Prince Harry Should Be Quiet, Patti Davis, Daughter of Ronald Reagan, Warns

On Jan 10, 2023

Prince Harry has someone outside of the royal family begging him to reconsider telling all with Spare: Patti Davis, daughter of Ronald Reagan.

Davis published her own memoir, The Way I See It, in 1992, which told family secrets about the former president and was considered controversial at the time of its release.

“My justification in writing a book I now wish I hadn’t written … was very similar to what I understand to be Harry’s reasoning. I wanted to tell the truth, I wanted to set the record straight. Naïvely, I thought if I put my own feelings and my own truth out there for the world to read, my family might also come to understand me better,” Davis wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.

Davis said in the editorial that she apologized to her father during the earlier stages of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis “when he still had lucid moments.” She recalled that he wasn’t speaking much at the time, but that she knew from the look in his eyes that he understood and appreciated the gesture.

Patti Davis warns Prince Harry about — Patti Davis

Beck Starr/Getty Images

“I thought of that moment when I read that Prince Harry, in his new memoir, wrote about his father, King Charles, getting between his battling sons and saying, ‘Please, boys, don’t make my final years a misery.’ Time is an unpredictable thing,” she noted. “I had the gift of time with my father, which allowed me to apologize, even though a disease hovered between us and clouded our communication. King Charles’s words reveal a man who is aware of his mortality and who would like his offspring to be aware of it as well.”

Davis urged Harry to consider that Prince William has his own truth and perspective about the circumstances of their lives (and likely about the alleged brawl over Meghan Markle Harry exposed in excerpts that set the Internet alight last week).

“Harry has written that, after William hit him, William told Harry to hit him back, which he declined to do,” Davis writes. “But by writing about the fight, he’s done exactly that.”

Ronald Reagan with wife Nancy, son Ronald Jr. and daughter Patti Davis

Bettmann/Getty Images

Davis said that the best advice she has for her younger self is simply to “be quiet.”

“Not forever. But until I could stand back and look at things through a wider lens. Until I understood that words have consequences, and they last a really long time,” she explained. “Harry has called William not only his ‘beloved brother’ but his ‘arch nemesis.’ He chose words that cut deep, that leave a scar; perhaps if he had taken time to be quiet, to reflect on the enduring power of his words, he’d have chosen differently.”

Prince Harry Should Be Quiet, Patti Davis, Daughter of Ronald Reagan, Warns

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