Listen up, Harry - here’s how other royal ‘spares’ are coping with not being number one

In that supposedly ideal set-up for royal families of having both an heir and a spare to keep the line secure, the road ahead is pretty much mapped out for the Number One Sons such as the Prince of Wales. Barring accidents, the throne will one day be theirs, though it may involve a long wait.

But what of the sons (and daughters) who were born later? How do they feel about such a status and does it have an impact on their lives?

We are soon to find out. The world’s most famous runner-up, the Duke of Sussex, is about to share “his truth”, as he likes to put it, on the subject in a memoir, strikingly entitled Spare.

The book promises “unflinchingly” to describe the “highs and lows” of being second-in-line. And then, presumably, of slipping down the ranking, as the heir has children, to fifth, which arguably in dynastic terms makes him less of a spare and more surplus to requirements.

While it seems unlikely that with so much to get off his chest, Prince Harry will have had time to delve into a dictionary to look up the etymology of “spare”, he might not be surprised to find that, as well as meaning extra, spare can also be used to mean “unemployed” and “angry”. This may even explain his apparently quietly seething portrait on the book’s cover.

For those unable to wait until January, indeed for the Duke, too, the example of how spares in other royal houses are coping with not being number one might offer some useful pointers as to the right and wrong way for Harry to handle his lifetime on the royal subs’ bench.

They roughly divide into what might be termed – in relation to those other definitions of spare – as workers and shirkers. First-in-line among the workers is Prince Carl Philip of Sweden.

Carl Philip may have been smiled upon by the gods when it came to Hollywood good looks (the 43-year-old is often described as a dead ringer for Orlando Bloom or Jamie Dornan) but royal life has not always been so kind. For the first seven months of his life, he was the actual heir to the Swedish throne. Then, the constitution was changed so that the crown would now pass to the reigning monarch’s first-born, regardless of gender, meaning that his older sister, Victoria, will one day inherit the palaces and crowns from King Carl XVI Gustaf.

It is a hard one to object to – at least publicly in an age of equality – but Carl Philip has not been allowed a peaceful life as Sweden’s spare. His choice of a wife in 2015 prompted national controversy and negative headlines. Princess Sofia is a former glamour model who once posed topless for lads’ mags, has a nice line in tattoos and has also appeared in reality TV shows.

The couple doggedly faced down their doubters, kept resolutely quiet about any hurt feelings, and diligently applied themselves to causes such as anti-bullying and dyslexia that were close to their hearts. Being workers, though, doesn’t always bring you rewards in the strange world of royalty.

In 2019, the king decided that their two sons, Princes Alexander and Gabriel (joined two years later by Julian), would no longer have royal status. Sweden’s stoical spare graciously accepted his father’s argument that a modern monarchy needed to be slimmer, and even hailed the new freedoms and choices it opened up for his boys to make their own way in the world.

His close Scandinavian cousin, Prince Joachim, 53, second son of Queen Margrethe II and Denmark’s spare, took similar news less well. His mother announced earlier this year that Joachim’s four children would no longer be princes and princesses but “only” counts and countesses.

“It is never fun to see your children mistreated,” Joachim told journalists. He is now reportedly estranged from both his mother and older brother Crown Prince Frederik, though he has carried on with his role as Danish defence attaché in Paris and has not yet headed off to raise chickens in Montecito.

Also firmly in the category of workers, not shirkers, is Belgium’s 60-year-old Princess Astrid, second child of King Albert II, and little sister and spare to the current king, her brother, Philippe. She has, having devoted herself to a life of public duties and representing the king on the international stage, never put a foot wrong.

In fact, Astrid has done it so well that there was some talk that the law might be changed to allow her to usurp her less-than-admired brother and take the Belgian throne. The same has sometimes been suggested about Princess Caroline of Monaco.

This 65-year-old’s current status as worker – notably her standing supportively in public at the shoulder of her younger brother, Albert, with his South African wife, Princess Charlene, mysteriously so often absent – has, however, only come after a headline-grabbing youth. For many years as second-in-line to her father, Prince Rainier III, and – briefly – first-in-line to Albert when he ascended, she was once forever making headlines with her string of high-profile romantic liaisons with actors and sports stars (including at one stage the then Prince Charles), and her three marriages.

