One of the reasons Prince Charles has had such a hard time with the fallout from his son Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s bombshell Oprah interview is that the future king is “immensely sensitive,” according to Princess Diana’s former voice coach, Stewart Pearce.
Pearce revealed to Us Weekly that “Prince Charles is a very, very shy man, a very sensitive and delicate man, but we see his public personality, but in private, he’s immensely sensitive.” He added, “when we’re sensitive, if we’re dealing with very strong, combustible emotion on the outside of us,” people tend to go into fight or flight. For example, when Princess Diana accused him of having an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, “what he did was to shrink back and as a result of that became an aloof,” Pearce explained. “Well, that doesn’t heal the challenge that’s taking place.”
So when reports came out that Meghan and Harry were “troubled” be the “lapse of contact” with the royal, the voice coach says those claims rang true to him because that’s “what Charles does.” Pearce continued, “He can’t deal with it because of his sensitivity, so he hides. And what Harry’s trying to do is to heal that. Not out of umbrage, not out of anger or revenge or criticism or accusation…I felt that he was just somebody saying, ‘This is the way that it is, and this is why we want to make change.’”
Harry has previously spoken about his fraught relationship with his father at length, both on Dax Shepard’s podcast last month and on his Apple TV+ series with Oprah, The Me You Can’t See. On the docuseries, the Duke of Sussex said, “My father used to say to me when I was younger, he used to say to [Prince] William and I, ‘Well, it was like that for me, so it’s gonna be like that for you.’ That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered, it doesn’t mean that your kids have to suffer. In fact, quite the opposite. If you suffered, do everything you can to make sure that whatever experiences, negative experiences that you had, you can make it right for your kids.” He added on Shepard’s podcast that learning about the “pain and suffering” his parents experienced inspired him to try and break that cycle of harm for his own family.
These types of candid conversations about his upbringing made Charles “quite devastated,” a friend of the Prince of Wales previously told Vanity Fair. “He is such a gentle man and a dedicated father first and foremost. Knowing him, he’ll be feeling wretched and will take no joy or happiness in what’s going on within the family. But he will also want to seek a reconciliation. He is not vindictive at all, and he wants to make peace with Harry.”
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