There’s a maxim that sustains the British royal family: Never complain, never explain. The logic is clear: If they whinge about their gilded cage, it might offend their less privileged subjects to the point of revolt; if they reveal a little too much about themselves, it destroys their mystique, which helps sustain them. People loved the queen because she didn’t seem entirely human.
To American ears, of course, this has always sounded ridiculous. Raised on a steady diet of freedom, in a country that was born a democracy, the American public has long viewed the Windsor stiff upper lip not as dignity but as repression. Which is why the United States so enthusiastically latched on to the man who defied his family—by doing a lot of complaining and a lot of explaining.
For six years, the American public has gobbled up the transatlantic fairy tale of Henry Charles Albert David Windsor, a.k.a. the Duke of Sussex, a.k.a. Prince Harry. He was the ultimate victim, the enlightened noble hounded by a predatory British press, fleeing across an ocean to find sanctuary in California. But following last week’s conclusion of Harry’s botched court case against the publisher of the Daily Mail, that fairy tale has finally run out of road. In fact, it might go down in history as a cautionary tale about why the royal maxim is essential, the fable of the prince who complained too much.
