Mark’s words on LinkedIn – Prince Harry’s documentary and upcoming release of ‘Spare’

As the dust settled around Harry and Megan’s Netflix documentary there was a feeling of stalemate; those who thought them attention-seeking Hollywood wannabe egomaniacs found enough dirt to entrench that point of view, and those who thought them innocent victims of outdated, prejudiced hegemony felt there was enough justifiable grievance in there to vindicate that point of view.
 
The documentary was hagiography and had the clear aim of undermining the monarchy, but Harry and Megan at least came away from that documentary with a shred of dignity intact; they hadn’t lowered the tone, and they weren’t desperate.
 
This week, the book excerpts gushing out via the tabloids have thrown all of that out the window. This is base-level, lowest common denominator, petty, grubby mudslinging, a complete miscalculation that could, counterintuitively, help the royal family in the long run.
 
The miscalculations include, variously, the title. Its Harry Potter-esque ‘young adult melodrama’ as a word choice aside, ‘Spare’ does not suggest a guy who wants a normal life or a guy who saw his mum and then wife ostracised by tyrannical medieval elitism, but a little Prince whose salty about not getting to be the next king.
 
Then there are the salacious stories – cheap, celebrity autobiography fare, the naval-gazing, and the outright attempts to shift blame and revise any previous negative publicity, all dressed inauthentically as a confessional. Not to mention the apparent inconsistencies between the documentary and the book, whether factually or just tonally.
 
Finally, the attempted character assassination of William. Whatever the truth of specific accusations, they’re currently being howled into a vacuum in such an extreme, one-sided way that people are questioning their credibility.
 
Circumstantially we know that things aren’t good between the royal brothers, but William has never criticised Harry publicly, and this lack of opposition, let alone aggression, makes him seem outright reasonable to many people. If you only overhear one side of an argument, you generally assume that that person is the aggressor, the unreasonable party, and in this case, that’s Harry.
 
As a crisis manager, I rarely advocate complete silence, but for the royals, it might be the right course in this instance. When your opponent’s criticisms are delivered in a format many believe to be a hysterical tantrum that in any case, is being picked apart by media and commentators, then silence in itself can be imbued with dignity, reason and ultimately, the moral high ground. 

Mark’s words on LinkedIn – Harry’s documentary and upcoming release of ‘Spare’