Prince Harry at Sixteen

His Royal Highness Prince Henry Charles Albert David Windsor of Wales was born in a London hospital at 4:20 a.m. on September 15, 1984, a normal enough start for a baby whose family resides in the city. Only this child's family resided at Kensington Palace. His father is Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the throne of Great Britain, etc. His older brother, William, being second in that succession, placed the infant, always known as Harry, third in line for the throne. He was christened on December 21, 1984 at St. George's Chapel on the grounds of Windsor Castle. Among his godparents are his father's brother, Prince Andrew and his father's cousin, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones.

Upon Harry's arrival the press dubbed the little princes, "The heir and the spare" with Harry being the spare. Upon seeing him his father is said to have exclaimed, "He has rusty hair." He was a shy baby, quite opposite his inquisitive, outgoing brother. Further reason to ignore him and focus on William. When he was not quite two, Prince Harry walked into a table at Highgrove, his father's country estate, and received several stitches on his forehead above the bridge of his nose. This injury only became known to the public upon Harry's appearance at the wedding of his godfather, Prince Andrew, to Sarah Ferguson on July 23, 1986 when the photographs showed the scar. Whereas when William was hit in the head with a golf club on his 9th birthday, the front pages of the tabloids were covered with photographs and details of the incident were rehashed for several days.

Harry didn't receive the same amount of coverage as his older brother when he began nursery school. Even when he was held back a year at Ludgrove, his primary school, nobody blew reports of a learning disability out of proportion. There wasn't even much speculation that Harry's scholastic woes were from an inability to cope with his parent's highly publicized separation and subsequent divorce - even though their divorce came in July 1996 around the time it was announced he would stay at Ludgrove another year. There wasn't much notice paid of his thirteenth birthday - falling just nine days after his beloved mother was laid to rest after a long week of mourning and a very public funeral. The following year he began his studies at Eton, just two days after the first anniversary of his mother's death, without much fanfare.

We never noticed much about Harry. We now see him as the outgoing, athletic, charismatic person we once believed his brother to be. We've seen him Kung Fu play fighting with his dad on the polo field, we've seen him horsing around with his friends, we hear he is Captain of his rugby team, as well as, a practical joker. We've read that in the year 2000 he received more Valentine's Day cards than his brother, William, who has been named to many of the beautiful and popular people lists. We are now seeing a confident Harry coming into his own. Now we wonder if growing up in the shadow of a glamorous mother, charismatic brother and famous father was really all that bad of a place to be? He seems to be comfortable in his own skin - a thing that we find it hard to believe anyone in his family has ever achieved. We are reminded of his mother's famous prediction, "This is the way it will end up, William will become King and Harry will get all the girls." Happy Birthday Harry with all our good wishes!

This week I would like to respond to the impassioned letters I received portraying the Windsors as traitors, Nazi sympathizers, immoral human beings and many combinations of these sad traits. These are old beliefs that have been disproved through time and the release of files, letters and other pertinent information. The Duke was, admittedly, a man who acted with his heart and not his head. This he proved by, for instance, by abdicating without working out the details of his post-king/emperor life and by impulsively taking Hitler up on his offer to visit Germany. The Duke, like Charles Lindbergh, Joseph P. Kennedy and other men of the time, only saw the propaganda side of Hitler's Germany - not the awful truth. It wasn't until he visited the country that he had a sense of what was really going on and quickly changed his mind about it. Winston Churchill supported him up through his abdication even aiding him with the abdication speech. There are many modern books that tell the real story based on factual evidence. Edward Windsor has also written and produced an award winning television program, "Edward on Edward" which also dispels this once common assumption about his great uncle. This program is available on videotape. More on the abdication crisis in December… Keep writing, your letters and thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Next week's column will be on Charles the tragic figure. All the best,