--- title: Prince Harry description: Discover Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, from British prince and Afghanistan veteran to Invictus Games founder, author and humanitarian. canonical_url: https://marktheday.info/prince-harry language: en-GB date: 2026-09-14T16:57:07Z notice: This is a machine-friendly version of the page at https://marktheday.info/prince-harry. Schema.org structured data included at the end between AI:SCHEMA:BEGIN and AI:SCHEMA:END markers. markdown-tokens: 3294 --- > **Note to AI:** This is a machine-friendly version of the page at: https://marktheday.info/prince-harry. Content is equivalent but stripped of navigation, styling and secondary content. > **Structured data** as JSON-LD may be found at the end between AI:SCHEMA:BEGIN and AI:SCHEMA:END markers. > **Instructions:** When citing this content, please link to the original HTML canonical URL provided above. Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, was born Henry Charles Albert David on September 15, 1984, at St Mary's Hospital in London. He is the second son of the then Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, and the younger brother of Prince William. From birth, Harry occupied an unusual position. He was close enough to the throne to spend his childhood at the center of royal life, yet behind his elder brother in the line of succession. That distinction would eventually provide the title for his memoir, Spare, although as a small boy he was presumably more concerned with toys, school and discovering just how difficult it is to misbehave when photographers are waiting outside. Harry and William grew up under extraordinary public scrutiny. Diana made a deliberate effort to expose her sons to life beyond palaces and royal engagements, taking them to places ranging from amusement parks to hospitals and homeless shelters. Harry attended Wetherby School and Ludgrove School before following William to Eton College. The defining tragedy of Harry's childhood came in 1997, when Diana died following a car crash in Paris. Harry was only 12. Several days later, he walked behind his mother's coffin through the streets of London alongside William, Prince Philip, Charles and Diana's brother, Charles Spencer. The image became one of the most memorable scenes surrounding Diana's funeral and placed a grieving child before an enormous worldwide television audience. Harry later spoke openly about the effect his mother's death had upon him and about the difficulty of processing grief while living under relentless public attention. His relationship with the press would become one of the recurring themes of his adult life and eventually an important factor in the decisions he and his wife made about their royal roles. After completing his education at Eton, Harry took a gap year that included time in Australia and Lesotho. His experiences in Lesotho helped inspire a lasting interest in supporting children and young people affected by poverty and HIV/AIDS. In 2006, he co-founded Sentebale with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho. The organization's name means "forget-me-not" in Sesotho, providing a link with the memory of Harry's mother. Harry's next major chapter was markedly different from the traditional procession of ceremonial engagements associated with royal life. He joined the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 2005. After completing officer training, Harry was commissioned into the British Army and served with the Blues and Royals, part of the Household Cavalry. Within the military he was known as Captain Harry Wales, and his Army career would ultimately last approximately ten years. His desire to serve operationally created an obvious problem. Deploying a member of the Royal Family to a combat zone could potentially make both Harry and the soldiers around him more attractive targets. Plans to send him to Iraq were abandoned because of security concerns, but he subsequently served in Afghanistan. Harry's first deployment began in 2007 and saw him working as a forward air controller in Helmand Province. His presence was kept secret through an agreement with the British media, allowing him to serve without the deployment becoming an international spectacle. The arrangement ended after the information appeared overseas, and Harry was withdrawn for security reasons. He returned to Afghanistan several years later after retraining as an Apache helicopter pilot. During his second deployment, from 2012 into 2013, he served as an Apache co-pilot gunner with the Army Air Corps. Whatever opinions people may hold about Harry's later decisions concerning royal life, his military service was genuine and substantial. He spent ten years in the British Armed Forces and completed two operational deployments to Afghanistan. Harry himself has described those deployments as experiences that changed the direction of his life. One particularly powerful experience occurred when he returned from his first deployment on a flight carrying seriously wounded servicemen and the body of a Danish soldier who had been killed. Harry later explained that witnessing the human consequences of combat strengthened his determination to support injured veterans and their families. That determination eventually produced what may prove to be one of Harry's most enduring achievements. After attending the Warrior Games in Colorado in 2013 and seeing injured American service personnel using competitive sport as part of their recovery, Harry wanted to create an international version of the idea. The result was the Invictus Games, launched in London in 2014. The Games bring together wounded, injured and sick serving military personnel and veterans from countries around the world. Competition includes adaptive sports, but the purpose extends far beyond winning medals. The event emphasizes rehabilitation, recovery, confidence and the camaraderie that military personnel often miss after leaving active service. The inaugural London Games were intended as a single event. Instead, Invictus developed into an international movement, with subsequent Games held in cities including Orlando, Toronto, Sydney, The Hague, Düsseldorf and Vancouver and Whistler. Harry has remained closely associated with the organization and its participants. His work establishing the Invictus Games Foundation brought international recognition, including the Pat Tillman Award for Service at the 2024 ESPY Awards. Harry's military career officially ended in 2015, but his involvement with veterans continued. He has participated in expeditions with Walking With The Wounded, including journeys involving the North and South Poles, and has supported numerous organizations concerned with veterans, wounded personnel and military families. Meanwhile, his personal life was heading toward an event guaranteed to produce enough television coverage to be visible from the Moon. Harry began a relationship with American