Another undeniable worker among the ranks of royal spares is Princess Märtha Louise, the first-born child of King Harald of Norway. But her chosen work has been with her own business ventures, including an alternative therapy centre where she communicates with angels.

The Norwegian crown was restricted to the oldest male claimant when her brother Haakon was born in 1973 two years after Märtha Louise, and though she undertook some royal duties as a young woman, she gave up her Royal Highness title in 2002 and spent time living and working in New York and London with her first husband.

More recently she has been back home but was banned in 2019 from using the word Princess to promote her clairvoyant work. She caused consternation earlier this year when she announced that she was engaged to marry American Durek Verrett, a self-professed shaman.

On the shirker side of the equation must be Infanta Cristina, the 57-year-old younger sister of King Felipe of Spain. In 2013, she was tried, alongside her then husband, handball player Iñaki Urdangarin, on charges of embezzlement of £5 million and misusing their royal titles.

He was found guilty and sentenced to five years behind bars, but the Infanta was acquitted, though what came out in evidence about her conduct saw her moving to exile in Geneva, Switzerland and stripped of her royal title as Duchess of Palma de Mallorca by her brother.

The damage Cristina did to her family’s royal reputation, however, is as nothing compared with perhaps the most controversial spare of recent times, Princess Irene of the Netherlands, younger sibling of the former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands (she abdicated in 2013 so her eldest son Willem-Alexander could accede to the throne). In 1963, while second-in-line to the Dutch throne behind her big sister, this popular free-spirited princess secretly became a Catholic without telling her mother, Queen Juliana, of the staunchly Protestant Royal House of Orange.

It was a prelude to her planned marriage to Prince Carlos, a claimant to the empty Spanish throne (this was the era of General Franco). It caused consternation in the Netherlands, set Queen and government at odds, and led to bomb threats as the glamorous Irene boarded a plane to Spain.

Unlike Britain’s Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II’s younger sister, she chose marriage over royal duty and her place in the line of succession. Her husband’s allegedly right-wing views caused liberals in the Netherlands, who believed she had been badly treated, to abandon her, and Irene was left to a jet-setting life in exile with minor royals and other hangers-on.

In 1980, she divorced her husband and was allowed home to the Netherlands with her four children, but her platform appearance at an anti-nuclear demonstration the following year caused yet more outrage. She moved out of the royal palace and henceforth kept out of the limelight, publishing books on her conversations with trees and dolphins. Since 1999, she has lived in South Africa where she runs a nature sanctuary.

On reflection, Irene may be a better role model for the Duke of York, another spare with only himself to blame, rather than his nephew. The Duke of Sussex is clearly intending that his forthcoming memoir will finally allow him to create a new pathway that allows him to achieve his stated goal of becoming – unlike his European cousins faced by similar accidents of birth – both a non-working royal and a working spare.

Hard-working spares from around the world

Thailand

Princess Sirivannavari, 35, is one of seven children of King Vajiralongkorn. Her mother and four brothers live in the US after reportedly being banished, but she came back to live with her father at his request. And she hasn’t been lazy. In her 20s, she represented Thailand in badminton and equestrian events and has a masters degree in haute couture. She also has her own high-end fashion brand, Sirivannavari.

Bhutan

Princess Ashi – the 29-year-old half-sister of King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck – has a sociology degree from America’s Georgetown University. She works at the Judiciary of the Kingdom of Bhutan as president of the Bhutan National Legal Institute and is a member of DeSupps, a volunteer group which manages crowds in disaster zones or large events.

Lesotho

There are plenty of diplomatic honours under the belt of 56-year-old Prince Seeiso Bereng Seeiso of Lesotho, the younger brother of King Letsie III. Not only did he serve as President of the Senate of Lesotho from 2015 to 2017, but he was also High Commissioner to the UK picking up a Diplomat of the Year award in the process. He co-founded the charity Sentelbale with Prince Harry in 2006 to help orphaned children in Lesotho.

Japan

The younger brother of the emperor, Fumihito, Crown Prince Akishino, 56, has a BA in political science, a PhD in ornithology and, through his interest in aquaculture, is thought to be a “catfish expert”. In 1990, he upset the order by marrying outside the aristocracy and before his brother, but that hasn’t stopped him from honouring his many royal roles while living happily with his wife, three children and multiple academic achievements.