Spare | Prince Harry

"I read the article several times.  Despite the somber subtext-- something's very wrong with Prince Harry -- I marveled at its tone: larky.  My existence was just fun and games to these people.  I wasn't a human being to them.  I wasn't a fourteen-year-old boy hanging on by his fingernails.  I was a cartoon character, a glove puppet to be manipulated and mocked for fun.  So what if their fun made my already difficult days more difficult, made me a laughingstock before my schoolmates, not to mention the wider world?  So what if they were torturing a child?  All was justified because I was royal, and in their minds royal was synonymous with non-person.  Centuries ago royal men and women were considered divine; now they were insects.  What fun, to pluck their wings." (46)

"I'd often catch Teej looking in my direction, sizing me up, a curious smile on her face-- as though I were something wild that had unexpectedly wandered into their camp.  But instead of shooing me, or using me, as many would've done, she reached out and . . . petted me.  Decades of observing wildlife had given her a feel for wildness, a reverence for it as a virtue and even a basic right.  She and Mike were the first people ever to cherish whatever wildness was still inside me, whatever hadn't been lost to grief-- and paps.  They were outraged that others wanted to eliminate this last bit, that others were keen to put me into a cage." (96)

"I was also Widow Six Seven. I'd had plenty of nicknames in my life, but this was the first nickname that felt more like an alias.  I could really and truly hide behind it.  For the first time I was just a name, a random name, and a random number.  No title. And no bodyguard.  Is this what other people feel like every day? I savored the normality, wallowed in it, and also considered how far I'd journeyed to find it.  Central Afghanistan, the dead of winter,  the middle of the night, the midst of a war, while speaking to a man fifteen thousand feet above my head-- how abnormal is your life if that's the first place you ever feel normal?" (139)

"There was an energy about her, a wild joy and playfulness.  There was something in the way she smiled, the way she interacted with Violet, the way she gazed into the camera.  Confident. Free. She believed life was one grand adventure.  I could see that.  What a privilege it would be, I thought, to join her on that journey." (268)

"My emotions are complicated on this subject, naturally, but my bottomline position isn't. I'll forever support my Queen, my Commander in Chief, my Granny.  Even after she's gone.  My problem has never been with the monarchy, nor the concept of monarchy.  It's been with the press and the sick relationship that's evolved between it and the Palace.  I love my Mother Country, and I love my family, and I always will.  I just wish, at the second-darkest moment of my life, they'd both been there for me.
And I believe they'll look back one day and wish they had too."
(386)

___

"Above all my deepest and adoringest thanks to Archie and Lili, for letting Papa go off to read and think and reflect, to my mother-in-law (a.k.a. Grandma), and to my incredible wife, for too many millions of gifts and sacrifices, great and small, to ever enumerate.  Love of my life, thank you, thank you, thank you.  This book would've been impossible (logistically, physically, emotionally, spiritually) without you.  Most things would be impossible without you." (410)