London - When William and Harry were small, Princess Diana insisted that if important photographs were being taken of the future king, his younger brother was also in the picture.
She even made a point of bringing Harry to William’s first day at Eton so they could be photographed together and he wouldn’t feel “left out”.
Diana was anxious for Prince Harry to be included in everything. She wanted him to avoid the traditional fate of the second-son “spare” in the Royal Family, left without a significant role while both position and estate (income from the Duchy of Cornwall as Prince of Wales, and from the Crown Estates as sovereign) went to the first-born son.
Perhaps, had she lived, she would have succeeded.
Now, after Harry’s decision to quit the army and prepare to head off for a second “gap year” at the age of 30, it looks as though Diana’s plan has failed. But has it?
In fact, Harry is leaving the Armed Forces - and abandoning the only environment where he could be himself - against almost everyone’s advice, including the entreaties of his father Prince Charles. He is doing it to pursue a dream that he has felt for a long time.
“He wants to go where he is needed, just as his mother did,” says one of his close circle. “He feels he can achieve something worthwhile rather than spend the next 10 years sitting at a desk.”
Harry knew it would be spent mainly at a desk because, to his bitter dismay, further operational postings with his army mates had been closed off to the Queen’s grandson after two tours in Afghanistan, one of them as an Apache helicopter co-pilot gunner which provided him with the excitement he has always craved. Harry did not see himself in the only other possible military role - instructor.
In recent times, especially after the scrapes he has got himself into, Harry has listened closely to what his father has had to say. But when it came to his army career, the time-honoured safe harbour for royal princes, he would not listen.
For two years he has privately brooded about the incident in Las Vegas when he was unwittingly photographed romping naked with a girl while playing “strip billiards” in his hotel suite.
“I let myself down, I let my family down, I let other people down,” he said at the time. That is understood to be the low-point episode that made him decide he had to do “something special” to justify his royal birth and privilege.
It was entirely his decision to leave the career he’d dreamed about for as long as he could remember after being smeared with camouflage paint, putting on fatigues and clambering into a Scimitar armoured vehicle in front of his beaming mother when he was eight.
Looking at him then, and in the years that followed, Diana always felt that Harry would be fine because she knew he wanted to be a soldier and that the army would take care of him.
“She’d be concerned that he was giving up what he loved,” says one of her old friends.
But to remain an officer would have meant going back to staff college in search of promotion, and Harry recognised, wryly, that although a good soldier, he wasn’t seen as potential senior officer material and was unlikely ever to reach a high operational rank. For him, the excitement of soldiering was being extinguished by protocol.
On Sunday, it was reported that he is in line for a ceremonial post as an honorary Royal Colonel, a role in which he will represent the Queen. But it will not take him anywhere near a combat zone.
Charles’s anxiety about his younger son is remarkably similar to Diana’s, but now there is a crucial new factor which has increased the intensity - the fate of his own brother, Prince Andrew.
“In Prince Charles’s view, the spotlight on William must fall just as brightly on Harry because he sees him as a key asset to the popularity of the Royal Family,” says a senior aide. “He, too, wants him to have equal billing within the family.”
There is no question that around the world, especially in the more distant parts of the Commonwealth whose support for the monarchy could be crucial to its extended future, Harry is more popular than William. Surprisingly, perhaps, since William is heir to the throne and the one with the beautiful, commoner wife.
But the fact is, Harry’s mischievous ways and engaging manner have made him the biggest royal draw since his mother.
“He possesses a natural manner when dealing with people, remembering names and looking them in the eye,” says a courtier. “Not everyone can do that. William, for example, is not nearly so nimble on his feet as his brother.”
Charles, however, is desperate for his son not to make the same mistakes as his own younger brother, Andrew.
Who would have thought that the Duke of York, with his suspect friends and under-age sex accusations - which he has vehemently denied - could be the one whose tacky example helps set the benchmark and tone of the royal family of the future?
Mercifully, unlike the sometimes charmless Andrew, Harry is blessed with his mother’s magic and common touch, a talent which would have been largely wasted were he to have spent the next 20 years in uniform. He has also, of course, inherited her recklessness.
“Diana always saw him as better equipped than William for a royal role and all that it means,” says a long-time family friend. “She could see even when he was young how composed he was with people and how relaxed he made them feel, whoever they were.”
The fact is, Harry was the one who found it harder to get over his mother’s death - when, remember, he was only 12. Almost 18 years on, he still grieves for her and misses her terribly.
But he’s also grown up admiring her achievements and what she was able to do for people. So we should not be surprised to learn that his late mother’s landmines campaign has never been far from his mind and could be resurrected.
And he has been thinking of Ebola, telling friends that were his mother alive today she would have been finding ways of helping the charities that are dealing with the families and victims of the deadly virus, just as she did with Aids and leprosy.
One idea he has been working on, we understand, is a way to mark the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death, in 2017. “It is only a couple of years away and he has been thinking of making a major statement about it,” says someone who has known Harry since he was a boy.
“It might be establishing a new charity or beefing up an existing one. It might even see him unveiled as the head of a non-government organisation (NGO), provided it was not just a ribbon-cutting position.”
In the immediate future, Harry is preparing to spend four weeks Down Under, living and working with the Australian Defence Force. After a successful trip two years ago, he is looking forward to another slice of the more relaxed lifestyle which is so different from some of the more strait-laced constraints of royal life.
There are even suggestions he will be tempted to spend extended periods in Australia in the coming years.
As he sets off this summer to work with conservation groups in Africa, Prince Harry also hopes to be able to resurrect another early ambition - to be a wildlife photographer.
It’s his continuing hobby and he always carries a camera. Years ago, when asked what he would like to do were he not a prince of the realm, Harry said nothing would give him more joy than photographing Africa’s endangered animals.
There will be time back in Britain for him to work with wounded servicemen - last summer he instigated and masterminded the brilliant Invictus Games, a Paralympic-style tournament for disabled military veterans - but much of his future is likely to be mapped out to be in Africa.
One intriguing question is just what this will mean for his love life, and how he will cope without the comforts of a long-legged blonde.
“Well, he did it in Helmand for 10 weeks,” declares one of his chums.
Whatever pressures now mount on Harry, they will not include marriage, though he himself must be giving it some thought as most of his friends are now wed. Surprisingly, there is no imperative from his family that he must find a bride.
The queen, 89 next month, who is very close to her grandson and will often clear her diary when she knows he wants to drop in to see her, would like to see him settle down and start a family, but not in haste.
“As the mother of three out of four children with broken marriages, she feels it is far better for Prince Harry to take his time and make the right choice,” says a lady-in-waiting. “There’s no hurry - William has secured the succession.”
His loyal staff, meanwhile, are working to ensure that there is a structure to Harry’s coming months to prevent the “second gap year” claims. His private secretary, Ed Lane Fox, for example, a laconic ex-army officer, has helped the once notoriously thin-skinned Harry adjust more easily to criticism.
Lane Fox and Nick Loughran, the prince’s press secretary, however, believe this is a narrative they can effectively handle. They also recognise that a prince so natural in front of the cameras will make a formidable fundraiser for any charity he should turn his mind to.
As Harry stands at what he admits is a “crossroads” in his life, the world will be watching to see if this belief in him is well founded.
Princess Diana need not have worried. One way or another, the spotlight will now be on Harry whatever he does.
Daily Mail