Sometimes, I think the unofficial motto of the UK is “misery loves company.” Not just that, but it feels like people over there enjoy projecting their misery onto other people. People who live in Montecito, California, for example. I won’t pretend that some awful things have happened to Prince Harry in recent months and recent years, but I find it ridiculous that a British channel put together a documentary called Prince Harry: My Terrible Year. With that kind of title, you would think that Harry had given an interview where he actually said the words “I’ve had a terrible year.” You would be wrong. Instead, the documentary filmmakers got various royalists to sit on camera and royalsplain how Harry is having a “terrible year,” while they blame him for complaining about his terrible year, something which he has not done. The big headline is that QEII’s former press secretary said bitchy words about Harry.
Prince Harry needs to stop painting himself as a victim because the public have had enough of hearing ‘how awful his life is’, a long serving aide to Queen Elizabeth II has warned. Ailsa Anderson was at the Queen’s side for 12 years as her press secretary and worked ‘very closely’ with Her Majesty’s grandson before he met Meghan Markle.
Speaking to a new documentary about Harry’s ‘terrible’ 2025, Ms Anderson has said he is a ‘very warm, engaging and kind person’ who has lost his way and needs to shed his victim mentality. In a message directed at the Duke of Sussex she said: ‘Stop being the victim and start being the hero of the piece, start writing your own script. I think people are just getting a little bit tired of how Prince Harry thinks the world is against him and how awful his life is’.
Ailsa, who worked for the Queen between 2001 and 2013, says that the exiled prince is ‘too impulsive’ and has also unwisely made public private matters about his family, including King Charles’ health. She said: ‘I think trust is paramount in every walk of life, if you can’t trust your family, who can you trust?’.
Charles and William will fear that if they were to welcome Harry back, ‘private information would then be leaked’, she said.
Channel 5’s documentary Prince Harry: My Terrible Year was broadcast on Saturday night. On it experts have suggested that they believe that Harry does want reconciliation with his family but his ‘ego’ is in the way. Psychotherapist Emma Reed Turrell said: ‘Reconciliation is absolutely possible with moments of accountability and responsibility on both sides.’ She said in a message for Harry: ‘Stick a pin in your ego for a moment and focus not on being right, but being in a relationship. There needs to be forgiveness on both sides.’
Gaslighting on a horrific scale: “If you can’t trust your family, who can you trust?” In fact, Harry does not trust his birth family and he has ample reason for that distrust. He doesn’t trust his violent, temperamental, wrathful and enraged brother. He doesn’t trust his weak, horrible father. He doesn’t trust his terrible stepmother or all of her contacts in the press.
“I think people are just getting a little bit tired of how Prince Harry thinks the world is against him and how awful his life is…” Other than his press during the Invictus Games, Harry has only given one interview about his family this year, correct? That interview was right after the High Court basically said that the Windsors and the Met Police don’t have to protect Harry at all if they don’t want to. In that interview, Harry spoke of an “establishment stitch-up” but he also spoke about how he simply wants to be able to speak to his cancer-ridden father. He wasn’t complaining about “the world is against me,” he was being quite specific about the British establishment lining up to purposefully put him in mortal danger if and when he visits the UK. Anyway, this whole thing is such a farce.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- The opening ceremony of the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 08 Feb 2025 Credit: Dutch Press Photo/Cover Images **NOT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLICATION IN THE NETHERLANDS OR FRANCE**
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- Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex at Wheelchair Basketball in Vancouver Convention Centre during Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025 Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 09 Feb 2025 Credit: Dutch Press Photo/Cover Images **NOT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLICATION IN THE NETHERLANDS OR FRANCE**
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- Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend wheelchair basketball at the Vancouver Convention Centre during the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver Featuring: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 10 Feb 2025 Credit: INSTARimages
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- Swimming during the 2025 Invictus Games Featuring: Prince Harry Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 14 Feb 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Volleyball at Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), at the 2025 Invictus Games Featuring: Prince Harry Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 15 Feb 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- The Duke of Sussex salutes during the sitting volleyball final at Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), at the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver, Canada Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 15 Feb 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- The Duke of Sussex during the medal presentation following the sitting volleyball final at Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), at the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver, Canada Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 15 Feb 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Sitting Volleyball in Vancouver Convention Centre during Invictus Game Featuring: Prince Harry Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 15 Feb 2025 Credit: Dutch Press Photo/Cover Images **NOT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLICATION IN THE NETHERLANDS OR FRANCE**
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- Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex at the Closing Ceremony of the 2025 Invictus Games at the Rogers Arena Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 16 Feb 2025 Credit: Dutch Press Photo/Cover Images **NOT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLICATION IN THE NETHERLANDS OR FRANCE**
So they completely ignore his own quotes about how happy he is living in California with his wife and children? They ignored how fulfilled he is with jobs and philanthropy that have nothing to do with the royals? He is writing his own script and he is the hero of it, like all who find the courage to leave a brainwashing cult. When has he said anything about Charles’ health that isn’t what Charles himself has revealed? He has cancer.
