Spare

Here is the thing about autobiographies; they contain the things the subject wants you to know about them. Not everything about them, not even necessarily the 100% honest truth about them. But the stuff they think you should know about them to get the picture they want to project.
And this is exactly why I have no idea what the actual fuck Prince Harry was thinking while writing this.

Some moments, I could really understand him. Seriously. Nobody likes to have their privacy ruined. Being a public figure from birth sounds like a shit deal. It must be awful.
Hell, he even had moments when he sounded mature, like when he talked about accepting that his father was happy with Camilla. I applauded him for that.
Then he just had these moments when he managed to ruin all my empathy and positive feelings with one astonishingly stupid statement. Don't get me wrong, we are all products of our upbringing and experiences in life, therefore his baseline for what life should be is way different than mine or yours. That's a fact. But there were moments when he genuinely sounded like he had never met a human being before. I'm not even saying average human, as he didn't spend too much time in genuine relationships with average little people, but just... any human, really. What do I mean?
His weirdness culminates when it comes to talking about Meghan, his wife. Sure, he loves her, that's wonderful. But at one point he is amazed by her not being bitchy about having to wait 3 hours at an airport to get to the Botswana vacation he got for the two of them.
Harry. Friend. If anyone paid for my Botswana vacation.... I could accept some minor inconvenience. Hell, a bunch of us get that when we pay for our own vacation with the money we actually had to earn with hard work. And it's still a privilege that we are able to travel at all.

Privilege. That is a bit of a keyword here.
I'm not the type to claim everyone I dislike is privileged and claim that's an evil horrible thing that needs to be taken away.
Yet Harry here has a really weird relationship with his own privilege. He calls himself privileged when he is talking about the video where he calls his friend a Paki. Yet he talks about just popping off to Botswana to hang out with his nature documentary maker friends when he feels stressed. You know what I mean?
He has this attitude of everything bad in his life being this gigantic unjust crime, but at the same time he takes so much of the amazing experiences and possibilities as just normal. Again, I get it, he grew up with this. But he is writing a book kind of thinking about his own life. WHERE IS YOUR PERSPECTIVE? He even mentions that the military pilot education he got costing millions of pounds. But hey. No biggie, it's his and it makes him feel good. So it's normal.
Sometimes he mentions how these things are great, but he never faces the fact that the only reason he can do all this is because of who and what he is. Harry the Prince only gets the awful stuff, none of the perks are because of the same thing.

He's incredibly unrealistic in many other ways as well. The way he talks about his wife is supremely weird. Some people are more mushy when they are in love, but this. THIS. He is just unable to understand that there are people who can dislike Meghan. He claims the British people not liking her is his own country betraying him. He calls her magic.
Every single time she is not automatically adored, he claims she is being abused. Meghan acts in a way that is actually rude (like asking for the lipgloss of Kate, whom she barely even knows, YUCK) and he can't help freaking the fuck out about people not tolerating it.
Talking about freaking out. There is this one moment while they are dating. They have a misunderstanding. He gets pissed and apparently he says some mean things. In this 500 page book filled with details about his frostbitten penis (yes, really), we don't get explained what this argument was. Okay. But the way he reacts to his own anger is pathetic. He totally crumbles, says it's unacceptable for him to be angry with her and suddenly feels the need to go to therapy. Not when he believed Diana was just hiding until his TWENTIES. Not when he obviously had drinking problems. But when he snapped at perfect MEEEEEG.
Not sure how I feel about his conversations with his therapist. He needs help. That's true. But he seems to surround himself with people and things that make him try and get the exact wrong kind of “help”. Like a man who has a so obviously distorted version of reality... should probably not do psychedelics and listen to “spirit mediums” who tell him his dead mother is actually still hanging out with him. Just a thought.

Now about one of the main ideas; Harry wants privacy. Again, understandable.
Then he goes and tells us he used up all the laughing gas when Meeeeeg was in labor with their first child. That he is circumcised. Where and how he lost his virginity. Mate, what are you doing?
What is even worse, he does the same with other people. Often people he tries to make appear in a bad light. Like fuck off with talking about his dad having been severly bullied as a kid and still having this toy rabbit to comfort him. Fuck off with assuming the complicated and long relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret (and assuming Elizabeth started every conflict).
He shows absolutely ZERO respect for anyone else's right to privacy. What was the goal here? Because it's such a spineless thing to do, acting so petty.

Talking about petty, he is incredibly jealous of his brother. As opposed to him just having so many hardships, the life of Prince William is just enviable in Harry's eyes. His brother has no hardships! Those are reserved for him and him alone.

All in all, I did not develop the fondest feelings for Prince Harry. Yet, I see King Charles as more of a human being now. Which wasn't the goal, but hey. I take what I can get.

I read this more out of curiosity than genuine interest. I'm quite fond of Princess Diana and I mostly wanted to hear what Harry had to say about her.

Told in a linear timeline, Prince Harry discusses the brutal reality of what it means to be part of the royal family. My heart has always gone out to him and I certainly sympathize more now that I've read this. What was off-putting to me was the amount of personal family matters disclosed that really didn't need to be discussed. It's one thing to talk about your own life in a memoir, but it doesn't sit well for me when it turns on others, even when they have wronged you.

Overall, the book was what I expected it to be: a media grab. There isn't a lot of depth to any of the stories aside from maybe what it was like to lose his mother in such a public and traumatic way. I found the writing melodramatic which didn't keep me super invested. I do understand that writing about difficult moments in one's life can be therapeutic, but that doesn't mean it needs to be published. So while I do feel sorry for some of the things he's had to go through, I also can't deny this story is getting so much attention simply due to his place in the Royal Family.