Harry claimed it was “heartbreaking” to see William abandon his promise to never plant stories against him. Photo / AP
Harry claimed it was “heartbreaking” to see William abandon his promise to never plant stories against him. Photo / AP
COMMENT
Less than a month after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s docuseries lobbed a fresh round of accusations at his family, we’re once again in the familiar position of awaiting another Sussex tell-all.
From the original jaw-dropping Oprah Winfrey interview, to Meghan’s Variety interview, to the six-part Netflix series Harry & Meghan, and now Harry’s upcoming memoir, Spare, the couple has certainly offered a lengthy list of complaints against the royal family.
And one that keeps cropping up, over and over again is Harry and Meghan’s assertion that the palace was “planting” and “leaking” stories against them – in particular, Prince William and Kate’s office.
In the Netflix docuseries, Harry claimed it was “heartbreaking” to see William abandon his promise to never plant stories against him, which was made after the brothers witnessed first-hand the devastating impact of “what happened in our dad’s office”.
“I mean constant briefings about other members of the family … inviting the press in – It’s a dirty game,” Harry told viewers.
“There’s leaking but also planting of stories. So if the comms team wants to remove a negative story about their principle, they will trade and give you something about someone else’s principle. And so the offices end up working against each other.”
Harry and Meghan offered a lengthy list of complaints about the royal family. Photo / Netflix
He finished up: “I would far rather get destroyed in the press than play along with this game or business of trading. To see my brother’s office copy the exact same thing the two of us promised we’d never do … That was heartbreaking.”
We now know that, at the very least, Harry’s memoir media blitz will again barge back down that well-trodden path.
“Every single time I tried to do it privately, there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife,” he tells US 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper in a promo for their interview, which will air on Monday morning, NZ time.
“The family motto is ‘never complain never explain’. But it’s just a motto. It doesn’t really hold. There’s endless [complaining and explaining] through leaks.
“They will feed or have a conversation with the correspondent and that correspondent will be spoon-fed information and write the story.
“Then at the bottom of it they will say that they have reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment. But the whole story is Buckingham Palace commenting.”
Harry and Meghan’s intense conviction makes it difficult to doubt them, particularly given the evident fallout of the alleged betrayals – the couple leaving royal duties entirely.
As Harry told his wife during a tense scene in their docuseries: “That’s why I’m now living in a new country … This is the contract, the symbiotic relationships between the two institutions working the best way they can.”
But incredibly, after all this time, one detail is still glaringly absent – the actual receipts.
Catherine, Princess of Wales, William, Prince of Wales, Prince Harry, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex put on a united front for the cameras and the crowds after the passing of the Queen. Photo / AP
In fact, most of Harry and Meghan’s allegations have been vague at best, including Harry’s suggestion in the Netflix series that stories about other members of his family were deliberately buried in favour of negative pieces against the Sussexes.
It’s an accusation backed up by their lawyer Jenny Afia, who said that she had seen evidence of “negative briefing from the palace against Harry and Meghan to suit other people’s agendas”.
“A story about someone in the family would just pop up for a minute, and they’d go, ‘We gotta make that go away.’ But there’s real estate on a website homepage, there’s real estate there on a newspaper front cover, and something has to be filled in there about someone royal.”
Elsewhere in the docuseries, Harry said: “They were happy to lie to protect my brother. They were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”
These are all extraordinary accusations, and well worth scrutiny – but there’s absolutely no further detail to support them. Even one specific example about this “trade” strategy would do wonders for Harry and Meghan’s credibility, which has arguably eroded with each murky assertion.
In a revealing interview for @60Minutes, Prince Harry discusses his childhood, the death of his mother and how the press interacts with Buckingham Palace: “There becomes a point when silence is betrayal.”
Besides, it appears that when it favours them, they don’t mind laying bare the facts – as we saw with Meghan’s decision to point out to Oprah that in the lead-up to the wedding it was Kate who had made her cry in their argument over flower girl dresses, rather than the other way around.
Granted, among the couple’s Netflix revelations was the very explosive claim that William allowed his former press secretary to provide a witness statement against Meghan during her Associated Newspapers trial – despite not being required to do so.
To recap: The Duchess of Sussex successfully sued the Mail on Sunday over the publication of the “personal and private” letter she sent to her father Thomas Markle in 2018. During an interview for Harry & Meghan, Afia explained that a witness statement and leaked text conversation between Meghan and her former press secretary, Jason Knauf, about the letter in question, made the case more difficult.
She went on to claim that William would have been aware of Knauf coming forward – a belief with which Harry and Meghan themselves agreed.
Harry is seen showing Meghan a text message from William. Photo / Netflix
Damning, for sure, but it’s just one (alleged) incident in what they’ve suggested is a years-long trend of working against them.
The brief of evidence? So far, that hasn’t been tendered to the court of public opinion.
If Harry does, in fact, want to get his “father and brother back” – as he claims in the promo for an ITV sit-down, also set to air Monday, local time – then the best option would likely be to stop publicly criticising them for pay cheques.
Given that that is clearly not the Sussex strategy (and the horse probably bolted way back in early 2021 with the Oprah chat), then it’s time he laid bare the hard facts to back up his significant allegations.
With two more candid interviews and a no-holds-barred memoir landing next week, here’s hoping that’s what’s finally delivered.