They wish he was miserable and terrible. Instead he thrives while the Lazy couple are still MIA after their freebie yacht.
Swap out Harry for William and there you have it.
Heir to the throne, all the money in the world, raised in a family whose supposed sole reason for existence is service with a lifetime of possible fulfillment and endless opportunities to do good in front of him, control of the press, three healthy children, access to all the mental health services and nutrition and exercise services anyone would ever want for their body and soul …. And he’s miserable.
Those gutter rats show how terrible their year has been by focusing on the man who is living his best life far away from them instead of the man who lives with them. The desperation is at epic proportions
This. Absolutely. They long for him to be regretful, exiled, lonely, unhappy.
He isn’t. He has a gorgeous wife and kids, a lovely home and lots of life-affirming projects. Unlike TOB.
It’s also another one of those things where the audience for this is the left-behinds. For William so he can self-soothe to the idea that Harry is regretful, exiled, lonely and unhappy. When yes, he’s just not. But it’s like they have to keep telling themselves that their ex is miserable to feel better about themselves. Poor Harry on a beautiful beach with his beautiful wife watching his beautiful kids learn to surf before they returning to their beautiful house in Montecito. Please. No one lives a life free of regrets but I doubt that Harry is wallowing in them by any means.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Harry was supposed to find he couldn’t function outside The Family. His marriage to Meghan (the “degree” marriage with the three-year potential life span) was supposed to fall apart under the pressure. Harry was supposed to come back, broke, contrite, hat in hand and Archie under his arm, begging for his old place back. The Family is still in shock.
They still don’t understand Harry at all. He always comes back stronger, smarter and more focused from any setback. In some ways that we know of publicly – it has been a challenging year.
But that’s balanced by Harry’s LIFE. He lives a life where he’s free to do good, to be with his family, to explore his interests, to cultivate his relationships with friends and family and to deepen his understanding of himself and what he wants to accomplish in the world – while having an amazing team and partner at his side to help him achieve his aims and goals – philanthropic and business. And he’s absolutely doing incredible work.
I do think that there have been very hard things this year for him. But there have been hard things for him every year. Just read or listen to spare.
But that these things don’t define a year. They are challenges or bullshit but they don’t define your existence.
His father is very ill.
His charity was stolen out from under him by a truly horrible individual with the backing, planning by and implementation of the palace- not William, he’s not nearly intelligent enough. But evil slimy minions? Yes.
And he lost his court case to get security that would ensure his safety – as a veteran who is on terrorist hit lists to say nothing of the dangers aimed at him, Meghan and his children by the royal institution and the UK media. I doubt it was a surprise but the things uncovered in discovery definitely were shocking to him.
But truly. The saddest thing is his charity. For those children – at this moment and with the stopping of USAID, the loss of the good work being done could not have come at a worse time for them. Harry won’t abandon them but that really really sucks.
That said – now that he’s free to create a new entity not under the supervision of the British charity commission to help the children impacted by HIV / AIDS and other factors – I can’t imagine he’s not going to rebuild bigger and better and smarter. He was so young when he created that charity. He’s learned so much. And he now has people around him who want him to succeed.
I’m not claiming to know him. These are just my opinions as an observer. But he has stated over and over again how happy he is. That’s the foundation. Happiness and gratitude. Everything else are issues to be tackled and dealt with to the best of his ability. Because that’s just what it means to be human.
