They are all wild about Harry, but it is all confected nonsense

Imagine you are born in a private central London clinic; your parents are Very Important People in the Most Important Family in the land.

Then imagine that on your first foray into the outside world, you are paraded and cooed over in front of that clinic, with cameramen perched atop ladders ­ in fact at any vantage point they could claim with their sharp elbows and long, heavy lenses.

Your extended family proclaim the arrival of a 'spare' to go with the young heir.

And that single fact will colour how you will be treated from that day forward by all but your mother and a few other empathetic souls, who are sadly much in a minority.

Your mother, for all her failings and stresses, is your one true guiding light as a human being, wanting to give you as 'normal' a life as is possible within a fishbowl existence where her every move is watched,and every item of clothing she wears is seen as a statement. She must have felt like Monty Python's Brian (when his legion of followers worshipped even his lost sandal as 'a sign').

She'd take you to theme parks, for walks and picnics and to friends' birthday parties – even on clandestine trips for a late-night burger at McDonald's just 150 yards up the main road outside your West London home.

Then, not too many years later, your adoring mother is killed in a motor accident in a foreign land while chased by feral cameramen on scooters seeking snaps of your mum with her Egyptian playboy boyfriend. They had stroppily stripped her of her title long before then.

You are in your room at a remote Scottish castle and get a few words of comfort from your father – who is a better communicator with plants – about having to be strong; later, to cheer you up, your grandad, who is like your dad only more bellicose, will take you deer stalking.

There is at least some support from your big brother, thought he is lost in his own pain and grief.

You are kept from public view for several days before then being made to walk just a few paces behind your mother's coffin, with the eyes of the world in laser focus on your small, tender frame; your head bowed and emotions stoically in check.

As you grow, you hide all that private grief, never properly coming to terms with it, and settle into your own private no-man's land, unsure of your destiny, save trying to do right by your mother.

You often rebel and are little bothered that you annoy all those stiff shirts who are much less focused on you than your gran, your dad, your brother. You feel like a fish on a bike.

But you remain close to big brother, at least until as he starts to find his way in the world, within certain, straitjacketed constraints.

You serve your country in a war zone, you work hard to support injured servicemen and then find there is genuine public affection for you as you mix with athletes and celebrities at an Olympic Games on home soil followed by an unrivalled Paralympics.

The Great British Public even forgive you your occasional sins, such as the odd fascist-flavoured wardrobe malfunction when you are heavily in drink. They see you for who you are, or must be; they feel your pain and say it is 'just Harry being Harry'.

You secretly rage against the family machine but do your royal duties whenever called upon. But you are determined to be your own man; never more so than when it comes to selecting a wife.

And you think, 'this is the one for me and I will put her first, no matter what those stiff shirts say'.

The media will of course say that simply will not do for a man in your 'position', and you are being led astray by this interloper who, by the way, happens not to conform to the expected racial blueprint.

You do the odd high-profile TV interview, particularly when you have a cause to push. You have learned from your mother there.

But you remain determined that the beast will not claim you as it did your beloved mother. And you vow to protect your wife and, later, your family, from them, too.

Nor shall any protocol be allowed to stand in the way.

If they hack your phone, you will resort to the law. And they won't expect that.

If they print parts of private letters between your wife and her rather eccentric father, you will again engage M'Learned Friend.

Few except those who would willingly feast on your carcass if it will get them more clicks or sell more of tomorrows' chip wrappings will object.

They will agree that the press needs to be put in its box when it oversteps the mark and cites the public interest as it rolls out the dark arts that push the law to its very limits.

Yes, some public money is pushed your way for your troubles. But you refurbish your home and put on a lavish wedding with some of your own cash – and much from gran's property portfolio, which made a record £344m last year and contributes to the state's coffers though taxes.

You feel less guilty when others are at it... the government spent £7.6m restoring Wentworth Woodhouse, England’s largest private home, which happens to be the ancestral home of the mother-in-law of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative MP.

And you did pick up the tab for most of the incidentals from your nuptials, with your bride paying for her own dress.

Bless her, she tries her best to put up with the stiff shirts but she is from a foreign land where many fight their way up the greasy pole using their talents, some get gilded futures handed down to them, and many millions, less fortunate, think knives and forks are jewellery.

So you decide to throw your hand half in. You will try to plough your own furrow. With a £7m trust fund left by your mother, some dosh from your great-gran, and yet more likely when when gran toddles off, you won't be working in McDonald's, as some of the memes doing the rounds suggest.

You are not daft, and your wife certainly has her commercial head screwed on. We live in an age when even Princess Grace of Monaco might have gone back to acting occasionally, so why not 'er indoors?

The down side, in fact, is limited – although the media will come gunning for you.

'Twas ever thus: they will whip up some confected rage and indignation and reinforce their flimsy arguments by prodding plummy-voiced rent-a-gobs who know next to nothing but have convinced those with the chequebooks that they do.

These bores only get wheeled out because nobody involved will talk. They probably don't even know what their own partners are getting up to.

Your family doesn't talk in public unless pushed or there is an agenda it wants to pursue. And were it not for hacking phones or going through people's bins, the media would be none the wiser to what goes on behind the gilded gates.

The sources these “informed” mouthpieces quote are about as reliable as the old WW1 trench messages; like one that starts out as 'Send reinforcements, we're going to advance' and morphs into 'Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance' as it is passed along the line.

Some say you and your wife disrespected your gran by not telling her in advance of you going public. But then when your uncle Andrew invited Emily Maitlis into the Palace for a sweaty chat about allegations involving under-age girls – one that seems a mere trifling issue compared to the storm in which you two have been swept up.

Radio chat show host James O'Brien best described the media's hysterical reaction to you and your wife's decision to pull back from royal public life: “How dare people decide not to spend their lives being subjected to lazy abuse, vitriol, misogyny and racism, say purveyors of lazy abuse, vitriol, misogyny and racism.”

The words 'nail' and 'head spring readily to mind.