For some reason, members of the house of Windsor suffer from a particular form of amnesia when it comes to bikes. In 1995 Diana, Princess of Wales pointedly took aim at other more relaxed European royal houses during her infamous Panorama interview saying she was against royalty “riding round [on] bicycles,” despite the fact that her very own husband Prince Charles had over the years been repeatedly photographed pedalling away to his heart’s content.
Like Diana, her son Prince Harry seems to have a hard time recollecting all those good times on two-wheels.
In March, he told TV host Oprah Winfrey and a global audience of 50 million people that when it came to his new life in California, “I guess the highlight for me is sticking him on the back of a bicycle in his little baby seat and taking him on bike rides which is something I was never able to do when I was young.”
Then only last week the rogue royal told podcast host Dax Shepard of living in the US: “I can take Archie on the back of my bicycle – I would never have had the chance to do that.”
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As far as Harry is concerned it is only now that he has the freedom to strap in his two-year-old boy and cycle around the exclusive neighbourhood, just a father and son, the dappled sunshine and a Range Rover full of protection officers purring along in their wake.
However, on at least four occasions the UK and the Commonwealth’s next sovereign did indeed take his sons out for a hearty peddle session, a fact we know because there are some uncomfortable family photos of him doing it. (Charles in a kilt riding a bike being the absolute and utter antithesis of eroticism.)
In 1988, Charles was caught riding around his dear mama’s 20,000 hectare Scottish bolthole Balmoral towing a four-year-old Harry behind him in a cart.
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In 1989, Charles, Diana, and the boys posed for shots on bikes during a family getaway on the Isle of Scilly. (Nothing says relaxing getaway like a break on a remote Cornish island with only a few trusted photographers about the place.)
Then twice in 1990 Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry were snapped cycling on the Sandringham estate.
This is not the only instance certain facts seem to have somehow gotten lost somewhere in the mix.
In 2017, the Prince revealed the full extent of his suffering after the loss of his mother, telling journalist Bryony Gordon he had been “very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions” and that William had tried to persuade him to seek help.
Royal biographer Angela Levin, who spent a year with the former army captain for her book Harry: Conversations With The Prince, recounted that when she interviewed Harry at the time about his decision to seek help she had “asked him, ‘Are you going because Meghan suggested it, has she persuaded you,’ and he said, ‘Absolutely not, she had nothing to do with it, it was William.’”
Fast forward to 2021 and during his conversation with Shepard last week, Harry said Meghan had encouraged him to get therapy.
So which is it?
Next up, Meghan and her friends.
In October 2019, both Harry and Meghan spoke to ITV journalist Tom Bradby revealing the extent of their inner turmoil, both speaking candidly about the toll that media scrutiny was taking on them. The Duchess told Bradby that when she first started dating the royal “my British friends said to me: ‘I’m sure he’s great but you shouldn’t do it because the British tabloids will destroy your life.’”
And yet, during Harry’s podcast outing he said, “We got together, and she was like, ‘Wow, this is very different to what my friends at the beginning said.’”
So did the Duchess’ friends presciently warn her or accidentally give her the wrong idea about royal life?
Or what of the supposed blissful ignorance that Meghan chose to usher in her royal career? Speaking to Oprah, she said: “Well, I didn’t do any research about what [being a royal] would mean.”
But … Meghan’s former childhood friend Ninaki Priddy said in 2017: “I know the royal family was something she found fascinating. She had one of Princess Diana’s books [Diana: Her True Story] on her bookshelf.” (In 1996 the LA native and a friend were photographed outside Buckingham Palace during a trip to London.)
Let’s also consider Charles a touch more, a sentence that few people outside of his valet and wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall must ever utter.
In 2017, Harry guest edited the BBC’s Radio 4 Today and interviewed his father, touchingly calling him “Pa”. The duo discussed climate change and mental health with Charles telling his son at one point, “Darling boy, it makes me very proud to think that you understand.”
Later, William “flatly refused,” according to the Telegraph, to give a nod to his father during a media outing connected to the anniversary of Diana’s death in 2017. Harry was the only brother who would speak up for their dad, telling a BBC documentary, “He was there for us, he was the one out of two left and he tried to do his best and to make sure we were protected and looked after.”
Come 2018 when Meghan’s own father Thomas Markle mortifyingly bailed at the eleventh hour after having been caught staging paparazzi photos, it was Charles who stepped in to proudly walk the bride down the aisle. That night at the couple’s reception, “Charles gave a brilliant speech,” one attendee told People and that “Harry was very emotional.”
Yet less than three years on from that happy day, Harry sourly told Oprah that when it came to his dad he felt “really let down” and that “there’s a lot of hurt”.
(He also said that Charles had cut him off financially, a claim that has been the fodder for much rebuffing via anonymous sources in the UK press with a senior source telling the Evening Standard, “The Prince of Wales went out of his way to make sure his son and daughter-in-law were financially supported.”)
This is not a new pattern.
Rewind all the way back to 2017 when Meghan spent her first Christmas with the extended Windsor tribe at Sandringham for Christmas and Harry infamously said during a BBC interview he had conducted with Barack Obama that for his fiancee, his was “the family I suppose that she’s never had”.
Except the world now knows that things were hardly Brady Bunch-esque behind the scenes.
By that point in time, the rift between brothers William and Harry had already started after the elder prince reportedly warned his brother, “Don’t feel like you need to rush,” when it came to his relationship with the Suits star and that he should “take as much time as you need to get to know this girl”.
In this strange, hurly burly world at least there is one constant: Harry and his curious relationship with consistency. At least whenever he needs a break he can jump on his bike and head out for a bike ride. Just like his dad Charles.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
https://news.google.com/__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?oc=5
2021-05-23 06:12:34Z
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