It seems everyone has an opinion on Prince Harry’s wild weekend with friends in Vegas. How have his ‘escapades’ affected his reputation, his family’s reputation? Is it right there was a media blackout (bar The Sun who broke rank) on the nude pictures?
In my personal opinion, he is a young, single guy partying with friends in Vegas. He wasn’t on Royal duties, he wasn’t on military duties – he was on holiday. To echo Boris Johnson’s sentiments on the whole saga, it would be more surprising if he hadn’t got up to mischief.
But, unfortunately for Harry, where most of us could detag a facebook photo and pray we never run into our drunken mistakes again, he is a member of the world’s most famous and respected family and trying to forget it ever happened is not an option. Most people’s grandmothers would never find out about such a, in the sober light of day, humiliating game let alone the world’s media.
Prince Harry has been in hot water before and has managed ridden out the storm. The timing is unfortunate as he has slowly been building his profile doing official Royal duties, but he is an energetic, cheeky chap and with that personality comes someone who is going to let his hair down once in a while.
Unluckily for him, his antics happened in the home of ‘get rich and famous quick’ – USA. One of the girls has signed a celebrity PR company and is preparing to do a tell-all. This is bound to lead to further embarrassment in the short-term. In the long-term however, I think Harry will be just fine. It will be something that will be looked back at with some amusement, as long as he is more careful in the future about his behaviour (or who his naughty behaviour is in front of).
As for the Royal Family’s reputation – I can’t see there being any negative repercussions. In Britain, we are far more bothered by ‘proper’ conduct than elsewhere. In fact, the Americans and others will probably find this situation interesting and will love the celeb scandal type angle. It may even endear more people, younger people, to the Royals as they seem more real, more like them.
In terms of the media blackout – I can see the arguments from both sides of the fence (The Sun’s and everyone else). The whole situation is an intrusion of his privacy and papers publishing the pictures perpetuates that. However, anyone with the internet could very easily see them so it was already out there. Either way, we’ve all now probably seen the third in line to the throne de-robed and have all gossiped about it.
Suzanne Mackie
Indigo