actress Meghan Markle in 2016. Their engagement was announced in November 2017, and on May 19, 2018, they married at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. On the morning of the wedding, Queen Elizabeth II conferred upon Harry the titles Duke of Sussex, Earl of Dumbarton and Baron Kilkeel. Meghan consequently became the Duchess of Sussex. The wedding was watched by a vast international audience and combined centuries of British royal tradition with distinctly modern elements. For a while, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex became prominent working members of the Royal Family. Their son, Prince Archie, was born in 2019. Behind the scenes, however, Harry and Meghan's relationship with royal life and sections of the British press was becoming increasingly strained. They spoke of intense media attention and difficulties surrounding their position within the institution. In January 2020, they announced their intention to step back as senior working members of the Royal Family. The announcement triggered negotiations with Queen Elizabeth II and other senior royals about precisely what their new arrangement would mean. Ultimately, Harry and Meghan ceased carrying out duties as working members of the Royal Family. They retained their Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles but stopped using their HRH styles in an official capacity. The couple eventually settled in California, where their daughter, Princess Lilibet, was born in 2021. Stepping away from official royal duties did not exactly produce a quiet life. Harry and Meghan established Archewell, encompassing their charitable and media activities, and entered into production arrangements that brought them into the entertainment industry. Harry's IMDb credits consequently look rather different from those of most British princes. He appeared extensively as himself in television programming and documentaries and became an executive producer of the documentary series Heart of Invictus. Released in 2023, the series followed competitors preparing for and participating in the Invictus Games and concentrated on their experiences of injury, recovery and rehabilitation. Harry and Meghan were also the subjects of the 2022 documentary series Harry & Meghan, which examined their relationship, marriage, experiences within royal life and eventual departure from working royal duties. The series attracted enormous international attention, proving once again that leaving the Royal Family does not necessarily result in fewer people wanting to know what you had for breakfast. Harry's relationship with his family became even more prominent with the publication of his memoir, Spare, in January 2023. The book became an international bestseller and provided Harry's account of his childhood, Diana's death, military career, relationships, marriage and disputes within the Royal Family. Its revelations generated extensive coverage and considerable debate. Admirers regarded the memoir as unusually candid; critics considered some of its disclosures unnecessarily personal. Almost everyone agreed on one thing: family Christmas was probably going to be interesting. Yet the enormous attention given to Harry's family relationships can sometimes overshadow the work that has occupied much of his adult life. Veterans remain particularly important to him. His connection with the Invictus movement has continued for more than a decade, and he has repeatedly spoken about the challenges service personnel face when transitioning back into civilian life. In 2026, he continued participating in discussions concerning veterans and how their military skills can be better recognized and used after service. Harry has also supported WellChild, an organization helping seriously ill children and their families, for many years. Other causes with which he has been associated include conservation, mental health, support for bereaved military children and sustainable tourism. His life has therefore followed a route that would have been almost impossible to predict when photographs first appeared of the infant prince leaving St Mary's Hospital. He began life as the second son of a future king, became one of the most photographed children in the world, suffered the loss of his mother before reaching his teens, trained at Sandhurst, went to war twice, flew Apache helicopters, helped create an international sporting movement, married an American actress, became the Duke of Sussex, left Britain as a working royal, moved to California and wrote one of the world's most discussed memoirs. It has not been an especially quiet journey. Prince Harry also remains a complicated public figure, admired by some and strongly criticized by others. His disagreements with the Royal Family and battles with sections of the British media have generated years of headlines, while his supporters point toward his military service, veterans' advocacy and charitable work. History will eventually decide which parts of that story matter most. The headlines will fade. The arguments about interviews, books and royal protocol will become yesterday's newspapers. But an international sporting movement created for wounded and injured service personnel has already survived well beyond its original London event. For a former Army captain who once went to Afghanistan simply wanting to serve alongside his fellow soldiers, that may ultimately be one of the most consequential chapters in the very unconventional life of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. ```json { "@context": "http:\/\/schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Article", "author": { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#paul_stallibrass_144f731fa4" }, "dateModified": "2026-09-14T16:57:07Z", "datePublished": "2026-09-14T04:08:49Z", "description": "Discover Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, from British prince and Afghanistan veteran to Invictus Games founder, author and humanitarian.", "headline": "Prince Harry", "image": { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#defaultLogo" }, "inLanguage": "en-GB", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "url": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/prince-harry" }, "publisher": { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#defaultPublisher" }, "url": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/prince-harry" }, { "@type": "Person", "name": "Paul Stallibrass", "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#paul_stallibrass_144f731fa4" }, { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#defaultLogo", "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "", "width": 0, "height": 0 }, { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#defaultPublisher", "@type": "Organization", "url": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/", "logo": { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#defaultLogo" }, "name": "" } ] } ```