The Royal Spares: Prince Harry's Spare is a generational saga of troubled seconds

I wasn’t Granny. I wasn’t Pa.  I wasn’t Willy. I was third in line behind them — Prince Harry writes in his memoir _Spare_ . He distinctly recalls a story he had heard when he was 20 — “Pa allegedly said to Mummy the day of my birth: Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an Heir and a Spare — my work is done. A joke. Presumably.” Call having a royal prefix attached to one’s name the highest definition of honour but beyond the grandeur lies a deeply controlling state, the doings of which have been unraveled onscreen and in the press in the recent years like never before. Netflix’s The Crown flipped pages of history to uncover the generational saga of the Heir and the Spare. The first season went back in time to tell the forgotten story of how the Queen became the Queen. Edward VIII’s choice to marry outside the royal prescription — a divorcee, led to his abdication, passing on the throne to the then Spare — George VI, whose Heir and the Spare — Elizabeth and Margaret would carry forward the legacy of monarchy induced sibling rivalry. In the recently released fifth season of The Crown, an episode recreates the time when Queen Elizabeth apologised to Princess Margaret for she had to bear the brunt of being the ‘spare’ — denied the choice to marry a divorcee, Peter Townsend even as the royal rules were tweaked later when Prince Charles divorced and married his long time girlfriend Camilla, who was also a divorcee. “Peter was my sun, my water,” Margaret says as she breaks down.

Of all the lessons the royals never learned, the most important one remained the curse of being the second, the third, the fourth and so on, in line. The damage that this discrimination has brought upon the third generation of the Royal family, is sure to leave deep scars. When Prince Harry underlines the little things that would discriminate Prince William & him, and how it translated onto his wife Meghan Markle, one can only feel sorry for the royal anomaly. “I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. I was summoned to provide back-up, distraction, diversion, and if necessary, a spare part. Kidney perhaps,” write Harry in his memoir. From William getting a larger share of the room to the royal family doing nothing to protect Harry & Meghan from the vicious British press, the Spares remain the Spares. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.