LONDON, Aug 24\u00a0\u2014 Prince Harry, who relocates back to Britain shortly with his family, will open a new chapter in his ever-eventful life which once seemed improbable amid royal feuds, battles over security and lawsuits against UK tabloids.<\/p>\n
The 41-year-old royal misfit has long struggled with the monarchy\u2019s strictures, shaking off the angry young man and \u201cplayboy prince\u201d tags only to find himself at loggerheads with his closest relatives.<\/p>\n
He and wife Meghan Markle \u2014 who together swapped Britain for California six years ago \u2014 return still estranged from Harry\u2019s heir-to-the-throne brother William and wife Princess Catherine.<\/p>\n
Whether their ties can be repaired \u2014 as appears to have occurred with Harry and his cancer-battling father, King Charles III \u2014 was just one of many questions swirling as their self-imposed United States exile ends.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think one of the motivating factors for this return … is reconciliation with the king and with the wider family,\u201d royal historian Ed Owens told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf those wounds are not healed it can have a really detrimental impact, not only on the people concerned but also on the reputation of the institution.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Lack of trust\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n The feud has tarnished the family\u2019s image.<\/p>\n The monarchy has faced allegations of racism and bullying, among others, potentially alienating a younger, more diverse generation of Britons.<\/p>\n The image of Harry and mixed-raced Meghan are highly divisive in Britain. According to polls, they attract more negative opinions than any other royals, barring his scandal-plagued uncle, ex-prince Andrew.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve got to come to terms with the lack of trust in Britain,\u201d royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told AFP. \u201cThey\u2019ve said some very unkind things about Britain, and also about the monarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n Harry was at one time among Britain\u2019s most popular royals \u2014 a military and charity trailblazer with the fiery red hair and rebellious streak.<\/p>\n But the boyhood trauma of losing his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, has dogged much of his life.<\/p>\n The prince told The Telegraph in 2017 that \u201cshutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Diana\u2019s death in Paris, caused by her intoxicated driver who broke speed limits while being chased by paparazzi, also instilled in him a life-long hostility towards the press.<\/p>\n In recent years, Harry has sued three different UK newspapers, becoming the first senior royal in over a century to enter the witness box as he won settlements from two.<\/p>\n \u2018Traumatised\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Henry Charles Albert David was born third in line to the throne, on September 15, 1984.<\/p>\n The 1997 image of the 12-year-old prince walking stony-faced and head bowed behind his mother\u2019s coffin earned enduring global sympathy.<\/p>\n He attended the elite boarding school Eton, later revealing his hurt over William allegedly ignoring him while also there.<\/p>\n Harry then spent a sabbatical year in Australia and Africa, caring for orphans in Lesotho, where he founded a charity in Diana\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n Youthful scandals \u2014 dressing as a Nazi for a fancy dress bash, being pictured partying naked in Las Vegas \u2014 fed endless tabloid coverage.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had a very difficult childhood,\u201d trauma expert Gabor Mate told the BBC this week.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was traumatised,\u201d he added, noting \u201cthe lack of emotional closeness in the family\u201d.<\/p>\n The tall, athletic rugby and polo fan embarked on a decade-long military career that included two Afghanistan deployments, one as a helicopter pilot. He resigned in 2015.<\/p>\n The previous year, Harry founded the international Invictus Games for wounded soldiers, which still holds annual events.<\/p>\n After his 2018 fairytale Windsor Castle wedding \u2014 watched around the world \u2014 he and Meghan were touted as future monarchy rejuvenators, branded the \u201cfab four\u201d alongside William and Kate.<\/p>\n The couple\u2019s son, Archie, was born a year later.<\/p>\n \u2018Arch-nemesis\u2019 William\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n But by early 2020, growing tensions surfaced, with the pair quitting the UK and as working royals. They were allowed to keep their duke and duchess of Sussex titles, but lost other monarchy privileges.<\/p>\n Harry waged a years-long, ultimately unsuccessful legal battle with the government to reinstate his publicly funded security.<\/p>\n The prince\u2019s six years in America were marked by his apparent eagerness to settle scores \u2014 in a tell-all documentary, TV interviews and explosive memoir \u2014 in a public fashion previously unseen by typically tight-lipped British royals.<\/p>\n The unprecedented access the couple granted \u2014 in multimillion dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify, among others \u2014 also prompted criticism of monetising their monarchy links.<\/p>\n Harry\u2019s 2023 autobiography, Spare, lifted the veil on his royal rifts, describing William as his \u201carch-nemesis\u201d and alleging he physically attacked him in a blazing 2019 row about Meghan.<\/p>\n The memoir also detailed everything from teenage drug use and losing his virginity in a field to his strained adult relationship with Charles. He and William pleaded with him not to marry his long-term mistress and now queen, Camilla, Harry revealed.<\/p>\n His daughter Lilibet was born in the US in 2021.<\/p>\n \u201cHe misses his family… but also his friends, his country of birth,\u201d Owens explained.<\/p>\n \u201cWhilst America has offered them a more peaceful retreat … they\u2019ve struggled to reinvent themselves in a dynamic way.\u201d \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, Aug 24\u00a0\u2014 Prince Harry, who relocates back to Britain shortly with his family, will open a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1165653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7708],"tags":[78079,518,1281,38484,447,5105,7710,519,448,34287],"class_list":["post-1165652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-royals","tag-invictus-games","tag-king-charles-iii","tag-meghan-markle","tag-monarchy","tag-prince-harry","tag-royal","tag-royal-families","tag-royal-family","tag-royals","tag-william-and-catherine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117147461644400394","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1165653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}