2024-02-07 11:40:48
by Luigi Ippolito
The two brothers have not spoken to each other for over a year, since the publication of Harry’s incendiary autobiography, and now that the younger one has rushed to London to the bedside of King Charles, no face-to-face meeting is planned
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
LONDON – Please, guys, don’t make my last years miserable!: this is how Charles addressed his children, when the three met in private immediately after Prince Philip’s funeral, almost three years ago now. An appeal for reconciliation from a heartbroken father at seeing his offspring divided by a deep and silent hatred: and now that the sovereign’s remaining time risks being dramatically shortened by illness, will William and Harry listen to his words?
However, it seems astonishing that the two brothers, now that the younger one has rushed to London from California to his father’s bedside, have no intention of even meeting face to face: no space has been made in William’s diary for a meeting with Harry and his father. heir to the throne, they say, has no intention of extending an olive branch. Because the reality is that Diana’s two sons haven’t even spoken to each other for more than a year, since the release of the minor’s incendiary autobiography, Spare: a book full of venom against the royal family, but particularly rancorous towards her brother.
Harry accused William of having put his hands on him during a furious argument, grabbing him by the neck and throwing him to the ground to crash (grotesque detail) against a dog bowl; he reproached his brother for his hostility towards his wife Meghan, who would have been defined as rude and abrasive; he complained that the Palace was ready to feed him to the press in order to protect William’s reputation. In short, a relationship that, in Harry’s words, was a catastrophe in the making.
His brother did not forgive him for these attacks, also because his wife Kate was portrayed very badly in the memoir: and thank goodness that Harry said he self-censored, because if he had really spilled the beans on his family he would have blown up the monarchy. Poor Diana, if she were alive, would be shocked to see how her two sons, the one she loved most in the world, ended up armed against each other.
But beyond episodes and insults of the moment, there is something sick in the existential dynamic that runs between William and Harry, as the very title of the younger man’s book denounces: Spare, the spare part, where the reference to the Heir, the Heir (an heir and a spare, the English say). Because therefore what condemns Harry to a second-tier existence is William’s very presence in the world and his destiny as successor to the throne: an unavoidable condition, which fuels a deep resentment, an ontological fracture that nothing can heal. What hurts Harry is his status as second-born, which leads him to see William as his nemesis, the ultimate Antagonist: and on the other hand William – apart from the fact that those who know him privately describe him as a hothead inclined to anger – little can be done to defuse that dynastic principle on which the monarchy is based.
Will the father’s suffering be able to bring about a rapprochement between the two sons? Many hope so: and most of all, the sick and fragile king.
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February 7, 2024 (changed February 7, 2024 | 12:50)
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