Prince Harry has been described as 'emotionally needy' and reliant on his wife Meghan Markle in a book by author and journalist Tina Brown, titled The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor - the Truth and the Turmoil. Ahead of the book's release - which came out earlier this year - Tina spoke to The Telegraph about its contents, including the Duke of Sussex's mental health.
"The Oprah interview was desperately damaging to any relationship that Harry could ever hope to have with his family." She said. "And even that could have been gradually assuaged if he hadn’t then announced he was doing a memoir.", as reported by the Mirror.
She added: "I think the memoir was actually more breath-taking than the interview. Frankly, berating the world for the lack of privacy he’s had and now he can’t stop giving interviews… It’s amazing.
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"He’s so emotionally needy that he’s been completely and utterly taken over by Meghan and his whole personality has changed. It’s a really sad thing to a great many people. Meghan seems to answer some huge need in Harry and it seems like they are in a powerful co-dependency. And I do question how it will end."
Prince Harry has been very open in the past about his mental health struggles following his mother's death. In the documentary series The Me You Can’t See' with Oprah Winfrey, Harry tells Winfrey that the trauma of Princess Diana's tragic passing caused him to suffer from anxiety and severe panic attacks when he was 28 through to 32.
At one point in the series, the Duke of Sussex spoke about how the pain of his mother’s death put him on a path to use alcohol and drugs to “mask” his emotions and to “feel less like I was feeling”.
He added: “I was just all over the place mentally, every time I put a suit on and tie on … having to do the role, and go, ‘right, game face’, look in the mirror and say, ‘let’s go’. Before I even left the house I was pouring with sweat. I was in fight or flight mode.”
Prince Harry's highly-anticipated tell-all memoir 'Spare' is set to come out January next year. It was delayed following the death of Queen Elizabeth II last month, but now will be available to buy from January 10, according to its official website.
A statement on the website from publishers Penguin Random House, titled "His words, his story", says Spare " will take readers immediately back to one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror.
"As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last. With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief."
The book is expected to deliver "bombshell after bombshell" according to reports earlier this month, and will contain particularly eye-catching details about the Duke of Sussex's relationship with his father, King Charles. Harry's decision to write the memoir, which he promises will be "accurate and wholly truthful", is believed to have caused a "tsunami of fear" in royal circles.
Previously speaking on The Mirror's podcast, Pod Save the King, Princess Diana's biographer Andrew Morton claimed Prince Harry still turns to his late mother for guidance in a spiritual way.
Morton said: "I think that Diana's influence has lasted longer than anybody thought because her torchbearers in life, William and Harry, have not forgotten her and have held concerts in her memory. Harry himself says that he never makes a decision without referring it to her in a spiritual sense.
"She marked a turning point in the way the Royal Family behaved and through her behaviour helped to modernise and make more human the Royal Family. So it wasn't big handbags, white gloves and standoffish. It was more touchy-feely than it had ever been in the past. So she made the Royal Family more relevant to modern times."
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