Meghan Sussex, Meghan Sussex

Harry Isn’t Delulu. He’s the Only Grown-Up in the Room.

In a raw 42-minute sit-down with GQ, the Duke of Sussex opened up about tears he couldn’t cry, the mother he still talks to and the family that froze him out. Within a day, William’s camp hit back.

“Some people don’t want it to work out”

Prince Harry has laid his cards on the table. “Some people don’t want it to work out. I want it to work out,” the Duke told GQ’s Zach Baron. “Of course I do.”

The 42-year-old called reconciling with his family “the most important thing.” But don’t mistake that for weakness. “I am optimistic. I’m hopeful. I’m not naive,” he said.

And he laid down terms. “I can respect them if they respect me and our position,” Harry said. “Our position is really quite clear now.”

William’s camp fires back within 24 hours

So much for the silent treatment. An insider told Rob Shuter that “silence is their greatest weapon.” Yet a day after the interview aired, a source close to William was briefing the Mirror.

“There isn’t a world right now where the Prince of Wales can imagine repairing the relationship with his brother,” the source said. Harry, they added, had been “advised in no uncertain terms” to stop speaking publicly.

The source even invoked the 60th anniversary of Aberfan, where 116 children died, to contrast the family’s duties with Harry’s “yet another interview.” Over at the Daily Mail, Richard Eden went further. He urged the King to strip Harry, Meghan and even their children of their titles.

“So I’m no longer falling out of nightclubs drunk?”

Harry had a pointed answer for critics who moan that he’s changed. “So I’m no longer falling out of night clubs drunk? Is that what you wanted for me?” he shot back.

“That was entertainment for a lot of people, especially the press,” he said. He admitted the party years masked his grief for Princess Diana: “Was I sometimes doing that to suppress the sadness of losing my mom? Yes.”

On the kitchen floor

The most startling moment came as Harry described his coaching work. He said he wanted to spare others “the situation that I was, which is lying on the floor in the fetal position in your kitchen.”

Pressed on whether he meant himself, Harry answered: “Yeah, that’s a reality, right?”

He also revealed he didn’t cry for 20 years after his mother died, “despite trying hard.” Therapy changed that. “Crying eventually feels great,” he said.

“Sometimes I do get a response”

Harry still asks his late mother questions, and says she sometimes answers. “Sometimes there’s questions that I ask her looking for some kind of response and sometimes I do get a response,” he said.

He joked that he’d “obviously spent too much time in California.” But he stood by it: “I really do feel her energy at certain times.”

He still carries guilt over their last phone call, rushed because, at 12, he wanted to run off and play with his cousins. “I’m the one that has to live with that,” he said.

Baby Archie felt his stress

Harry gave a glimpse of the pressure he was under after Archie was born. He described a 40-minute drive in and out of London, “so stressed with everything that was happening.”

If he came home tense, his baby son “would feel it immediately.” So Harry used the drive to calm down before he picked Archie up.

War on the “pretend” journalists

Harry saved his sharpest words for the press. Most stories about him, he said, are “made up, untrue, or just really badly sourced or with an agenda.”

“I’ll be damned if you guys who pretend to be journalists are gonna drag this whole profession down the drain,” he fumed. On his memoir, he was defiant: “Everybody else is allowed to tell their version of my story, but God forbid, I should be able to tell the other side of it.”

He even took aim at the stiff-upper-lip types. A man can’t just be a “macho dude who has no sensitivity,” he said, who “is basically just a douche.”

What exactly should he apologize for?

Critics say Harry owes his family an apology before any peace. His fans ask: for what?

In Spare, Harry wrote that William grabbed him by the collar and knocked him to the floor during a 2019 row over Meghan. He landed on the dog’s bowl. Palace sources love to bring up his Nazi costume, but Harry wrote that William and Kate urged him to wear it.

Meghan told Oprah it was Kate who made her cry before the wedding, not the other way around. William and Kate have never publicly responded to most of these claims.

A prince comes home

Harry admitted the move happened fast: “For us, it was very short.” Putting Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, in a British school “has meant a lot to me,” he said.

He hinted the move may not be forever, saying it’s “good to be outside of the US for the next few months perhaps.” But he left no doubt where his loyalties lie: “I will defend my family with full strength.”

The verdict

One brother is talking about grief, therapy and forgiveness. The other is briefing the tabloids. You decide who’s stuck in the past.Sources

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