In another revealing interview since leaving behind royal life, Prince Harry said he moved to the United States with his American wife, Meghan Markle, in part because he doesn’t want to rear his children in the way his father, Prince Charles, reared him, or in the way Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip brought up Charles.
via: Page Six
“He treated me the way he was treated,” the 36-year-old said on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast.
The Duke of Sussex said that he debated leaving royal life since his “early 20s” because of “what it did to my mum,” contradicting the narrative that Markle was really the brains behind the move.
“It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway,” said Harry, who dramatically quit his royal duties and moved to the United States last year.
“So we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say, ‘You know what? That happened to me, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.’”
The Duke of Sussex said he now wants to “break the cycle” within his family — after realizing that much of the way he was treated as a youngster was the result of how his own dad was raised by Queen Elizabeth II and the late Prince Philip.
I never saw it, I never knew about it, and then suddenly I started to piece it together and go, ‘OK, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he’s treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids?’” he said.
“And here I am, I moved my whole family to the US, that wasn’t the plan but sometimes you’ve got make decisions and put your family first and put your mental health first.”
Harry went on to describe his life as a royal as “a mixture between ‘The Truman Show’ and being in a zoo.‘”
As for his days of “wild partying” as a young man, Harry chalks it up to “childhood trauma,” admitting to having experimented with marijuana and excessive drinking in his 20s.
The 39-year-old “Suits” alum supported her hubby’s decision to relocate, assuring him she “didn’t need to be a princess,” he said.
She also encouraged him to seek therapy, as at one point he felt “in a cage” while fulfilling royal duties, which led to him to be “angry” about things that were out of his control.
“It’s the job, right? Grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was in my early 20s and I was thinking, ‘I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this,’” he said. “Look what it did to my mum; how am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family when I know it’s going to happen again?”
“I’ve seen behind the curtain,” he continued. “I’ve seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don’t want to be part of this.”
Harry doesn’t regret the relocation one iota, telling Shepard that family life has been a lot easier since moving across the pond.
“So living here now I can actually lift my head and I feel different,” he said. “My shoulders have dropped, so have hers, you can walk around feeling a little bit more free, I can take [2-year-old son] Archie on the back of my bicycle, I would never have had the chance to do that.”
Prince Harry is clearly not holding anything back anymore.
