Harry's Revelations: A Man in Narrative

We have to think of Prince Harry as an unhappy human being, at least for much of the book The Reserve.

Until his awakening.

It has a lot to do with Meghan Markle, whose "luminous, angelic face" he discovered on Instagram and who appears as the revenant of his late mother - "Mommy".

In the last photos of Lady Diana who died in an accident, Harry thought he saw a halo above her head, which was only created by the paparazzi's flashing lights.

In "Reserve" Harry tells of his

under difficult conditions.

Although it is more likely that his ghostwriter, the celebrated journalist JR Moehringer, lets the narrator character Harry tell stories: of the suffering after the death of his mother when he was twelve years old, of struggles (with his brother, the media, the Taliban), of revelation and Resurrection.

"Fucking shit.

The crown"

A trauma plot in which a young man can treat his "unprocessed grief", defense mechanisms and emotional congestion despite adverse circumstances - because he confides in the right women, including a psychotherapist - easily nestles into this religious framing.

There is healing and new life, but at the cost of a bigger family row.

Because almost this entire case history revolves around Harry's decades of shock from Diana's accidental death and his difficult search for the "true self", it remains unclear to the end of the text whether it is just badly written or extremely well staged - namely as an authentic confession of one traumatized boy and man in a royal affect-controlled environment, hounded by the tabloids?

Is the awkward style in which, for example, a “gorge from humanity” is described and at the same time something is regularly banged out like “

”, programmatic?

Are the forgotten narrative threads and failed attempts at philosophy symptoms of confusion?

What hurts is true

What is inconsistent and crooked here undoubtedly has a subtext: what is said may not always be beautiful or gentle, but it is undisguised.

It's true.

The conviction repeatedly expressed in “Reserve” that the truth hurts is part of the logic of the trauma plot in it.

But the text relies even more heavily on the implicitly invoked reversal: what hurts is true.

And needs to be said.

Whether intentional or not, the book definitely stages a public

.

As it should be, pain and anger are expressed and, touchingly naive, resentments about being the eternal “substitute”, the “reserve” next to the heir to the throne William, are denied.

Harry's memories are initially addressed to "Pa" (King Charles), "Willy", and the "world" is a sort of extended (and mailed!) "Letter to Father" explaining why Harry and Meghan are leaving the British royal family to have.

"

" it says, and the 503 pages of the book seem to be driven by a strong narrative compulsion.

From the urge to correct and justify, from the desire to reveal delicate, private details from one's own life and that of family members.

Unfortunately, the agenda of maximum honesty apparently also includes recording banal, inconsequential details or endlessly mentioning Harry's penis, which was also "highly traumatized", frozen after a North Pole expedition.

All of this makes a text that was presumably very consciously drafted appear oddly overdriven.

But also very close.

Harry's I-message is in itself an affront to the royal family.

The book, in which he explains and complains in detail, in which the uncovering of secrets is the narrative principle, leads an intimacy offensive in a conflict that the former soldier hardly disguised compares to a war.

Against the regime of the palace – if you keep quiet, you stay – Harry puts in place a hypermedialized therapy session in which he shows as much of himself as possible to as many people as possible.

And because a silent counterpart reinforces narrative compulsions, what one could carelessly call a repetition compulsion at this point is probably unavoidable.