Inside Prince Harry’s ‘indulgent’ childhood and why Charles now ‘regrets’ how he raised him: Royal expert reveals if the King had been firmer with his son during his early years, he might not have caused him so much worry now

Unlimited toys, the freedom to explore grand palaces, and having your every whim met by an army of servants sounds to many like the perfect childhood.

But according to Prince Harry, his royal upbringing caused him to suffer from ‘generational trauma’.

Not because he lacked any material possessions, but because his emotional needs were not met.

The scars were so bad that he decided he would walk away from the only life he knew in 2020, vowing to raise his children differently – with more love and less Press intrusion.

However, not every royal expert shares Harry’s analysis of his upbringing. 

Ingrid Seward, who has spent 40 years following The Firm, claimed that Harry’s emotional problems were in fact caused because his father had been too soft on him.

She said: ‘Had Charles been firmer with Harry – and, to some extent, William – in their formative years, they might not have caused him so much worry.’

The editor of Majesty magazine claimed Charles was an ‘indulgent father’ who let Harry get away with too much.

After all, Harry was the Spare, and because he was not expected to inherit the throne, he was always allowed greater licence than his elder brother William.

But instead of viewing his status as a blessing, Harry took his ‘Spare’ label as a great curse – and apparent insult.

He moaned in his 2023 memoir: ‘I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. 

‘I was summoned to provide back-up, distraction, diversion and, if necessary, a spare part. Kidney, perhaps. Blood transfusion. Speck of bone marrow.’

But Seward, in her most recent book My Mother And I, has rejected Harry’s account, writing: ‘That is completely untrue, but it was how Harry chose to see himself, and he has allowed this perception to dominate his life – to the extent that he has now made a career out of it.

‘Choosing to be seen as a victim, he has tried to wreak vengeance on his family and the Press for all the slights he believes he’s suffered. And much of his ire has been directed at his elder brother. 

For Seward, the roots of Harry’s personal turmoil lie in his childhood. 

Seward, 77, has spent decades covering The Firm and its highs and lows – from the War of the Waleses, to Toegate to Megxit and beyond. 

Like many journalists of her generation, she would often find herself invited to Kensington Palace for cosy chats with Princess Diana or to the ski slopes of Switzerland with Charles, William and Harry. 

She witnessed at close quarters ‘the boys’ grow into men, becoming one of the most qualified people to comment on what went so wrong in Harry’s upbringing.

Seward describes how, for a long time, Princess Diana called Harry ‘her little baby’ and that he didn’t want to share his mother with William, who is two years his senior.

Perhaps due to their thirst for attention over their mother, Harry also always felt like he needed to compete in everything with his brother, which was especially difficult given William was notably more successful at school.

Diana was concerned everyone was going to think her younger boy was ‘thick’ as he didn’t have any thirst for knowledge and was never interested in sitting down with a book, Seward wrote.

Despite getting the finest education at Eton, he struggled at school and exams, with his housemaster admitting he was not cut out for university. 

In Spare Harry claimed that his memory was bad because after his mother’s death he ‘didn’t want to fix it, because memory equalled grief’. Prince William, on the other hand, did well at school and at university. 

Learning was so hard for Harry growing up that Diana’s friend and alternative healer Simone Simmons was called in to give healing to him – partly for headaches but also because he was struggling with dyslexia.

Seward wrote that growing up, the late Queen had always thought Charles and Diana’s children were ‘unruly little boys’.

She recalled: ‘On one occasion they climbed onto the grand piano at Sandringham and Harry knocked a vase of flowers onto the floor, where it broke.

‘Nanny was summoned to organise clearing the mess, but the Queen got to hear about the boys’ antics and was not pleased. 

‘It may have been holiday time, but this was still a court bound by rules and conventions that had changed little since Victorian times.’

At the age of nine, Harry turned to his brother and declared: ‘You’re going to be King; it doesn’t matter what I do.’

Put another way, according to Seward, he saw this as a licence to do almost whatever he wanted.

But it appears Harry may have been enabled at times with his rulebreaking by both Charles and Diana.

For instance there are reports that he showed an early talent for mimicry that took scant account of the importance of the person he was imitating. But instead of telling him off, it appears his antics amused his parents.

‘Later events suggest, however, that a bit more early discipline might have been helpful’, Seward wrote. 

