American Princess

by Leslie Carroll

  Harry was touched by the veterans who shared their own war stories, and went to the Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit that assists poverty-stricken children. Giggling as hard as they were, he popped balloons with them during a relay race. Harry’s mum had visited the Children’s Zone during a visit to New York in 1989. When Diana cuddled a child with AIDS, it showed the world that not only was there nothing to fear about contracting the disease by hugging someone, but that everyone on earth deserved compassion. Like his mother, Harry has always been a natural with kids and they invariably return his affection with equal measures of delight.

  America was wild about Harry.

  His whirlwind weekend proved that just seven years after the notorious annus horribilis, the royal family was still as popular in America, if not more so, than it had been during Diana’s heyday. If the reception Harry received in New York City was any indication, the attraction had only increased since her passing.

  It was a cue to the older generation that Harry, then twenty-four, and William, twenty-six, should assume additional responsibilities. At William’s age, their grandmother was already Queen. And at twenty-six, Diana was a mother of two and fulfilling myriad royal obligations. Charles had been keen to protect his sons from the spotlight for several years—but now, despite Harry’s stated wish to return to the front as a helicopter pilot, it was time for the princes to focus on earning their keep as royals.

  In September 2009, the brothers combined their charitable efforts into the Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry. Three years earlier, they had created the Princes’ Charities Forum to team up their various philanthropic efforts. The seed money for the foundation came from a six-figure investment from the personal fortunes of both Harry and William. A third of all money raised by the foundation will go to the armed forces. The plan is for the foundation to become a grant-giving entity. After William married Catherine Middleton, as Duchess of Cambridge she became a patron as well.

  Like Diana, who refused to be just a name on a letterhead and had zero interest in “fluffy” causes, Harry and William are hands-on, with sleeves rolled up, and are completely committed to doing, rather than being figureheads on the invitation to a charity luncheon or ball.

  The princes also choose their own patronages—projects and charities they are passionately committed to, rather than being directed by the palace to become the patron of one entity or another.

  In addition, Harry and William are members of the royal family’s Way Ahead Group. This exclusive assemblage comprised of the highest-ranking members of the royal family and a half-dozen anonymous senior advisors was formed in 1994 to discuss The Firm’s agenda for both the immediate and long-term futures. No member of government is privy to its closed-door discussions, which have included ending male primogeniture and the sovereign’s agreeing to pay income taxes.

  ALTHOUGH HARRY HAD made a state visit to Barbados in January 2010 to announce an annual polo match that would raise money for Sentebale, he was still clinging to his desire to remain in the army. On May 7, with Chelsy in attendance, the Prince of Wales presented his younger son with his wings. A dream had come true at last: Harry was now qualified to fly Apaches. According to a source with knowledge of Harry’s character, as well as the workings of the MOD, only the top 10 percent of candidates get to fly an Apache, “and if you’re heading the course, you’re really an exceptional flier.” Moreover, the Ministry of Defence wouldn’t trust a multimillion-pound aircraft and the lives of its troops to someone just because he’s a member of the royal family.

  Harry’s various personae were beginning to come together. As prince, soldier, and lover, he had gotten to the point where he could no longer try to sustain them individually or sequentially.

  He ultimately found his niche in the military. There Harry finally seemed to fulfill his desire to be normal. His ability to relate to the average person—particularly combat veterans, as one himself—is a huge part of Harry’s makeup.

  He also had to blend the Windsor and the Spencer in himself. Although his mother was hardly sporty and hated “killing things” (as in woodland creatures), Harry has always enjoyed hunting and fishing on the royal estates, is an avid polo player, and throws himself headlong into physically punishing recreational sports such as rugby and football. Without his mother, he blew off steam—and grief—in self-destructive ways.

  But Harry is his mother’s son in his capacity for empathy and his compassion for those among us who have the least, especially children affected by war, poverty, and disease. To watch Prince Harry interact with a child or a group of kids is to feel your own heart melt a bit.

  He has also developed a deep emotional connection to Africa. On a return visit to Botswana with William in 2010, the princes were invited to participate in the local custom of writing down their hopes and dreams on scraps of paper. Harry’s wish list included “to live in Africa,” “wildlife photographer,” “professional surfer,” and of course, “helicopter pilot.”

  That year he agreed to become a cover model for GQ to promote an expedition to the North Pole undertaken by Walking With The Wounded, a British charity that helps injured former British armed services members make the transition from military to civilian life. A portion of the sales from every issue of that magazine would be donated to WWTW.

  When the charity’s founder Ed Parker half jokingly suggested that Harry, who had agreed to sponsor the expedition, might wish to join them on the arduous trek, the intrepid royal immediately and enthusiastically replied yes.

  Harry trained intensively alongside the wounded warriors, learning everything that would be necessary to navigate the punishing subzero temperatures and shifting ice floes, including working with a dietician from GlaxoSmithKline who devised meals containing the proper nutrients for such an athletic undertaking in extreme conditions.

  All of the warriors’ belongings were packed and pulled on sleds called pulks. They carried tents, cookstoves, fuel, medical supplies, weapons, radios, and toiletries.