This is so freaking pathetic. Do they not understand how TERRIBLE this looks for all of them, going on and on about how unhappy Harry is?
He’s gone, he’s thriving, get over it. This really has hit the deranged level of obsession.
Big load of horse shit nothing more.
That was my impression as well.
I feel like he needs to get a restraining order against the whole f–king country. This is unhinged.
Hard agree.
What an odd documentary. As Harry said they make and create the news. In this case, they make and create narratives about his life.
Anderson is like Arbiter. Their employment with QE2 was decades ago but they’re suffering from irrelevance. At least the Palace “sources” are now outing themselves.
How can people thrive when you’re surrounded by such miserable people? Glad they got away. He’s happy, they’re not. They’re quite terrible.
Ailsa Anderson has actually been pretty fair in the past and mostly avoided speaking negatively about the sussexes but this direct message to Harry about stop playing the victim is gross and has me questioning anything she says. Harry hasn’t said the world is against him or how awful his life is. That’s completely made-up. Did he try and get security for his family? Yes. Was he disappointed and felt it unfair? Of course. But where in that has he ever said his life was awful? Or that the entire world is against him? That’s made-up fairy-tale projection. The fact that Ailsa even said that has completely discredited her. And that she acted like she was speaking to Harry directly, my god. Hope the paycheck was worth it. Maybe she wants William or Kate to hire her idk.
I think some of these more ” respectable” royalists who aren’t just in it to make a buck realize the long-term impact of the Wales’ laziness, Charles’s cancer, and the Sussexes success outside of the institution. These aren’t the Tom Bower, and Angela Levin’s. These people believe in the institution of monarchy and are angry now that Harry isn’t coming back to save them.
They know the the Zoom monarchy that the Wales’ want to do is not only not sustainable for decades but that eventually even the most checked out person is going to realize they are literally just funding a billionaire who gets tax breaks and privileges and can’t even do the most basic BS charity work to justify it.
Projecting much? Any observer believing his/her own eyes would see that the BM is projecting its own miserable year onto Harry. They weren’t allowed to cover his landmine walk. They had no clue about the Disneyland trip or the surf lessons. They had no access to the Sussexes at all and had to rely on photos taken by other paid photographers or try to capture images from With Love Meghan. They are losing clicks and money, having to pay for images, rather than making others pay them for images.
It sucks to be out of the loop, starved and frozen out. So instead of blaming themselves for making this bed they have to lay in, they make up some noise about Harry. My prediction is it will have piss-poor ratings.
Why do they act as if Harry divulged in the interview that Charles had cancer? His 75 year old father has cancer, saying I don’t know how much time he has left is a reasonable deduction, not breaking trust. This continues to be a stupid talking point because they are angry at what was said in that interview about the clear behind the scenes efforts to make sure he didn’t receive security.
The psychology behind these people needing to destroy someone they view as having rejected them as a culture as opposed to an individual, needs to be studied. Because they are hard-pressed to ruin this man’s name, when he doesn’t live in the country, have any administrative power, receives no taxpayer funding, and has made it clear that he will spend minimal time in the country after the court decision in May.
There’s really no reason to constantly want to do exposes and documentaries about him other than being hurt and embarrassed by feeling like he chose someone else over you. Whether that’s living in America, or his wife and children ( which is more disturbing), I don’t know.
But this hyperfocus on Harry and Meghan years after they had any sort of institutional role or actively lived in the country, that doesn’t look like it’s going to abate anytime soon is very concerning. I don’t think it’s literally been a single day since late 2016 that they weren’t in the news, in multiple papers.
Harrys father is
1- mortal
2- old
3- fighting cancer with no public talk of remission or an end to treatments
4- and no one is giving Harry any information on his fathers current diagnosis or prognosis.
So. It is a fact. He does not know how long is father has left. Because he has been denied any information regarding his father’s health and well being.
That’s just …. Facts. How is that even considered a strange thing to aay.
Except that it disrupts the Charles olive branch reaching out back channels thing.
I think they call it cultural dissonance. In the UK, it seems H&M are the lightning rod for it. The monarchy is dying, decreasingly relevant and desirable. There’s Brexit isolation and a kind of national identity crisis. H&M are the epitome of “We don’t need you.” Meghan won’t even acknowledge anymore that the royal years were a part of her life and Harry just wants to see his father before he dies, and the royalists can’t handle it.
