The news that an invite had apparently landed for Charles’ crowning on May 6 — a glitzy affair that will be watched by millions — comes as Harry said he had always “felt different” to the rest of his family.
Harry’s remarks, which were splashed across the Sunday newspapers in Britain, were made in an interview with Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-Canadian psychologist.
That interview, which was live-streamed on Saturday, focused on emotions and mental health. Harry did not bring up the request to vacate Frogmore Cottage, the residence where he and Meghan stayed during their infrequent visits to the United Kingdom. Nor did he address whether they would attend his father’s coronation in May.
Since the publication of Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” which details his dysfunctional relationship with his family, his and Meghan’s attendance at the coronation has been the subject of fevered speculation in Britain: Will they be invited? Will they come? Will they overshadow Charles? Does anyone care?
But Harry has previously spoken regarding wanting to repair relations with his family and hasn’t ruled out attending the coronation. When asked regarding it in January, Harry said “the door is always open” and “the ball is in their court.” It’s unclear if his calculation on whether to come may have changed following the eviction from Frogmore.
During his Saturday interview, Harry told Maté that “I certainly have felt throughout my life, my younger years, I felt slightly different to the rest of my family.”
“I felt strange being in this container, and I know that my mum felt the same so it makes sense to me,” he said of his mother Princess Diana, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997, when he was 12 years old.
Harry said that he felt “a huge responsibility not to pass on any trauma or negative experiences that I’ve had as a kid or as a man growing up” and that he made sure to “smother” his own children with “love and affection.”
Harry and Meghan stepped back as working royals in 2020 and now live in California with their two children, three-year-old Archie and one-year-old Lilibet. Archie’s fourth birthday is on May 6, the day of the coronation.
In the 90-minute interview, the duke also discussed going to therapy and using drugs to cope with the trauma of his mother’s death.
The duke said that he initially worried regarding going to therapy, saying: “I thought that if I went to therapy, it would kill me and that I would lose whatever I had left, whatever I managed to hold onto of my mother.”
“It turns out that wasn’t the case. I didn’t lose that — it was the opposite,” he said. “I turned what I thought was supposed to be sadness to try and prove to her that I missed her into realizing she just really wanted me to be happy, and that was a huge weight off my chest.”
He also said that cocaine “didn’t do anything for me” but marijuana “did really help me.”
In their chat, Maté said he thought the duke had attention-deficit disorder, or ADD. Harry joked in response: “Thanks for the free session.”
The pair also spoke regarding Harry’s ten years of service in the British armed forces and Afghanistan, where he completed two tours.
Harry said he was a “fantastic candidate” for the armed forces because of his troubled past. “I don’t know how it is around the rest of the world but certainly in the U.K. we tend to recruit from broken homes, individuals that are ready for it,” he said.
After Maté said that he disagreed with the war, Harry responded: “There were a lot of us who didn’t necessarily agree or disagree but you were doing what you were sent to do.”
Harry also described Meghan as an “an exceptional human being.”
“People have said my wife saved me,” he said. “I was stuck in this world, she was from a different world and helped draw me out of that. My partner is an exceptional human being and I’m eternally grateful for the wisdom and the space she’s been able to give to me.”
“The two of us have had our own stuff with our families,” he added.