TL;DR:
- Prince Harry recalled being asked about the births of Prince George and Princess Charlotte in Spare.
- “You must be joking,” Prince Harry said after being asked about any “misgivings” considering he’d moved further down the line of succession.
- He told a “half-truth” after Prince George’s birth and had two thoughts going through his mind when a journalist treated him as if he’d “received a terminal diagnosis” following Prince Charlotte’s.
As Princess Charlotte celebrates her birthday — she’s 8 years old as of May 2 — revisit what Prince Harry said about her birth as well as Prince George’s in Spare. How the Duke of Sussex reacted to becoming an uncle. Plus, why journalists’ questions on the subject in relation to the line of succession bothered him.
Harry ‘couldn’t’ have been ‘happier’ when Prince William and Kate Middleton welcomed George in 2013
On July 22, 2013, Prince William and Kate Middleton became parents for the first time. They welcomed now-9-year-old George at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, England.
Looking back on becoming an uncle in his memoir, Harry remembered how excited he’d been when George was born.
“I was an uncle. Willy and Kate had welcomed their first child, George, and he was beautiful,” he said (via Spare). “I couldn’t wait to teach him about rugby and Rorke’s Drift, flying and corridor cricket — and maybe give him a few pointers about how to survive life in the fishbowl.”
Harry continued, saying the media “used this joyous occasion as an opportunity to ask me … if I was miserable.”
“What? The baby had moved me one link down the chain of succession, making me fourth from the throne instead of third,” he recalled. “So reporters said, Bad luck, eh?” His response? “You must be joking.”
“There must be some misgivings,” Harry recalled being told. In turn, he offered a “half-truth: “Couldn’t be happier.”
“I was delighted for Willy and Kate, and I was indifferent to my place in the order of succession,” Harry explained. “But nothing to do with either thing, I wasn’t anywhere close to happy.”
Prince Harry had 2 thoughts during questioning about moving further down the line of succession with Charlotte’s birth
Then along came Charlotte and more questions about the line of succession for Harry. On May 2, 2015, the Prince and Princess of Wales became parents for the second time.
“I was an uncle again, and very happy about it,” he said. “But, predictably, during one interview that day or the next a journalist questioned me about it as though I’d received a terminal diagnosis.”
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Harry insisted Charlotte’s birth made him “thrilled to bits” and that he “couldn’t be happier for Willy and Kate” despite talk of being “further down the line of succession.”
As they “pressed,” pointing out that Harry was “no longer even the Spare of the Spare,” the now-38-year-old had two thoughts.
“First of all, it’s a good thing to be farther from the center of a volcano,” he remembered thinking. And, “second, what kind of monster would think of himself and his place in the line of succession at such a time, rather than welcoming a new life into the world?”
The ‘preposterous line of questions’ about succession and the birth of Charlotte ended with a ‘naggy auntie’ response from Harry
Harry continued. He once “heard a courtier say that when you were fifth or sixth in the line you were ‘only a crash away.’ I couldn’t imagine living that way.”
Meanwhile, the aforementioned journalist “persisted” with questions about Charlotte’s birth. “Did the birth make me question my choices?” Harry remembered them asking. “Choices?” he replied. “Isn’t it time you settled down?” the journalist asked.
As Harry attempted an answer, they told him, “People are starting to compare you to Bridget Jones.” As in the film character, played by Renée Zellweger, desperate to find a partner.
“It’ll happen, I assured him, or her,” Harry continued, sharing he couldn’t “recall the face, only the preposterous line of questions.”
The questions went on: “When, kind sir, do you plan to wive?” “It will happen when it happens, I said, the way you’d assure a naggy auntie,” Harry said. “As the journalist “stared with abject … pity,” one question remained: “Will it, though?”
Harry made no mention of Prince Louis’ birth in Spare or if he, once again, received questions about the line of succession when the 5-year-old was born in April 2018.
Today, Harry is no. 5 in the line of succession behind his brother as well as his niece and nephews.
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