‘I think trust is paramount in every walk of life, if you can’t trust your family, who can you trust?’
LMAO why, yes, that’s exactly right!
When Harry figured out he couldn’t trust his ~royal~ family to be around or near his wife and children, he left Salt Island. He has since been quite intentional and careful while building a new community for him, his wife, and children.
And because the rota reads comment sections: do a search for “missing missing reasons” re: estranged adult children and parents. The royals have the rota acting like flying monkeys revealing, continually and in real time, even individual royal family members can’t be trusted.
Of course it had to be Channel 5, absolute joke of a tv channel if there ever was.
I’m not familiar with Channel 5, but this whole thing perfectly illustrates why Harry wrote his memoir in the first place. To tell HIS story, in HIS words, and to no longer allow the rota rats to do it for him because this crap is how they do it. Their alleged advice is falling on deaf ears as they don’t seem to understand that nobody is required to make nice with their abusers–not when it’s family, not when it’s an entire nation’s press.
Here we are again. So Harry grew up in an environment where he could not trust anybody in the royal household even his father. Charles office used and briefed stories about Harry to the BM to restore his reputation after Princess Diana’s death portraying him as a poor single father (this is victimhood). Charles did nothing to protect Harry who was still an adolescent at that time. Harry has all reason not to trust his family. Harry at least puts his name to what he says about his family.
This both sides need to show accountability and forgiveness. I have not seen anything coming from the left behind Windsors only vindictiveness and more briefings to undermine Harry and Meghan.
If Charles had spent half the time he used to spin against Diana and his parents to be a father and a human being, he might be respected today.
This piece of junk reporting will fade into obscurity, thank goodness. It doesn’t even count as a real “documentary” if it doesn’t include its actual subject, Harry, who is obviously available to talk to the press when it’s doing real journalism and will report him fairly (unlike here). They didn’t bother to ask Harry for obvious reasons: he would, of course, have debunked much of what they’re saying. So instead it’s just a bunch of royal-adjacent talking heads lecturing Harry, with zero input from the documentary’s subject.
Channel 5 should be embarrassed, but at least this piece will quickly vanish in the dumpster fire that is British coverage of Harry and Meghan.
But they want Harry to have a miserable, terrible year. They want Harry to whine. They enjoy it. They just want Harry to say it’s all because of Meghan and he made a mistake. What they don’t want is the role of the Royals in Harry’s misfortunes to be highlighted.
Terrible year? A financially successful Invictus Games and now Travelyst is up for an award. New Netflix deal. Numerous speaking engagements for Harry. But I guess being booed and protested or ignored means “Success!” to the UK media. And even the security case wasn’t a total loss because it exposed how awful the palace has treated the Sussexes regarding security. Harry has options for helping the kids in Lesotho, I believe he won’t have any problems finding someone to partner with him and Prince Seeiso. Bill Gates was lamenting the end of USAID, here is his chance to put his money where his mouth is and help those kids.
Incoming: Kate’s summer natcha video! See? Kate was busy editing for the past two weeks, and that’s why she couldn’t do VJ Day.
Sorry, wrong thread!
Ha! No worries! I’ve done it myself!
The irony is that when Harry says he’s happy and he enjoys his life in California these same people say that he’s unhappy with his life and wants to return to the royal fold. As Kaiser says the British press are just gaslighters.
I wait for the day when we have a book or documentary like this doing a deep dive into William ‘s failure to launch. We discuss this alot here about all the causes involved in Will anger and laziness. RR over the weekend pinpointed 2023 as the year when Will ‘s behaviour and attitude changed but doesn’t cite a particular event which would have been helpful. He experienced major life events since 2016 but surely 2022 when the Queen died is when he really was under pressure to perform? I would argue that Will has had a terrible decade and things really went downhill for him last year.He looks terrible and has become unreliable at work. Failure to commit to attending Friday ‘s VJ Commemoration Event is another terrible decision on his part.
The British Media and royal family have really said if we can’t sabotage the Sussexes and make them fail then we’ll settle for second best and just convince everyone they’ve failed.
🎯
Emma Reed Turrell is a bad psychotherapist.