Don’t believe the headlines that suggest Prince Harry’s Netflix series about the Invictus Games is, in fact, all about him. Because it isn’t. It is a powerful exploration of the mental — as well as physical — trauma that wounded servicemen and women endure after leaving military life. Harry is the lynchpin of the series not only because he founded the Games nine years ago, but because his army service made him realise that he, too, is a wounded soldier.
His trauma, though, stems from the day his mother, Diana, was killed in a car crash exactly 26 years ago tomorrow. The numbness he felt— without, he says, any support network to help him — ended only when he was deployed to Afghanistan and his emotions began to unravel.
“It was chaos,” he says. “My emotions were sprayed all over the wall.”
In Heart of Invictus we see the best of Prince Harry: someone who can genuinely empathise with the emotional void so many injured soldiers feel. He listens to their incredibly moving stories and encourages them to tackle their issues, revealing the depths to which he himself sank.
“Unfortunately like most of us the first time you really consider therapy is when you’re lying on the floor in the fetal position probably wishing you had dealt with some of this stuff previously.
“That’s what I really want to change.”
It is a noble aim and Invictus has become one of Harry’s defining achievements. There have been five Games since the inaugural event in London in 2014 and, in a week or so, this year’s Games will open in Düsseldorf. Harry and Meghan (who famously went public with their relationship at the Toronto Games six years ago) will be there. Harry will give another inspirational speech. He is at his absolute best when he’s amongst his military family: confident, proud and authoritative. There have been suggestions that Meghan, too, will address the throng about courage and resilience. This strikes me as decidedly less appropriate when there will be any number of men and women there who have courageously proved precisely what resilience means.
The Prince was furious when he was stripped of his military appointments and honorary roles after deciding to quit royal duties. That hurt more than anything else because his decade of army service had given him some of the most fulfilling years of his life. He belonged; he wasn’t treated differently; he was one of the lads… one of the family. But Invictus is one thing the palace can’t take away from him. This is Harry’s baby — whether or not he is in the royal fold. And Heart of Invictus is a fine, humbling and moving piece of work.
The success of the Games does, though, remind us of what we have lost in this once so popular star of the Royal Family. Despite his grand heritage, Harry has a gift of the common touch: an easy connection with the public, a mischievous sense of humour and a basic likability that’s hard to emulate.
These Games are all about recovery, hope and a sense of belonging. In the documentary Harry tells his military audience that if their goal was to make their country proud and their family happy, then they have achieved it.
The irony is that during his time on this side of the Atlantic, the Prince is not expected to make any attempt to bridge the bitter gulf between himself and his own family. He’ll be in London for a charity engagement immediately before flying to Düsseldorf. He may even be here on the morning of the first anniversary of the death of his grandmother, the Queen. But there’s no promise of white smoke signalling a truce — or even a meeting — with his father or brother.
Perhaps we should send them all off to the Invictus Games to get some perspective on how extraordinarily petty their family squabbles are.
Jennie Bond was the BBC’s royal correspondent for 14 years
