Prince Harry Felt ‘Unloved’ and ‘Unappreciated’ at This Royal Family Christmas Way Before Meghan Markle
Not all of Prince Harry’s Christmases have overflowed with holiday cheer. Sure, the British royal family is known for festive decorations and celebrating over dinner and presents. But the Duke of Sussex had one Christmas, in particular, during his time as a working royal where he felt “unappreciated” and “unloved.” And it happened long before he met his now-wife, Meghan Markle.
Harry spent Christmas 2013 ‘relegated’ to a ‘mini room’ at Sandringham
In between the multiple bombshells and questions answered in Spare, Harry revealed in his January 2023 memoir that Christmas 2013 wasn’t exactly brimming with joy.
“I went directly from the South Pole to Sandringham. Christmas with the family,” he wrote. “Hotel Granny was full that year, overrun by family, so I was given a mini room in a narrow back corridor, among the offices of Palace staff.”
Harry continued, noting he’d “never stayed there before” nor “rarely even set foot there before.” It wasn’t “so unusual,” he explained, given the late Queen Elizabeth II’s “vast” residences. “it would take a lifetime to see every nook and cranny.”
Being given a “mini room” didn’t necessarily bother Harry. “I liked the notion of seeing and exploring uncharted territory,” he wrote. “I was a grizzled polar explorer, after all!”
However, he felt something else, too. “I also felt a bit unappreciated. A bit unloved. Relegated to the hinterlands.”
Approximately 2.5 years later, Harry had his first date in London, England, with his now-wife, the Duchess of Sussex, after which they eventually began spending holidays together.
Harry became ‘quite content’ looking at photos on Christmas Eve, 2013
“I told myself to make the best of it, use this time to protect the serenity I’d achieved at the Pole,” Harry continued, calling his “hard drive” clean.
Except the rest of the family were “infected with some very scary malware.” The release of the Court Circular, the annual list tracking working royals’ engagements.
“The family tolerated, even leaned into, the nonsense of the Court Circular for the same reason it accepted the ravages and de[redations of the press — fear,” Harry explained. “Fear of the public, fear of the future. Fear of the day the nation would say: OK, shut it down.”
So, by the time Christmas Eve 2013 rolled around, I was actually quite content in my back corridor, in my micro room, looking at photos of the South Pole on my iPad,” he added.
Sitting there, Harry “downed” his “test tube” labeled “CLEANEST AIR IN THE WORLD” in one gulp.
Harry revisited his Christmas 2013 room during 2020 royal exit talk at Sandringham
Later, during January 2020’s Sandringham Summit, Harry found himself back where he spent Christmas 2013. It happened when, according to Spare, “The Bee,” a pseudonym for his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II’s courtier, remarked his printer suddenly stopped working.
For that reason, there were only copies of a drafted statement detailing Harry and Meghan’s full exit from royal life, not any of the other discussed “options.”
So Harry set out to prove the “summit was just [for] show” by seeing the printer for himself. He walked “through the kitchen, up some back stairs, down a narrow corridor” to the Bee’s office, where he saw the printer in working order.
“I went further down the corridor, through a door. Everything suddenly looked familiar,” Harry recalled. “Then I remembered. This was the corridor where I’d slept that Christmas after returning from the South Pole.”
Harry and Meghan’s 2023 Christmas plans are, at the time of writing, unconfirmed after reports of a possible royal family reunion over the holidays and a Sandringham Christmas for the couple.
