This one’s got a princely racket?”), but all I got was, “That’s what I said, now.”
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I wish I remembered you better. He volunteered to buy you rockets. Were you really into STEM? I remember that I adored you. But after that, it all begins to blur.
I wish you could have bought me flowers or talked to me for hours. Did we have to wait until we were married, to do that? I think I would have liked talking to you.
I know that the other prince was very confident that he knew what a prince and lover ought to be, although for years I thought he was saying he knew “what a Princeton lover ought to be,” and I found his claim off-putting. But I knew better than to ask. I’d just get another “That’s what I said, now,” in reply. Sometimes I wonder if he knew as much as he boasted. But I can’t speak for him. I can only speak for myself.
That’s why I wanted to write this. To begin to make sense of myself as more than just one of one, two princes. What can I say? Bidibidip. I just want to move forward, in the present. To go ahead, now. Just go ahead, now.
