MANY fellow republicans are understandably struck by how perversely stupid it seems for Britain to be gripped and gawping at the dark drama of Prince Harry and the royal family while the nation falls apart at the seams. There’s clearly much more to worry about than two princes at each other’s throats.

I get the disgust. I feel the same to some extent. But I think many anti-monarchists like me are misunderstanding the reasons why this saga exerts such a deep psychological fascination on people, regardless of their views on royalty.

One of the principal reasons I wish for an end to Windsor rule is that they bring out the Bronze Age in Britain. A monarchy is atavistic, primitive. Kings and queens exist to be unthinkingly glorified, but also torn to pieces if they blunder. Our Bronze Age forebears had no problem grovelling before their monarchs one day, then quite literally burning them alive the next if crops failed.

We line the streets in tearful droves at the death of an old lady – but when that old lady wasn’t seen to mourn her daughter-in-law Diana in a sufficiently mawkish way, we turned on her.

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It makes me sick. It’s creepy, weak, needy, cruel. We demand these people show us their newborn babies, as if we own the children who will one day rule us. Britain would be morally and psychologically much healthier if the monarchy was simply abolished. The Windsors would be happier too. They’d still have their loot, but we’d no longer have the right to own them.

However, I think matters are different when it comes to Harry v the Windsors. I don’t think this story is connected to the primitive, atavistic nature of Britain’s relationship to the royals.

I think this story speaks to so many people for one very simple reason: it’s about the disintegration of family, and the painful distance that can grow between siblings in adulthood. We all recognise that; we’ve all experienced that. The Windsors are like a medieval miracle play turning the truths we all know about family damage into flesh. That’s why we can’t take our eyes off it all.

Our default obsession with the royals is ugly: it’s about the need to control and be controlled. We want to exert power over those who rule us by intruding utterly into their lives. In return for their gilded existence, we get to metaphorically consume them. It’s deeply, distressingly, sadomasochistic.

The Harry story, however, isn’t like that. I think many just identify with this painful unfolding of a family falling apart. It’s not that we identify with Harry. How can anyone identify with a prince? We identify with the sense of pain that comes with a blood relationship turning rotten.

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Think of one of the very first stories our culture ever told itself. After Adam and Eve, which speaks of our creation and why we die, our second foundational story tells of Cain and Abel, and family collapse.

The Herald: The clash between brothers Cain and Abel is the second foundational story of our culture after Adam and EveThe clash between brothers Cain and Abel is the second foundational story of our culture after Adam and Eve (Image: Newsquest)

Who hasn’t felt such pain? I know nobody among my circle of friends who hasn’t experienced a deep and wounding fall-out with a close relative. It’s been many years now since I last spoke to my brother – something which hurts me deeply. My wife hasn’t spoken to one of her brothers for quite some time either. I’ve friends who haven’t spoken to siblings in decades.

As with all matters in life, the truth about these broken relationships lies somewhere in the middle. When it comes to my own fractured family ties, it may be difficult to admit but I’m as surely at fault as the other. Unless a person is just thoroughly villainous, then it’s likely in any family disagreement that blame for these upsets can be shared 50-50.

My greatest fear is of my own two daughters ever bitterly falling out in adulthood. They were the closest of sisters in childhood, and remain exceptionally bonded now they’re in their early 20s, but family ties are often weaker than we imagine.

All it takes is someone moving away for work or love, for the phone calls to dwindle, for family events to be missed, and little by little love starts to fracture. Add in some difficult partners – as we’re told is the case with Harry and William – and you’ve a recipe for ruin.

The Harry saga also reflects back to us how foolish so many of our family wars really are: Harry and William’s relationship seems to have finally shattered when Kate took umbrage at Meghan referring to her "baby brain". That’s truly a very boring, petty reason for brothers to turn on each other. But if we look at our own sibling feuds we’ll probably find similarly silly reasons at its heart.

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Harry and William also had a physical exchange. It hasn’t happened to me, but many friends have swapped blows with siblings in adulthood. It’s shaming, pointless, yet heartbreakingly human. We often hurt those we love, which may account for Harry’s truly shocking levels of disclosure when it comes to private secrets.

That’s something few of us would do, or have the platform to do. It marks an escalation permitting no reconciliation. The fear of such taboo-breaking and infliction of pain within a family means the public can’t look away.

Is blood thicker than water? I’ve often doubted it. But this I do know, from other wounded relationships I’ve healed in my life: that if we acknowledge there are two sides to every story, if we recognise that the other person’s heart hurts as our own, then the past can be put behind us if people really do love each other.

The problem is, too many families pretend that they’re built on love. They’re often built on the weakest foundation: familiarity.

The bottom line is that good parents are usually the reason siblings stay close. Wise, steady parents draw the poison before it festers, with good counsel and love no matter their children’s age. Such parents care more about their children than themselves – a truth that’s sadly often not the case in life. I know that if, god forbid, my two daughters ever grow distant, I won’t blame them. I’ll blame only myself.