How ‘bonkers’ that the US First Amendment allows media organisations to capitalise on Prince Harry’s pain and grief – as he himself said on Armchair Expert, a podcast by US actor Dax Shepard, last week. Harry’s pain and grief is, of course, a privately-owned asset from which only Harry himself should be able to profit – indeed, just like his royal title, which he and his wife tried to trademark as their personal brand. If you don’t want to have your pain and grief reported around the world, on the other hand, there is a way of preventing that happening: which is to avoid giving interviews on podcasts and on prime time TV. The reason that tabloids and glossy magazines are able to titillate their readers with Harry’s inner angst is, of course, because he keeps putting it into the public domain himself.
What keeps Princess Alexandra (to pick another random royal) awake, awake at night? What angst did she go through when her father, the Duke of Kent, was killed in a plane crash in 1942, when she was aged six? What morass of feelings did she experience when her daughter, Marina, went off the rails in her teens, when mother and daughter were alleged to have engaged in furious rows? I honestly have no idea, which is perhaps related to the fact she hasn’t signed a deal with Netflix, and indeed doesn’t tend to give interviews at all.
