To most people, being born a Prince sounds like winning the lottery in life.
Being educated at the finest schools, getting to explore grand palaces, and having your every whim met by an army of servants sounds to many like the perfect childhood.
But according to Prince Harry, the fact he was only second in line to the throne and not first, or the ‘Spare’ as he likes to call it, seems to have left a bitter taste in his mouth.
When he was growing up, he learned that instead of inheriting a kingdom and becoming the sovereign, his role was to support his elder brother William as he took on the responsibility.
In his tell-all memoir, he describes how his position left him seemingly bubbling away with resentment, writing: ‘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. Speck of bone marrow.’
In fairness, the order of birth played a far greater role in Harry’s ancient family than in most.
The hierarchy was baked into his life from the beginning, as even at nursery, the royal children would all be treated differently depending on their hereditary pecking order.
But playing second fiddle to William throughout his life seemed to take a massive toll on Harry, which culminated in his scathing 2023 book ‘Spare’ about his brother and the whole Royal Family.
Ingrid Seward, who has spent 40 years following The Firm, claimed that Harry’s emotional problems had been caused by him allowing the ‘Spare’ label to ‘dominate his life – to the extent that he has now made a career out of it’.
She said: ‘He chooses to be the victim and wreak vengeance on the slights he thought he had suffered; on his family, on the press and through the courts.’
The editor of Majesty magazine claimed Harry’s account was ‘completely untrue’ but it was instead ‘how Harry chose to see himself’.
Seward, 77, has spent decades covering The Firm and its highs and lows – from the War of the Waleses, to Toegate to Megxit and beyond.
Like many journalists of her generation, she would often find herself invited to Kensington Palace for cosy chats with Princess Diana or to the ski slopes of Switzerland with Charles, William and Harry.
She witnessed at close quarters ‘the boys’ grow into men, becoming one of the most qualified people to comment on why Harry couldn’t be happy in his position within the Royal Family.
After all, it wasn’t all bad being the Spare, as the role allowed Harry far greater freedom than his elder brother.
Instead of always having to be the serious one and shoulder the responsibility for the whole family business, he was allowed to enjoy his life more – all the while in the lap of luxury.
Harry would play the fool and get away with childish antics, such as standing behind visitors and pulling funny faces behind their backs to make William laugh when he had to meet them.
At the age of nine, Harry turned to his brother and declared: ‘You’re going to be King; it doesn’t matter what I do.’
Put another way, according to Seward in her most recent book My Mother And I, he saw this as a licence to do almost whatever he wanted.
For instance there are reports that he showed an early talent for mimicry that took scant account of the importance of the person he was imitating.
Perhaps due to their thirst for attention of their mother, Harry also always felt like he needed to compete in everything with his brother, which was especially difficult given William was notably more successful at school.
Diana was concerned everyone was going to think her younger boy was ‘thick’ as he didn’t have any thirst for knowledge and was never interested in sitting down with a book, Seward wrote.
Despite getting the best education money can buy at Eton, he struggled at school and exams, with his housemaster admitting he was not cut out for university.
In Spare, Harry claimed that his memory was bad because after his mother’s death he ‘didn’t want to fix it, because memory equalled grief’. Prince William, on the other hand, did well at school and at university.
Instead Harry seemed to throw himself into partying, writing in his memoir that his unhappiness was the reason he first took cocaine at the age of 17.
As Harry grew up, servants began to gossip and wonder why he couldn’t just be happy with his luxurious playboy life.
Royal author Tom Quinn wrote in his book Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, which came out last month, senior courtiers tried to explain to Harry that he was actually much better off than his brother.
They explained to him that it was because William would never be able to escape the full focus of the media, especially when he became king.
But increasingly Harry couldn’t see this, according to the author’s source.
When he and Meghan married in May 2018, things seemed to get worse for Harry as he once again felt his ‘Spare’ label was being used against him.
According to royal historian Robert Lacey, Harry was the victim of a certain ‘cruelty’ from the royal family as a result of his role as the heir.
In an interview with GMA in 2020, the royal expert claimed he and Meghan began to be ‘edged out’ by aides who felt that they were taking too much attention away from the more senior members of the family.
‘The British royal system can be very cruel, and it’s particularly cruel to the spare,’ Lacey said, adding: ‘Harry came to realise in his teens that he was typecast as the court jester, the number two.’
Lacey suggested that Harry’s unhappiness with his role as the ‘spare’ only continued to grow stronger over the years, particularly as they grew older and it became increasingly obvious that William – and his wife Kate – were being primed to take over the throne, while the younger sibling was given less attention and status.
When Harry released Spare in January 2023, it quickly became apparent to royal fans that his malicious rivalry with William seemed to have always been there.
Many of the stories in the book seemed to be designed to make the public think less of his brother, none perhaps more so than the damaging claim that William had physically attacked him by pushing him into a dog bowl.
It wouldn’t have been the first time in history that royal princes have quarreled.
King Edward VIII’s brother, Bertie — the shy, stammering man who never wanted to be King George VI — fell out with his brother permanently after he ignored his pleas not to abdicate.
And George III’s lewd sons all fought like dogs, but none of them wrote a memoir to tell the public all about their grievances towards each other.
Spare also revealed that as well as William, Harry also put the blame of his problems on his father Charles.
In one area of the book he takes aim at the King’s alleged coldness, writing: ‘Pa and I mostly coexisted. He had trouble communicating, trouble listening, trouble being intimate face-to-face.
‘On occasion, after a long multi-course dinner, I’d walk upstairs and find a letter on my pillow. The letter would say how proud he was of me for something I’d done or accomplished.
‘I’d smile, place it under my pillow, but also wonder why he hasn’t said this moments ago, while seated directly across from me.’
According to Prince Harry, his royal upbringing caused him to suffer from ‘generational trauma’.
Seward believes Harry became so ‘swept up’ with his role as Spare that he even compared himself to his aunt Margaret.
Princess Margaret was well-known to resent being cast in the role of younger sister, though Seward notes at no time did she ever indicate that she would like their positions to have been reversed.
The Princess once said: ‘I have never suffered from “second daughter-itis”. But I did mind forever being cast as the “younger sister”.’
The frustration was visible at their father’s coronation in 1937 when she threw a tantrum after discovering her gown’s train was cut slightly shorter than her sister’s.
Harry hardly knew her, but it struck him – as he wrote in his autobiography – that they should have been friends.
In every royal generation, it seems the spares find it painful and difficult to gain a worthy sense of self when they are always regarded as a substitute.
All of this pressure contributed to Harry’s feelings of anger and frustration, which weighed heavily on the whole family when it came time to hammer out arrangements for the couple to step down as senior royals.
The deal that was cut allowed Harry and Meghan to keep their Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles, but they are no longer addressed as his or her royal highness (HRH).
From his new life in California, Harry seems to be more comfortable in his status, although there have been rumours he is plotting a return to royal life.
During the King’s cancer treatment last summer, Harry sought advice from trusted former aides in Britain on how to mastermind a return from exile, according to The Mail on Sunday.
However the idea seems to have floundered, as the prince remains in self-imposed exile.
And although Harry’s relationship with his brother is feared irreparably damaged, the Duke has seemed less embittered of late.
To his family’s relief, he decided against updating his acrimonious memoirs, Spare, for its paperback edition, which came out on October 24 – nor did he give interviews to publicise it.
Nevertheless, if Harry ever wants to return to royal life, he will have to eventually accept, perhaps for the first time, that his position will always be the Spare.
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