Prince Harry has publicly reinforced his status as a family man and his commitment to his children in a moving address in New York Tuesday, pushing back against narratives by some critics hinting that he was happy to be spending a week away from his family.
In a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative promoting his and Meghan Markle’s charity the Parents Network, which seeks to protect children from harm from social media, Harry said that his own phone had a lock screen of his children, saying: “My lock screen is a picture of my kids, what is yours?”
The screen behind him then filled with screen grabs of lock screen pictures of children who had died after taking their own life after social media bullying.
Harry continued: “These children and thousands more, meant the world to their families. The beautiful faces you see before you, their smiles, their dreams, all lost, all too soon and all because of social media. It is why we launched the Parents Network, a global community that provides crucial support to parents whose children have suffered from the harmful effects of social media.”
The deliberate inclusion of his own family in the speech came the day after he was spotted making a video call to his wife and kids in a semi-public setting Monday.
Harry made the call Monday from an event space at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel before going on stage with winners of the Diana Award, which recognises outstanding achievements of young people.
Diana Legacy Award winner Chiara Riyanti Hutapea Zhang, 18, told People magazine: “Backstage, he was actually calling Meghan. I thought that was just so sweet, and it helped humanize him. He made sure we had no nerves at all.”
The outlet added that Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3, were on the call also.
Both the call and today’s mention of his kids might have been carefully curated to rebuke some of their most hostile critics on social media, who have had a fresh opportunity to sell the narrative of a divided couple this week when Harry began a week long stint apart from his wife.
For almost any other busy married couple to spend a week apart would not be worthy of note, but when it’s Meghan and Harry, any physical separation triggers a tsunami of speculation.
When it emerged last year that Harry had spent the occasional night at an LA hotel, staying there instead of driving back to Montecito late at night, it provoked a deluge of speculation, without a shred of evidence, that the marriage was in trouble.
Harry is spending the first part of this week in New York, where he is attending UN and Diana Award events, before moving on to London where he will be the guest of honor at the WellChild Awards.
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