How Prince Charles Cunningly Used Prince Harry To Redeem Himself

A royal biographer has revealed how Prince Charles once took advantage of Prince Harry to improve his image. That time, Prince Harry was a teenager making the most of his life, while Prince Charles was a royal family member who’s in dire need of good publicity to recover his stained reputation.

As a teenager, Prince Harry was the worst. During his younger days, the Duke of Sussex earned the nickname “Party Prince” because of his hard-partying lifestyle. He came under fire in 2002 after it was revealed that the underage Prince Harry had been drinking in their village pub near Highgrove and had been smoking marijuana.

That year, Prince Charles was still one of the least favored royals because of his scandal with Camilla Parker Bowles and his failed marriage to Princess Diana. That’s why when Prince Harry got into hot water that same year, the Prince of Wales took advantage of the incident to make himself look good.

A royal biographer revealed how Prince Charles used the negative write-ups about Prince Harry for good publicity by using his son’s situation in a “masterful piece of damage limitation.” In her 2005 book “The Firm,” royal biographer Penny Junor revealed how Prince Charles gave the negative stories published about Prince Harry a positive spin, all to his advantage.

“The Prince of Wales had taken his younger son to visit a drugs rehabilitation center after he confessed to smoking cannabis,” wrote Junor. “Prince Charles had discovered the previous November what had been going on while he had left Harry home alone during the school holidays, and had handled the incident well, so the story went. He had taken him for a short sharp shock to Featherstone Lodge in south London to talk to recovering drug addicts. What could have been a wholly negative story had a positive spin,” she added.

According to Junor, what Prince Charles did left him “smelling of roses.” While his move helped save Prince Harry from addiction, the young prince reportedly resented his father over the incident.

Junor revealed that Prince Harry bitterly resented being made to look bad so his father could look good. “Worse, he was furious that the blame for leading him astray should have fallen on Guy Pelly, a good friend of both princes, whose reputation was trashed,” she wrote.

The scandal was also what prompted Prince Harry and Prince William’s first serious rift as brothers. According to Junor, Prince Harry resented that he had been blamed for everything, while William, who had “hardly been a model of decorum” at Highgrove, got away scot-free.