- The Observer, Sunday January 13 2002
Friends of Margaret spoke years ago of her frustrations; brought up as second in line to the last King-Emperor of India, but knowing always that as soon as her sibling the Queen had children, her useful function in the royal firm would be redundant.
Harry was only too aware from an early age of the way in which this applies to him too, say family friends. He is also, not only as the younger but also the more sensitive of Charles and Diana's children, acutely wounded by the very public way in which his parents' marriage dissolved.
While his brother Prince William was allowed by teachers to watch his mother's now celebrated appearance on Panorama in 1995, in which she admitted to adultery with Captain James Hewitt, Harry had to hear details about the much publicised interview through the whisperings of school friends at his preparatory school, Ludgrove.
The younger prince was also, perhaps understandably, far more disoriented than William by the horrific death of his mother in 1997. Harry formed a much more dependent bond with Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the 'nanny' employed by Prince Charles after Diana's death, than did his brother.
'He has always been slightly quieter and gentler,' says a family friend. 'Of course, he is into rough and tumble, like any adolescent but he has moments when he goes completely quiet. You know not to disturb him.'
Another family friend said the young prince had worked 'incredibly hard' during his GCSE year which ended last June. 'It may be alarming, but it's hardly surprising that he went a bit crazy once that was all over.'
Prince Charles's decision to address Harry's excesses last year looks healthily progressive in the light of his own upbringing during which 'bawlings' from Prince Phillip were not uncommon. Diana herself, a patron of the alcoholics' charity Turning Point, had also raised the dangers of addiction with her sons at an early age.
'Charles does enforce discipline with the boys, but he knows perfectly well there's no point at all in just shouting and getting stroppy,' said the family friend. He hoped apparently, that the matter had been quietly resolved and that Harry's stark experience - a visit to a rehabilitation clinic - would bring home the dangers both of drugs and alcohol.
Palace officials have always been conscious that tabloid newspapers have been desperately keen to attempt to link the young princes with drugs.
Camilla Parker Bowles' son Tom admitted to cocaine use two years ago. His cousin Emma, a reporter on the Evening Standard's Londoners Diary column was last year admitted to a rehabilitation clinic in the Unityed States after she too developed a cocaine dependency. And Lord Frederick Windsor, son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, has also been caught 'powdering his nose' in a tabloid sting.
So the News of the World , desperate to 'score' in the tabloid cir culation battle, must have been delighted when it received a tip-off about last summer's events.
Last Wednesday afternoon News of the World editor Rebekah Wade rang St James's Palace to say she had a story that she wished to discuss with Palace officials. She met courtiers on Thursday morning, and found that they were all too sensitive to the embarrassment that Ms Wade's paper can cause.
Last year, it was one of her staff, dressed as a sheikh, who entrapped the Countess of Wessex into promising meetings with other members of the royal family through her public relations business and into describing Cherie Blair as 'horrid, horrid, horrid'.
Harry, returning to school for his new term at Eaton on Wednesday evening, was warned not to discuss the story with his classmates. By Thursday evening the full extent of the planned News of the World revelation was known.
A courtier said last night: 'The story was largely true. It did not involve entrapment or intrusion. This is the sort of thing that happens in families and, of course, distressing if it gets into the papers, but there it is.'
The family friend said: 'Even though this has only now become public, it happened last summer. As far as Prince Charles is concerned, it is a family matter and now resolved. He's very, very proud of Harry and deeply fond of him.'
Even if the wider world is transfixed by the news, for the young prince life now continues as normal. He is visiting Prince Charles' country home, Highgrove, for lunch today. Father and son will discuss plans for Harry's university education which his Eton housemaster Andrew Gailie raised with Charles on a separate visit, planned some months ago, which took place yesterday morning.
'All families have ups and downs," said the friend of the Wale's. 'This is one of them. The sooner life gets back to normal for a 17-year-old boy, the better.'
