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How the party prince finally matured

Getty

Getty

Prince Harry is the party prince who matured into a military pilot, charity fundraiser and charming royal ambassador.

The fourth in line to the throne is proving himself to be an asset to the monarchy. On his successful tour to Brazil and Chile in June, he demonstrated his ability to step up to the task, whether meeting crack addicts in Sao Paulo or dancing with children at a daycare centre in Santiago.

But if his past scrapes are anything to go by, the Duke of Cambridge’s impulsive younger brother is unlikely to lead a quiet life.

When Harry headed overseas to Jamaica in 2012 to mark his grandmother’s Diamond Jubilee, he showed himself a perfect statesman for modern royalty.

He sprinted with Olympic 100m champion Usain Bolt, danced to Bob Marley in Kingston and displayed a natural talent for endearing diplomacy by hugging and holding hands with the Jamaican prime minister Portia Simpson Miller just hours after she repeated her intention to hold a referendum to remove the Queen as head of state.

Usain Bolt Prince Harry

Prince Harry and Usain Bolt. Photo: Getty

Commentators declared that whereas once he was a potential liability, now Harry had found his feet as a senior royal.

At the closing ceremony of the London Olympics, it was Harry who took on an important role, standing in for the monarch, representing her as the Games came to an end.

But just a week later, a raucous road trip to Vegas, prior to a tour of duty to Afghanistan, ended with photos being printed around the world of the naked Prince frolicking with a woman in his hotel room during a game of strip billiards.

As a younger man he brawled with a paparazzi photographer, dabbled with cannabis and sparked worldwide outrage by dressing up as a Nazi for a fancy dress party.

In more recent years, his military career has been his focus. He attended Sandhurst and joined the Household Cavalry’s Blues and Royals in 2006 to train as a troop leader of an armoured reconnaissance unit.

In 2007 and 2008, he achieved his dream of seeing front-line action, spending 10 weeks in Afghanistan as a forward air controller, co-ordinating air strikes on Taliban positions.

His posting was abruptly ended, however, when foreign websites broke a media blackout on reporting details of his service.

With a burning desire to return to Afghanistan, Harry retrained and qualified as an Apache helicopter pilot after 18 months of rigorous training in Britain and America.

Prince Harry

Prince Harry has served in Afghanistan twice. Photo: Getty

In September 2012, he made it back to Afghanistan for a second tour. The 20-week stint gave him the chance to use his Apache flying skills and head out on operations in his role as co-pilot gunner.

But he was criticised on his return to the UK for frank comments that he took the enemy “out of the game”, and soldiers “take a life to save a life”.

The Prince admitted at the time that he was more comfortable being Captain Wales than Prince Harry.

“I’ve always been like that. My father’s always trying to remind me about who I am and stuff like that,” he said. “But it’s very easy to forget about who I am when I am in the army.”

An army desk job, announced in January 2014, has enabled him to focus on his Invictus Games – a Paralympic-style competition for injured servicemen and women – similar to the US’s Warrior Games.

The Games, designed to highlight the sacrifices made by those who have fought for their country, take place in London this week in the run-up to the Prince’s 30th birthday.

Writing in The Sunday Times ahead of the event, Harry recalled the horrendous images he saw during two tours of Afghanistan when he encountered children who had died from roadside bombs and soldiers lying on the battlefield.

“I had never seen it first-hand,” he wrote in the newspaper of flying home to the UK with injured soldiers. “By ‘it’ I mean the injuries that were being sustained largely due to improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

“Loss of life is as tragic and devastating as it gets, but to see young lads – much younger than me – wrapped in plastic and missing limbs, with hundreds of tubes coming out of them, was something I never prepared myself for.”

The second son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince Henry Charles Albert David was born at 4.20pm, weighing 6lb 14oz, on September 15, 1984.

Palace officials announced he was to be known as “Harry” and his father later declared this was always the case unless he had been “very, very naughty”.

The young Prince was, unlike William, free from the responsibility of one day having to be king. He went to Eton after private nursery, pre-prep and prep school and grew up to have a daredevil approach to sport and life in general.

Harry and William saw their parents go though a difficult divorce amid the scandal of affairs.

Then, in 1997, Diana was tragically killed in a car crash in Paris when Harry was just 12.

Etched in the public’s memory is the harrowing image of the young Prince, dwarfed in size by his brother, father, uncle and grandfather, walking bravely behind the horse-drawn gun carriage transporting his mother’s body through the streets packed with mourners.

Princess Diana, Prince Harry, Prince William

Princess Diana with Harry and Will. Photo: Getty

In 2006, the Prince founded his charity Sentebale in honour of Diana to help disadvantaged children in the southern African kingdom of Lesotho. He has encountered real poverty, abuse and deprivation during frequent visits to the nation as he has watched the organisation develop.

He spoke movingly about his mother in a television interview in 2010 during a joint tour of southern Africa with William.

“Every day, I know I do and I’m sure William does as well, whatever we do, wherever we are and whoever we’re with I particularly always wonder what she’d think, what she’d be doing if she was with us now,” the Prince said.

He travelled to Angola in August 2013 to see landmine clearance work by a charity championed by Diana just months before she died.

Harry is also a passionate supporter of Walking with the Wounded, which funds the re-training and re-education of wounded servicemen and women.

He took part in a gruelling trek to the South Pole in December 2013 in aid of the charity, joining a team of injured British servicemen and women in a race against groups from the US and the Commonwealth.

Their mission took them more than 200 miles (321.8 km) across the bleak continent to the geographic South Pole where the group experienced freezing temperatures as low as -45C (-49F).

Prince Harry at the South Pole

Prince Harry at the South Pole. Photo: Getty

They faced such extreme weather conditions that organisers had to call off the competitive element. But working as one unit, the teams made it to their Antarctic goal.

Harry has always been affected by press intrusion – not least because his mother died in a car crash while being pursued by the paparazzi.

He has been vocal of his dislike of the media. When he was spotted in Datchet, Berkshire, helping the Army shift sandbags for the flood relief in February 2014, Harry was asked by reporters if he was enjoying helping out. “Not really, with you guys around,” he remarked bluntly.

But on his recent tour to Brazil and Chile, he seemed happier around the press – perhaps now realising that the media is part of the deal if he wants to promote the charities he is so passionate about.

He became a devoted uncle with the arrival of Prince George of Cambridge in July 2013.

As he turns 30, royal fans will be wondering when this Prince will settle down with a family of his own. It had been thought that an engagement might be on the cards for Harry this year.

But in April, his two-year relationship with Cressida Bonas ended amicably despite many predicting the couple would marry. The Prince’s previous long term love was Zimbabwean-born Chelsy Davy, whom he dated for around six years.

For now, Harry is channelling his energy into his Invictus Games – an event which could be the start of the Prince’s very own royal legacy.

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