Resumes the directory BL BOOKS with the “editorial product” which will surely be the best-selling of 2023. Spare – The Minor – Of Henry Charles Albert David of Windsorbetter known as Prince Harry published in Italy by Mondadori. In addition to entering the Guinness Book of World Records for sales, this memoir will undoubtedly create effects for the new English monarchy of Charles III.
It was one of the most heartbreaking images of the twentieth century: two little boys, two princes, following their mother’s coffin under the pained and dismayed eyes of the whole world. As the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales was celebrated, billions of people wondered what thoughts crowded William and Harry’s minds, what emotions ran through their hearts, and how their lives would unravel from that moment on.
Finally Harry tells that story, his own.
Before losing his mother, 12-year-old Prince Harry was considered the cheerful and carefree “reserve” (in English spare) of the most serious heir to the throne. That mourning, however, changed everything. Harry found himself facing school problems and battling anger and loneliness. And having blamed the press for his mother’s death, he struggled to accept a life in the limelight.
At twenty-one he joined the army. Discipline gave him stability, and his missions made him a hero at home. But he soon found himself more lost than ever, suffering from PTSD and crippling panic attacks. And most of all, he couldn’t find true love.
Then he met Meghan. The world was captivated by that movie story and rejoiced in their fairytale wedding. Yet, from the beginning, Harry and Meghan have been targeted by the press and have had to suffer waves of insults, racism and lies. Seeing his wife suffer and fearing for their safety and sanity, Harry found himself forced to flee the country to prevent history, tragically, from repeating itself. Over the centuries, few had dared to leave the royal family. The last one had been his mother.
For the first time, Prince Harry tells his story, and he does it with relentless honesty. Shoot. The minor it is an exceptional book, full of details, revelations and intimate reflections, and illuminated by the awareness – conquered at a great price – that love always wins over pain.
We are faced with a memoir, an apparently autobiographical novel, written in the first person which, in over five hundred pages, traces the 38 years of Prince Harry’s life.
Let’s start from the title which, erroneously, was added in Italian with the subtitle “the minor” putting a huge mute on what the author wanted to communicate. In fact, “Spare” in English means “reserve”. Prince Harry chose this title because there is a saying, far from elegant, in the Windsor house and, it seems, it was pronounced by his father on the day of his birth to Princess Diana: “The Heir and the Spare” – the heir and the reserve – that is, what is required to “produce” who, in the English line of succession, will become King. According to Harry, his father took leave of the obstetrics department on 12 September 1984 by his then wife Diana telling her: “My I’ve done the job: I’ve given birth to an heir and his reserve… now I can go back to Camilla”. We lacked the stud profile of Prince Charles… and we would have candidly done without it. Reading the book opens and concludes a myriad of anecdotes and little facts (relevant or not) that you may or may not like, but outline a terrible reality: being born in the royal house oppresses and keeps you in a sort of golden cage. A luxurious prison where every behavior and every sentence said publicly must be measured. This is a book of “gossip and life”. I very much doubt that a thirty-eight-year-old writes about himself in that weighty, almost octogenarian old-seaman way. Harry will surely no longer have a court of cicisbei and butlers in tow, having given up the titles… he will certainly have replaced it with a team of editors and Ghostwriters.
We all know the plot of the book since we have been bombarded with all the knowledge about the English royal house: Harry’s childhood, Diana’s death, mourning, absent father, present but bigoted grandmother, difficult relationship with brother, war in Afghanistan, post-war trauma processing, meeting the love of his life, throwing rags at court because of Megan, abandonment of titles, death of his grandmother, and finally the release of a random hummingbird.
I recommend this editorial product to two categories of people:
- to those who have to queue at the hairdresser.
- to those who want to observe the secularization process of one of the last monarchies in the world: Harry with this bookish, has highlighted how useless the crown is and how the inheritance of the major political office of a nation is absolutely unthinkable in contemporary times .
That Charles III is not a Machiavellian prince or an enlightened statesman we had arrived at by ourselves.
As for Harry’s book, I only think that in a hundred years time it will have minimal historiographical relevance. This is the first time in history that an heir to the throne bares the King.
SPARE – the minor – of Prince Harry or whoever he is (Mondadori) | Review