Perhaps Charles and Diana’s softness towards their children was due to the guilt of what they were putting them through as their marriage became riven with acrimony.

It is thought that often they may have heard their parents fighting and witnessed Diana’s tearful outbursts, although as Harry was two years younger, he might have been shielded from any unpleasantness by being whisked off by nannies.

But Seward believes that due to the turbulent marriage, it was difficult for Charles to build a relationship with his sons.

Diana often curtailed his time with them, and whenever he wanted to have them for the weekend she often thought of a last minute excuse to keep them with her.

However, Charles hated conflict and seemed to be too timid and weak to properly confront his wife over her behaviour.

Seward claims most of the Royal Family blamed him for the state of the marriage, thinking that if he had been firmer in the beginning, many of the later difficulties with Diana would have been avoided.

Like his mother and grandmother, Charles hated confrontation and wanted to turn away from the problem instead of dealing with it. 

But just like with Diana, it appears that Charles’ lack of courage in confronting his family’s behaviour also caused problems when it came to challenging unruly Harry. 

However looking back on Harry’s upbringing, Seward claims Charles ‘probably regrets’ that he wasn’t strict with Harry and William.

She told Fox News: ‘He went on with Diana’s freestyle of bringing up children. 

‘Diana allowed them to do, more or less, what they wanted, which was very fashionable in those days. You let children just get on with things. 

‘I think Charles probably regrets that he wasn’t a bit stricter, because it might’ve given both boys a few more boundaries.’

Diana ditched a more formal approach to raising her children and became known for her unconventional hands-on approach behind Palace doors. 

Instead of formal events, she prioritised playtime, scheduled impromptu trips with her sons and attended more to their emotions. 

However Charles was raised in a more traditional environment as a future sovereign and kept things more formal with his children.

It seems Charles’s way of showing them love, rather than smothering them with hugs and kisses, was to teach Harry about nature and plants – saying ‘they have feelings too’.

But Harry was traumatised by what he perceives as the lack of affection, saying he now ‘bombards’ his own children with the love he feels he never received from his father.

The upset can be seen in Harry’s choice to spend the opening chapter of his memoir recounting how Charles broke the news of Diana’s death – claiming he was not hugged by his father even in that heartbreaking moment.

Perhaps Charles’ lack of physical affection towards his sons comes from his lack of closeness with his own mother – the Queen. 

After all, Princess Elizabeth only had Charles until he was age four, as after she became Queen, her children were virtually taken away from her.

Although it was very much the norm for nannies to handle children in aristocratic families in those days, the Queen would only see her children in the morning and then again in the evening.  

When Charles spoke to Jonathan Dimbleby for an authorised biography in 1994, he was critical of his upbringing and how he was emotionally distant from his mother and his father Prince Philip.

Seward told GB News that the King didn’t develop a close relationship with his mother until his ‘later life’, going into his fifties.  

Harry seems to believe that Charles’ tortured early years with his mother was the reason that lay behind their own distance.

He told actor Dax Shepard’s ‘Armchair Expert’ mental health podcast in May 2021 that Charles had ‘suffered’ because of his upbringing, and he had ‘treated me the way he was treated’, calling it ‘genetic pain’.

The Prince added: ‘I don’t think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on, basically.’

After Harry’s childhood, his teenage years also included a fair share of rule-breaking, as he admitted in Spare he first took cocaine at the age of 17.

He became the ultimate royal party boy, with reports of booze-fuelled trips abroad and regular nights out at Mayfair club Mahiki.

The King’s youngest son was often splashed across the front pages of newspapers stumbling out of nightclubs and getting up to mischief. 

And since he married Meghan, Harry’s relationship with his father got worse after he left the Royal Family, moved to America, and broke the cardinal sin of royal silence by unleashing a barrage of public criticism at his family.

Understandably so, things remain frosty between Harry and Charles. 

Although the Prince dramatically flew to the UK in February for a meeting just after Charles’ cancer diagnosis had been made public, it only lasted 30 minutes.

And on neither of his other two visits to the UK last year, in May and in September, did he meet with his father – despite his struggling health. 

Despite no doubt sharing a deep bond, Charles’ relationship with his disillusioned son remains fractured.

In quiet moments, he might now pause to reflect on where things went wrong for his youngest son.

Perhaps the answer has something to do with the childhood antics that seem to have foreshadowed his royal rule-breaking now.