The news that an invitation had apparently landed to Charles’ coronation on May 6 – a glitzy affair that will be watched by millions – comes as Harry said he had always “felt different” to the rest of the his family.
Harry’s remarks, which were splashed across Sunday papers in Britain, were made in an interview with Gabor Mate, a Hungarian-Canadian psychologist.
The interview, which was streamed live on Saturday, focused on emotions and mental health. Harry did not raise the request to leave Frogmore Cottage, the residence where he and Meghan stayed during their rare visit to the UK. He also did not say whether they would attend his father’s coronation in May.
Harry and Meghan’s attendance at the coronation – will they be invited? Are they coming? will they overshadow Charles? does anyone care? – has been the subject of fevered speculation in Britain following the publication of Harry’s memoir, “Spare”, which details his dysfunctional relationship with his family.
But Harry has previously spoken of wanting to mend relations with his family and has not ruled out attending the coronation. When asked about it in January, Harry said “the door is always open” and “the ball is in their court.” It is unclear whether his calculation of whether to come may have changed after the reprieve from Frogmore.
During his Saturday interview, Harry told Mate that “I definitely felt throughout my life, my younger years, that I felt a little bit different from the rest of my family.”
“I felt strange being in this container, and I know my mother felt the same, so it makes sense to me,” he said of his mother Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 when he was 12 years old. .
Harry said he felt “a huge responsibility not to pass on any trauma or negative experiences that I had as a child or as a man growing up” and that he made sure to “smother” his own children with “love and affection “. .”
Harry and Meghan stepped down as working royals in 2020 and now live in California with their two children, three-year-old Archie and one-year-old Lilibet. Archie’s fourth birthday is May 6, Coronation Day.
In the 90-minute interview, the Duke also discussed going to therapy and using drugs to cope with the trauma of his mother’s death.
The Duke said he was initially worried about going to therapy, saying: “I thought if I went to therapy it would kill me and I would lose everything I had left, whatever I managed to hold my mother.”
“It turns out that wasn’t the case. I didn’t lose that – quite the opposite,” he said. “I turned what I thought was supposed to be sadness to try to prove to her that I missed her to realize that she just really wanted me to be happy and that was a huge weight off my chest. “
He also said that cocaine “didn’t do anything for me,” but marijuana “really helped me.”
In their chat, Mate said he believed the Duke had attention deficit disorder, or ADD. Harry joked in response, “Thanks for the free session.”
The couple also spoke about Harry’s ten years of service in the British Armed Forces and Afghanistan, where he completed two tours.
Harry said he was a “fantastic candidate” for the armed forces because of his troubled past. “I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world, but in the UK we certainly tend to recruit from broken homes, people who are ready for it,” he said.
After Mate said he disagreed with the war, Harry replied, “There were a lot of us who didn’t necessarily agree or disagree, but you did what you were sent to do.”
Harry also described Meghan as “an extraordinary person.”
“People have said my wife saved me,” he said. “I was stuck in this world, she was from another world and helped pull me out of it. My partner is an extraordinary person and I am eternally grateful for the wisdom and space she has been able to give me.”
“The two of us have had our own things with our families,” he added.