Prince Harryis still a hugger.
In 2016 — a pre-socially distanced COVID world — I marveled at how many people Harry hugged, and how freely. Everywhere he went, he shared his energy generously, listened intently, and shined his light on all who clamored for their moment of real-life royalty. He was Prince Charming in America’s fantasy fairytale kingdom, Walt Disney World, and it seemed as though everyone fell under his spell. And he did it without a crown, without a Dukedom. He did it with empathy and human connection.
“I feel invisible a lot of the time because of the way I look,“Katie Kuiper, a former Army staff sergeant who suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the face, told me at the time. When Harry gave her a congratulatory kiss on the cheek, she said, “He made me feel special.” It was, simply, royal magic.
Six years later, nearly everything in Harry’s life has changed. No longer a bachelor who speaks wistfully of becoming a dad one day (“There have been moments through life, especially when we do a tour abroad, when I think, ‘I’d love to have kids now,’ " he told PEOPLE in 2016) nor a senior working royal, he is a man who has set his own radical course: a new life in America with wifeMeghan Markleand their kidsArchie, who will be 3 on May 6, andLilibet, 10 months.
So, now that he has left Kensington Palace for a castle in California, is the royal magic still there?
“I am my mother’s son,” he told PEOPLE inthis week’s cover interview, and that much is clear whenever he interacts with the Invictus athletes and their families. Whether it’s getting on his knees to make eye contact with apair of Dutch kid reportersor visiting Team USA’s training room to deliver a game day pep talk, he remains as attentive as ever.
In conversations with more than a dozen Invictus athletes and their family members, they all shared similar gratitude for the opportunity to come together with fellow wounded service members and veterans. They’re not trying to figure outwhether Harry and Meghan will attend the Queen’s Jubileecelebrations. (No doubt one of a multitude of reasons Harry prefers chatting to the athletes rather than reporters.) They’re just grateful he’s here.
Like many of the athletes I spoke to, Runnells says adaptive sports have been an indispensable lifeline after his injury.
“It has been a huge pick-me-up from the hole I was in,” he says. His injury “brought me down because I was never able to do anything I used to, and this right here . . . this just brought me back, so I can insert all the energy and everything that I have just like this.”
Harry’s humor, too, remains a draw. Visiting Team USA’s training room, he planted kisses on two of the athletes with shaved heads — Runnells and Josh Smith.
“He was like, can I kiss the lucky egg?” recalls Runnells. “Were were just like, ‘Yeah, totally.’ " (Since the kiss, says Runnells, “It’s crazy the luck I’ve had. We haven’t lost. I caught a van that kept me from showing up late. I got to see the tulip fields. It’s been absolutely ridiculous.")
Meeting bothPrince Harry, 37, and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, 40, was a highlight for Pye-Keenan, who presented a bottle of maple syrup she’d brought from home.
“He put his hand out, so I shook it,” she says. “He’s got a good handshake. Which, if you don’t have a good handshake, I don’t want anything to do with you. He has a really good handshake.” And meeting Meghan, who is biracial like Pye-Keenan and her sister, was also meaningful: “There are just certain things you can say that people just understand when you have the same backstory.”
Modern royal magic.
source: people.com
