Royal reporter Emily Andrews is back on her BS. She writes for Woman & Home these days, mostly focusing on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, of course. Her latest piece is so clearly projection about the Other Brother, it’s wild that anyone thought this was a good idea. The focus? “Is Prince Harry happy?” He is. Next question. No, really – I’m sometimes surprised by Harry’s visible happiness. He’s literally the “eternal optimist,” always believing that things will get better, always approaching his life and work with joy and contentment. But royalists can’t acknowledge that, because Prince William is so clearly trapped and miserable.

Is Prince Harry happy? That’s what I get asked the most – and of course, it’s the million-dollar question. He may live in a palatial Californian mansion, be free of the shackles (as he sees it) of royal duty and have a gorgeous wife, Meghan Markle, and children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. But is Harry really happy?

Certainly, for much of the past six years since Megxit, he’s looked angry, stressed and emotional. Last month was a case in point. As soon as he arrived in the UK, he learned he’d comprehensively lost his privacy case against the Daily Mail. Appearing onstage for what should have been a celebratory Invictus event, he looked nervous and slightly stunned. Given Associated Newspapers Limited, the Mail’s publishers, are seeking costs against him (and others including Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley) in the region of £35 million – which could potentially bankrupt him – you can understand his anxiety.

There was all that drama about was he coming/was he not coming (when he didn’t get the security and gun cops he wanted), his family weren’t coming (due to the security), then his family DID come (except we never saw them – proving conclusively that it IS possible for them to come safely to the UK, despite Harry’s many and varied protestations that it’s not safe enough here).

Even at Birmingham’s NEC, when he was about to go to Highgrove for that much longed-for tea with his kids and the King, he looked (and sounded) somewhat flat. For me, Harry looks as if he’s a man without a purpose.

I wrote last week about the shock bombshell that the Sussexes are considering moving back to the UK – and at the very least spending more time over here. Harry misses his family and his pals. Yet he’s waged continual war on the British establishment – the government, the press, the judiciary and the monarchy itself.

I thought it was instrumental that when he was visiting last month, he appeared on Joe Marler’s podcast and gave his occupation as ‘Full-time dad. British Army veteran. Prince of England. Duke’. We’ll leave aside the historical inaccuracy (there’s been no Prince or indeed King of England since the United Kingdom union in 1707), but it’s the apparent yearning that gets me. He doesn’t seem to know who or what he is.

So is he happy? I don’t think he truly is – but the sadness for Harry is that he’s searching for something he’s not going to find. So I’m not sure he ever will be.

[From Woman & Home]

This weekend, I was cleaning up my bookmarks and I was surprised by just how visible and busy Harry has been in the past 12 months: visiting Ukraine twice, visiting Australia, visiting Jordan attached to WHO, vacationing in Portugal, visiting England and Scotland, visiting Canada multiple times, traveling to Arizona, attending Game 5 of the NBA Championships (as a guest of NBA Commissioner Adam Silver), speaking at Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in Sports, going solo at the Invictus One Year to Go events, going to Sundance, taking a ski holiday, and on and on. When people like Emily Andrews try to portray Harry as bored and purposeless, it’s not only a lie, it’s projection. The miserable one is the Other Brother.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images, Meghan’s Instagram.