For any Scapegoat ever.. This story is for you.
Coming of age in the Royal Fam from Harry’s perspective: Spare
I’ve been a bit under the weather the past few days. The sky is finally blue, I often don’t do well when it’s overcast. I had to clear my schedule this time around for lots of rest.. so I decided to listen to Prince Harry’s new book, Spare. He was the narrator, making it all the more enticing. The inflections in his voice were just as telling as the words he was speaking.
I have no doubt there was a ghostwriter involved, organizing and crafting, but Harry tells his story in a way that is quite believable. I felt throughout the whole account there was actually so much more, but how do you simmer it all down to a digestible read/listen? I think that’s part of what happened there.
The other part is, this guy isn’t a saint and is a product of his upbringing. He doesn’t want to add too much that is unbecoming (though he doesn’t deflect partying, etc.), but there’s also an agenda here. That being said, what he’s saying and doing seems to be speaking his truth and acting on it, taking himself (and his family) out of an abusive situation, seeing from outside the royal bubble, and finally using the media for his benefit rather than being the media-scapegoat his family set him up to be.
Hard to wrap my head around, the Spare is the runner up should anything happen to the heir.. but he also said it’s an understanding he’s had from his very beginning: if a kidney was needed, bone marrow, or anything of the sort, he was the spare part.
He also very much seemed to be the one used to distract the media away from anyone else’s life around him. The underlying theme: being misrepresented and not stood up for. Not protected. In fact, dropped in the fire, offered up to the wolves.
It was heart-wrenching to hear. Another underlying theme was how his mother died being chased by paparazzi and how the paparazzi affected his whole life, chasing him, stalking him, and anyone close to him. The dangerous side rather than the glamorous side of fame. How he often felt fear, especially after he had a partner he was worried about, and children. His whole perspective about Paparazzi was the life-threatening aspect of how they didn’t care how they retrieved pictures. They didn’t stop, even when Princess Diana’s car crashed and she was not moving inside. They continued to snap pictures through the windows. It’s pretty eerie.
What’s so striking to me too, is this stream of consciousness of hierarchy. That someone is so much more somehow, that it’s fascinating to know more about them, their private life. I was fascinated to read this book. Had someone else written it, who was not Prince Harry, would I have cared? Or even heard about it?
Initially I felt like this guy was a frat-boy-kinda dude. Uninteresting to me. But, as I suspect the agenda was, it pulled me in and created a deeper perspective on what was going on with this person from the time he was young 11, when his mom died, to how he was trained to believe he wasn’t smart, less smart, less special than his brother, and that he was a royal disappointment. He had trauma that was never dealt with (until he was an adult) and then he went into military training cutting off even more emotional connection with his trauma and unresolved grief.
His scapegoat journey was relatable: having to figure things out for himself, having to rely on himself and his own intuition, even when he wanted to believe the best of situations that were not good for him. The best of people who were not looking out for him. Having a hard time believing that people who were supposed to love him, were using him as a.. spare.. or someone to blame, even in ridiculous or irrational circumstances.
When someone has to remove themselves from family, there’s a reason. And the first go-to that the perps of scapegoating try to admonish is, “You must be crazy.” It’s spellbinding to see this over and over in stories, in this story, in history, in women’s history. And then, ever so eventually, the Truth comes out. But by then, the evolved scapegoat is long gone, boundaried-up, living their best life. Once you know, you can’t unknow. There’s a fine line between seeing the matrix of dysfunctional dynamics and continuing to live magickly, but oh so possible.
Any Evolved-Scapegoat Goddesses out there, Here’s to your Truth,
