Grief, the Royal Mantle, and an Appraisal of the Empire Book Review: Spare by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

Spare by Prince Harry ultimately makes obvious that Harry doesn’t want to change the status quo, but wants to be in the highest echelons of it, demanding racial equality at the top of a racist empire. 

Spare, the new, widely discussed memoir by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, is the Prince’s attempt at telling his story in his own words (or more accurately, the words of ghost writer, J. R. Moehringer). Given who Harry is, the commercial success of the memoir was completely inevitable. Revelatory excerpts (quick takeaways) from the book such as Harry’s battles with anxiety and panic attacks, Harry’s body count while serving in Afghanistan and deplorable actions of members of the British royal family have been circulating online for the last few weeks simultaneously giving the book a certain gravitas and the whiff of ‘scandal’. All of the promotion (Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex released a six-part Netflix documentary before the book’s release) and coverage of the memoir seems to be almost besides the point for what essentially is a memoir about the contours of unresolved grief—how it warps your mind and memories, shapes your past and your future...

 

 

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