  Liberated once again from the long shadow of his protection officers, Harry was free to be himself, to enjoy the spectacular rainbow of colors refracted through the ice that transformed the treacherous terrain into a fantastical floating fairyland.

  He had to duck out of the North Pole expedition before it ended, however, for a prior engagement. Harry had always had William’s back, but on April 29, 2011, he would play his most important supporting role to date.

  That chilly spring morning, at exactly 10:10, William and Harry streamed out of the driveway of Clarence House in a maroon chauffeur-driven Bentley and headed down Pall Mall past thousands of cheering well-wishers toward Westminster Abbey, where William would wed commoner Catherine Middleton. Harry, acting as William’s supporter—best man, in American parlance—was dressed in the navy blue uniform of a captain of the Household Cavalry.

  Filled with all the pomp and circumstance one expects of a royal wedding, it was the most glamorous and exciting event in a generation; but the night before, both princes had made an effort to be normal. Harry and William took an impromptu walkabout among the eager celebrants, members of the public from all over the world who had camped out on the Mall hoping to catch a glimpse of the wedding procession. Imagine their surprise when the flap of their tent was parted and they saw the red hair and rosy cheeks of Prince Harry, who asked if they had any drinks and snacks, and whether they minded if he joined them!

  Although Catherine’s maid of honor, her sister Pippa Middleton, nearly stole the show with her figure-hugging gown, and there was a great deal of speculation as to whether she and Harry might be the next royal couple, Pippa did bring a date to the wedding. Chelsy was Harry’s plus one. William and Kate had been given the Queen’s permission to break with decades of royal protocol by tearing up the guest list the prince’s advisors had handed him, which was littered with strangers whose names he didn’t recognize. Write your own list with your friends’ names at the top, his granny told him. Ho
w normal!

  During the reception Harry’s best-man toast was warm and funny and affectionately teasing, “taking the piss” out of his big brother as he joked about William’s receding hairline and the baby talk he and Kate engaged in, along with the pet names they had for each other, a dead mimic of both of them. Still, he took time to acknowledge their mother and how proud and happy she would have been on that day. William has a tough act to follow.

  MEANWHILE, HARRY CONTINUED to pursue his ambition of becoming a helicopter pilot, with the hope of a second military deployment to the front lines. In February 2012, now twenty-seven, he completed his requisite sixteen months of training and was awarded the top prize for best front seat pilot, bestowed on “the student whose overall performance during the course is assessed as the best among his peer group.”

  Harry was also a free agent. By the New Year, he and Chelsy had split for good. As much as she loved Harry, she coveted her privacy and had never been all in for a life in the public fishbowl and the rigidity of royal protocol.

  Harry threw his energy into “finishing the things” his mother “didn’t get the chance to.” In addition to representing the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee, he walked in Diana’s footsteps, visiting Bustamante Hospital for Children in Jamaica, which had been on his mum’s 1997 schedule, making his tour there particularly poignant. Ignoring his printed itinerary, Harry gave additional time to the children, speaking with them and sitting by their hospital bedsides.

  Later in the day, Harry demonstrated his commitment to the Commonwealth when he utterly captivated Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, who was on record as supporting the removal of the Queen as Jamaica’s head of state. Holding hands as they posed for a photo op, Ms. Simpson-Miller gushed about the charismatic young prince, “I’m in love with him!”

  Harry then visited RISE Life Management Services, a program that provides educational and vocational support and opportunities to inner-city children. All formality was jettisoned when Harry removed his tie and, in his blue suede shoes, began dancing with the students to a reggae beat. Another dream came true when he met the widow of Bob Marley, one of his musical idols. Rita Marley presented Harry with a scarf from her husband’s collection in Jamaica’s national colors of green, red, black, and yellow. It would become a cherished souvenir.

  On July 18, 2012, Harry attended the London premiere of the latest Batman franchise, The Dark Knight Rises, followed by a bit of barhopping with a stunning blonde. The following day, Fleet Street identified her as Cressida Bonas, a twenty-three-year-old bohemian beauty from a large family of artistically inclined aristocrats. Harry and Cressy had been introduced by his first cousins, the princesses Eugenie and Beatrice; and in 2010 the prince ran the London marathon with Cressy. With thirty-two of their friends, they formed a giant caterpillar, earning a Guinness Book of World Records mention as the largest group ever to cross the finish line in such a manner. Afterward, the group formed the Big Change, a charitable trust working for young people.

  Cressy’s mother, Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon, had been a cover girl during the swinging sixties, and her father, Jeffrey Bonas, is an entrepreneur, a businessman, and a historian. One of Cressy’s half sisters, Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, now an actress, had once dated Prince William. Their grandfather is Edward Curzon, the 6th Earl Howe.

  But if anyone was thinking that now was the time to engrave the royal wedding invitations, Harry got in his own way again—and in hot water with just about everyone—when he was caught behaving like a character out of the Hangover films.

