“He treated me the way he was treated.”
Prince Harry has said in a new interview that his father Prince Charles handed down a “cycle” of “genetic pain and suffering” to him, and that he and his wife Meghan Markle moved to America to try and break this cycle.
Speaking on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, the Duke of Sussex said: “He treated me the way he was treated.”
Harry admitted that had debated leaving royal life since his “early 20s” because of what it did to his mother, Princess Diana, going against the view among some that it was actually Markle who drove the move to the US.
Harry went on to say: “It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway.
“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 36-year-old said that he now wants to “break the cycle” within his family and has realised that his father was simply treating him in the same way that he was treated as a youngster.
He said: “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?’
“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 described his life as a royal as “a mixture between ‘The Truman Show’ and being in a zoo.”
He also admitted to having experimented with weed and excessive drinking in his 20s, and put his wild partying down to the “childhood trauma” he suffered.
His wife Markle was the one who encouraged him to seek therapy, with Harry explaining that he felt “in a cage” while on royal duties and would get “angry” about things out of his control.
He told the podcast: “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.’
“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, I’ve seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don’t want to be part of this.”
He said that he does not regret moving to LA one bit, and that his family life has become a lot easier.
“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.”
Just a guy choosing to live his best life. You love to see it.
