Prince Harry has revealed the “cold-blooded” Christmas gift he received from a royal relative he often steered clear of.
Writing in his memoir Spare, Harry expressed regret over not having more time to connect with great-aunt Princess Margaret after she died. But his feelings towards her won’t alwas positive.
He explained that, initially he felt detached and weary around her, writing: “Growing up, I felt nothing for her, except a bit of pity and a lot of jumpiness. She could kill a houseplant with one scowl. Mostly, whenever she was around, I kept my distance.”
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However, he later acknowledged a sense of kinship, particularly concerning their relationships with their elder siblings. Harry wrote: : “On those rarer-than-rare occasions when our paths crossed, when she deigned to take notice of me, to speak to me, I’d wonder if she had an opinion of me. It seemed that she didn’t. Or else, given her tone, her coldness, the opinion wasn’t much.”
Harry’s change of heart came as he learnt of Margaret’s declining health and reflected on his maturity, noticing similarities between them not apparent before.
He revealed: “Now and then, as I grew older, it struck me that Aunt Margo and I should’ve been friends. We had so much in common. Two Spares. Her relationship with Granny wasn’t an exact dialogue of mine with Willy, but pretty close.
“The simmering rivalry, the intense competition…it all looked familiar. Aunt Margo also wasn’t that dissimilar from Mummy. Both rebels, both labelled as sirens. So, my first thought when I learned in early 2002 that she’d been taken ill was to wish there’d been more time to get to know her.”
Harry is unlikely to spend Christmas with the Royal Family this year, given his decision to step back in 2020 and move to California with his wife Meghan Markle. And esteemed royal biographer Hugo Vickers thinks the onus is on him to send an “olive branch” to his family, after relationships soured.
Speaking to The Sun, he said: “He’s the one who needs to pull himself together and extend the olive branch because he is the one making it difficult between them.
“The most successful members of the Royal Family are the ones who support the King in what he’s doing, and they don’t compete with him.”