  Harry had been an ambassador for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games held in London. After the games closed in August, he jetted to Las Vegas with some of his mates for a guys’ only holiday that had all the hallmarks of a Hollywood film. The lads stayed in a luxury suite in one of the newer hotels in Vegas, where every excess was indulged. There was a wet bar, a massage table, and a pool table inside the suite. Mohair padded walls masked the noise of mad carousing. The guys partied hard at nightclubs and casinos with bikini-clad go-go dancers. Harry challenged Olympian Ryan Lochte, who at that time had earned two gold medals and a pair of silvers, to a race in the hotel pool; and he invited a group of women to party upstairs in his suite.

  When the ladies arrived, Harry, having lost at strip poker, was nearly starkers, playing air guitar with a pool cue and calling for a single glove so he could perform his Michael Jackson impression.

  Because no one, including his protection officers, thought to confiscate mobile phones for the duration of the evening, photos of these birthday-suited shenanigans later appeared online. These days, anyone with a camera in their phone can be a paparazzo. And there was no denying that the naked guy protectively cupping the crown jewels and standing in a spooning embrace with an equally nude female reveler was Prince Harry. The giveaway was the leather string necklace that a Botswanan shaman had given to him to ward off evil spirits. It certainly had failed to protect him from all the alcoholic spirits the revelers had spent the night consuming.

  In the wake of the incident, reaction was mixed—from he’s representing the Queen wherever he goes, shame on him, to “everyone knows that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

  However, there’s fun and there’s conduct unbecoming anyone, least of all a member of Britain’s royal family. It raised the inevitable questions of character.

  But Harry assumed responsibility for his immaturity, telling CNN “I probably let myself down. It was probably a case of me being too much army and not enough prince . . . but at the end of the day I was in a private area and there should be a certain amount of privacy that one should expect.”

  As Harry approached his twenty-ninth birthday in 2013, his thoughts turned to settling down. In an interview for America’s ABC-TV, he admitted, “I’ve longed for kids since I was very, very young. I’m waiting to find the right person—someone who’s willing to take on the job.”

  The free spirits Harry had been attracted to in the past had been unwilling to make the personal sacrifices required of a royal. The Windsors are born into their duties. Their spouses must choose that lifestyle and understand the compromises that accompany it. It’s hardly all ermine and tiaras. Most people would not trade their normal lives for nearly round-the-clock coverage of their every move, and especially in this age of social media, the constant attack from total strangers online who believe it’s a valuable use of their time to criticize one’s background, appearance, and loved ones.

  For the time being, however, another wish was about to come to fruition. Just eight days before his birthday, Harry returned to Afghanistan for a four-and-a-half-month tour of duty in Helmand Province flying Apache helicopters. He would be based at Camp Bastion (now Camp Shorabak), at twenty-seven square miles, the largest British overseas military base built since World War II, and home to 30,000 military personnel.

  Just before Christmas, while Harry was still in country, he learned that he would be an uncle. As he was no longer “the spare,” now that William and Catherine’s child would be third in line for the succession, Harry’s destiny had changed forever.

  In 2013, he increased his participation in charitable endeavors, traveling to Colorado to attend the Warrior Games, a Paralympic-style competition for wounded servicemen and women. Intrigued, Harry wanted to learn more about the games, with an eye toward producing the event in the United Kingdom. Help for Heroes and Walking With The Wounded were two of Harry’s focal points now. He would eventually rejoin the brave men and women of WWTW in 2014 for their South Pole trek.

  “For every life taken, which is about 450 in Afghanistan, about 4,000 are injured, and that’s what we don’t hear about. Arms, legs that will never grow back, as well as mental injuries. The image of your best friend being blown up next to you, that’s something that will never leave you.”

  That August, Harry followed in his mother’s footsteps to Angola, where thousands of land mines had been planted during the country’s civil war, man
y of which remained long after the conflict had ended. One step could be lethal. Diana visited Angola during the last year of her life; a year later, in 1998, the HALO Trust was created to rid countries of land mines and make them safe for crop planting. In 2013, Harry became patron of the HALO Trust’s 25th Anniversary Appeal, visiting Angola to witness the progress of the mine-clearing projects.

  Meanwhile, Harry’s relationship with Cressida Bonas plodded along. They attended a few weddings of friends from their social set that didn’t have “no ring/no bring” rules attached to the invitations, and vacationed in Verbier, a posh Alpine ski resort, with Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. In March 2014, after dating for almost two years, Harry and Cressy attended the first WE Day UK concert at Wembley Stadium, organized by the nonprofit charity Free the Children. You can’t buy a ticket to an all-star WE Day concert. Students earn one through local and global community service.

  Because it was Cressy’s first official royal engagement, speculation was rife that another type of royal engagement was imminent. But the more Harry and Cressy had the opportunity to spend time together, the more they discovered that, except for their obvious physical attraction, they really didn’t have that much in common. A bohemian at heart, Cressy was a former dance major at university who remained deeply interested in art and culture. In addition to her horror of the spotlight’s harsh glare, she resented the intrusion of passersby snapping photos of her on their cell phones and promptly posting criticism of her hairstyle or what she was wearing.

  Cressy was a beautiful girl who was being lambasted by utter strangers in real time on social media—all because she was the girlfriend of a prince. Who could handle that?