For years now, I’ve wondered if King Charles – someone who loves to read – has ever actually read his son’s memoir, Spare. From the way the courtiers brief, it feels like Charles was given the broad strokes of Prince Harry’s memoir and the courtiers recommended that he skip it. If Charles ever bothered to read Spare, I think he would be genuinely surprised by how much Harry loves him and yearns to understand his father and have a closer relationship with him. That’s one of the reasons why my view on Charles has gotten harsher with each passing year – Harry has tried everything he can think of to communicate with Charles and make peace, and Charles continues to behave like a pathetic deadbeat. Well, the British commentators continue with their juvenile games on this front. The latest is Ruthie Henshall’s memoir, The Showgirl and the Prince, about her brief fling with Prince Edward. Henshall includes some memories of seeing Charles play with William and Harry when they were kids. Commentators have treated this like a “gotcha” for Harry, because they are convinced that Harry bashed his father for the entirety of Spare. Now Piers Morgan’s wife Celia Walden has written a Telegraph column about it: “Prince Harry proves therapy makes children judge their parents too harshly.” Sigh…

What a sweet picture Ruthie Henshall paints of King Charles’s parenting style. In her new memoir, The Showgirl and the Prince – which tells the story of her five-year relationship with Prince Edward – the 59-year-old stage doyenne recalls how warm and hands-on he was with his boys. In one scene, described in vivid detail: “Charles [was] playing rough and tumble with William and Harry in the Balmoral corridors. He clearly loved those boys, and they were squealing with joy as Daddy chased them.”

Certainly, it’s a different picture to the one the Duke of Sussex painted in his own memoir, Spare – even the title of which seems to contain a grievance. And when it was first published, three years ago, much was made of the claims – peppered throughout his early years – that the monarch was always a bit “checked out”, that he had “trouble communicating, trouble listening, trouble being intimate face-to-face”. He’d “always given an air of being not quite ready for parenthood”, Harry wrote. “And as for single parenthood? Pa was never made for that.” All of which cast him in a pretty cold light.

It was a detail Harry decided to include about the moment his father told him Diana had died, however, that I imagine must have been most hurtful. “Pa didn’t hug me,” he wrote. He “wasn’t great at showing emotions”. Instead, Charles put his hand on Harry’s knee, which he did at least describe as “fatherly, hopeful, kind”.

Recollections inevitably vary and, as always, the truth will lie somewhere in between. But I do worry about how harshly therapy culture has made us judge our parents retrospectively – how short-sighted those judgments can often be.

There seems to be a great emphasis on grand displays of love now – on tactility, on how many times a day your parents told you they loved you – yet as we know, these are no barometer. Mothers tend to be more tactile than fathers, for example. That was definitely the case with me. Does that mean my father loved me any less? Of course not.

Given “tolerance” is the order of the day, how about we extend a little to older generations? To fathers (and mothers) who might not always show their love in a Hallmark way. Because that wasn’t the norm 60, 70 or 80 years ago – particularly with fathers and sons. Because they might have been raised in a more formal environment, and as a consequence have a more reserved parenting style than, say, David Beckham, who has several times posted pictures of himself kissing daughter Harper on the lips.

None of this is to belittle the power of touch (or indeed an unprompted “I love you”), but the most touching tokens tend to be far less obvious, in my experience. They’re in the “rough and tumble” Henshall describes, but also in an anecdote Harry downplays in his book.

“On occasion, after a long multi-course dinner, I’d walk upstairs and find a letter on my pillow,” he writes. “The letter would say how proud he was of me for something I’d done or accomplished. I’d smile, place it under my pillow, but also wonder why he hadn’t said this moments ago, while seated directly across from me.” That he did it at all was surely all the proof Harry needed.

[From The Telegraph]

Again, I came out of Spare knowing that Harry loved his (deadbeat) father dearly but was disappointed in many choices Charles made. I think therapy has helped Harry understand and contextualize the neglect and trauma of his childhood and early adulthood. What’s funny about “I do worry about how harshly therapy culture has made us judge our parents retrospectively” is that after years of therapy, Harry is still trying, often in vain, to have a relationship with Charles. While at the same time, after years of therapy, Harry doesn’t f–k with his bald-demon brother whatsoever. That says more than most commentators are willing to acknowledge. Anyway, I genuinely think British commentators should be banned from writing about therapy until they themselves get a massive amount of psychological help.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.