Here’s Why Prince Harry’s Memoir ‘Spare’ Will (And Won’t) Matter To King Charles III

King Charles II has had a challenging 2022. The enormous workload that this year set upon the new monarch’s shoulders on September 8, upon the death of his mother, won’t be completed by the time the calendar rolls over to mark the Gregorian new year. Charles is currently seated at Sandringham with the extended family, as Queen Elizabeth would have been — with the notable addition of Sarah Ferguson, whom Prince Philip could not abide and whom Charles re-invited this year for her first royal Christmas (with her daughters and their families) in 31 years. The Christmas “crackers” have all been popped, the jokey presents exchanged, the Boxing Day shoot has been had.

But Charles is at work this week, and the immense chores continue apace in all monarchical fields of endeavor: securing the political union of the immediate United Kingdom (Scotland, North Ireland, Wales, and England); securing the Commonwealth even as certain countries plan their retreats from it; maintaining the unending tsunami of parliamentary and ministerial dispatch boxes requiring his attention and/or approval; and settling the enormous number of royal patronages left in the wake of the departed, first, those of his mother, then those of his disgraced brother Andrew, and finally, those of his self-exiled son Harry.

Last April the regimental commander of the esteemed Grenadier Guards — one of the several regiments of the scarlet blouses and big bearskins — sent out the — for him and his troops — delightful news that the regiment’s honorary royal patron/colonel Prince Andrew had, upon request, returned the honorary colonelcy of the Grenadier Guards which he had inherited from his father as Philip retired from public life in 2017, to the Queen. At the regimental mess and other events, the officers and presumably the troops had reportedly been uncomfortable toasting Andrew’s health in the wake of his decades-long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew’s resultant settlement of Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s far-reaching 2021 lawsuit. They had asked for a change in royal patrons. Andrew was forced to surrender the colonelcy to the Queen.

Notably, back in November, rumors of a crucial meet between Andrew and his elder brother surfaced, during which event Charles reportedly had to inform Andrew in no uncertain terms that his days as a working royal were over. To an outside observer with even a modicum of knowledge of Andrew’s public travails of the last three years, that may seem anticlimactic — if not actually also completely beside the point of the wholesale banning of the wayward prince. But the obdurate second son had been lobbying his mother and had in royal parlance “entertained” some shred of hope that he could return to charitable action. Just a few weeks after their mother’s death, Charles had to tell him there was no way back. Put another way, as recently as last month, it was apparently still necessary to wrestle Andrew from his dream that their had been a possibility of return to the life.

So far, so good. Charles hasn’t yet figured out to whom the Grenadier Guards will go — for the moment, they’re in his portfolio. Charles did move equally highly regarded Irish Guards from William’s military patronages and gave them to Kate Middleton — whose popularity in the very telling YouGov polls is high and getting higher, as her brother-in-law Prince Harry’s popularity dives to historic lows — just a few points north of Andrew’s all-time lowest-estimation-of-a-royal in the eyes of the British public, as a matter of fact. The newly-minted Princess of Wales is fast becoming a workhorse for the monarch on the order of Sophie Rhys-Jones, the Countess of Wessex, Prince Edward’s spouse. Thus life, and the musical chairs of official royal business, proceeds.

Which brings us to King Charles’ most complex dealings with his second son. There are a few basics to observe in these dealings. As felicitous as the “Vol.1” and “Vol.2” Netflix drops before Xmas might have been for the streaming giant and their contracted freelancer/producer/contributor/reality stars, the palaces and their most directly affected inhabitants — Charles in Clarence House/Buckingham Palace and William operating out of Kensington — were elegantly mum on the several accusations leveled at them (and in general at the operation of the monarchy) by Harry and Meghan Markle. As “Vol. 1” and “Vol. II” of ‘Harry & Meghan’ madly streamed (in the biggest first week drop for Netflix), Charles and William went about the royals’ traditional charitable holiday doings more or less unfettered. Charles danced the hora at a Jewish community centre with Anne Frank’s own nonagenarian step-sister, needless to say, a first for a British monarch, and he was roundly applauded for his seasonal brio in the press. However carefully curated by the courtiers, the image was one of uninterrupted work.

Since the launch of the three ‘episodes’ in London drive-time of December 8 and the second group of three in mid-morning of December 15, the courtiers charged with such sensitive matters in the palaces found themselves in the rare position, both willed and not, of not really having to respond to anything in the videos. Specifically, what we might call the upper court, Charles and William, have found themselves in the extraordinary circumstance of a strange alliance with the British press against Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markle’s allegedly damning “content.” Quite a number of the Fleet Street stalwarts on the royal beat — including the Daily Mail and the Murdochs’ Sun, some of whom had been sued and/or blacklisted by Harry and Meghan Markle — were happy to do all the spadework of digging out the (perceived) inaccuracies and/or (perceived) false highlights in the Netflix series.

For his part, Charles III left his quite eloquent statement on all of Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markle’s doings many weeks before the fact of the Netflix mega-drop, significantly, on September 9, from Windsor, the day after Queen Elizabeth died at Balmoral.

This, his first televised address to his country and the world, is a Charles moment worth studying. The frame was set: As his father was, Charles is occasionally and refreshingly straight-spoken, so that he and his speechwriters took great pains in the eight-and-a-half minute oration to boil the thing down. And in essence, the task at hand was for the king to lay out for the nation the new plans for the monarchy.

He did that in three short, emotive, searing chapters, the first of devoted thanks to his mother, the second sketching out his own and Camila’s new roles, and the third, announcing William’s and Kate’s royal designation as Prince and Princess of Wales. It was direct communication from the new monarch, and in fact an important matter of state.

Of Harry and Meghan the new king said exactly one fascinating sentence: “I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas.”

MORE FROM FORBESPrince Harry’s Tell-All Memoir, ‘Spare,’ Has A Publication Date, A Cover, And Is Primed For ImpactBy Guy Martin

No royal identifier or title attached, no country of residence, no specificity other than the names and the task before them, the sentence was at once elegant and telling: Life moves on, there are much bigger fish to fry, this is the new king now and his are far different concerns than his second son’s list of highly public complaints.

Charles’ voice broke only once, and then only slightly, a few paragraphs down in the speech from there as he gave the country and his mother a final thanks. Addressing his mother directly, he quoted Shakespeare’s grand line for Horatio in Hamlet, Act V, as Horatio watched Prince Hamlet die. “May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,” the king said.

It’s not clear what’s been left in Harry’s book after the reported “editing” over this year, if any editing to whatever might be considered the original in fact occurred at all. But whatever’s in the thing — whatever charges are present in the Spare narrative that haven’t yet been aired by the Windsors of Montecito at the Crown or at individuals in the royal family — it’s not likely that the book will provoke any sort of thaw in the increasingly chilly relations between the Windsors of Windsor and the Windsors of Montecito.

But: Noting the new king’s extreme diligence and devotion to his new role, and the breezy, hands-on no-nonsense of the first two months of his reign, it’s equally unlikely that the publication of Spare in two short weeks will provoke any comment from the palaces at all. As with the Netflix launch before Christmas, the British press, a broad target of the couple’s itself, will be dissecting it, sentence by sentence.