HARRY: MY FAMILY HELPED DRIVE OUT MEGHAN
In explosive TV interview, prince admits royals NOT racist... but says they were ‘complicit’ in ‘pain’ his wife suffered
Prince Harry last night accused fellow royals of being ‘complicit’ in the ‘ pain and suffering’ inflicted on his wife.
In a bombshell interview to plug his memoir, he suggested they helped to ‘trash’ his and Meghan’s reputations, forcing them to move to California.
The prince’s astonishing claims came in a 90-minute discussion with ITV presenter and old friend,
Tom Bradby. But he sensationally conceded that his family were not racist, although he believes them guilty of ‘unconscious bias’.
He also backed the Queen’s former lady in waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, who was embroiled in a toxic race row last month, saying
she ‘never meant any harm’. Harry’s memoir, Spare, will be published tomorrow, although extensive leaks and three high-profile interviews in 24 hours mean much of its content has been disseminated already.
In his sole UK interview, Harry:
■ Accuses his family of a ‘really horrible’ reaction to him after the Queen’s death and of showing ‘absolutely no willingness to reconcile’;
■ Says he chose not to fight back against his estranged brother William in an infamous altercation because he has sought therapy;
■ Concedes that, while he loves his father, Charles wasn’t great at single parenthood;
■ Admits Meghan and Kate didn’t get on from the ‘get-go’ but claims there was a lot of media stereotyping;
■ Says that during one row Kate was ‘gripping edges of a chair so hard her fingers turned white’;
■ Admits William didn’t outright try to dissuade him from marrying Meghan but warned him ‘this is going to be very hard for you’;
■ Justifies his book and last month’s Netflix documentary as important for ‘historical fact and significance’;
■ Claims a lot of things are ‘ unexplained’ about his mother’s death and believes the paparazzi chasing her should have been held to account;
■ Pledges a life-long war against the media, accusing the Press of trying to drive competition between members of the Royal Family;
■ Described as ‘horrific’ an article by Jeremy Clarkson in which he said he dreamt of Meghan being paraded through the streets naked with excrement being hurled at her;
■ Says he is happy now but still believes there can be a reconciliation with his family – as long as they take accountability.
Harry uses the interview to again parade his widely-dismissed theories that the Press had an agenda against him and Meghan and Buckingham Palace colluded in this by leaking and placing negative stories about them.
He says this was typified by events surrounding the Queen’s death in September, when he travelled up to Balmoral separately from the rest of the family amid confusion about whether Meghan should join him.
The prince said: ‘The day that she died was – was – was just a really, really horrible reaction from my family members and then by all accounts, well certainly from what I saw and what other people probably experienced, was they were on the back foot and then the briefings and the leaking and the planting.
‘I was like “We’re here to celebrate the life of granny and to mourn her loss, can we come together as a family?”’
He also claims that ever since he started dating Meghan he received little help or support in trying to combat the negative stories about her.
Extraordinarily, he says their decision to quit as working royals was wrongly attributed to them wanting to make money, even though the couple themselves said they wanted to pursue financial opportunities outside the Royal Family and have secured multi-million media deals.
He adds: ‘The level of planting and leaking from other members of the family means that in my mind they have written countless books.
‘Certainly millions of words have been dedicated to trying to trash my wife and myself to the point of where I had to leave my country. The distorted narrative is that we wanted to leave to go and, you know, make money. We were dedicated to a life of service, as is proven by everything that we’re doing now with the work that we do.
‘And the proposal was very much on the table, publicly, which is we can’t cope in this situation and we’re gonna put our mental health first, we’ve asked for help and support.
‘At that time I didn’t fully understand how much – or how complicit the family were in that pain and suffering that was happening to my wife, and the one group of people that could’ve helped or stopped this from happening were the very people that were – that were encouraging it to happen.’
Harry insists he had no choice but to ‘separate’ from his family but says he has tried to have a ‘constructive’ conversations with them. But he says it seems to suit them if he and Meghan are painted out to be ‘the villains’.
He grandly says he hopes a family reconciliation will have a ‘ripple effect’ across the world: ‘ Maybe that’s lofty, maybe that’s naïve, whatever. But I genuinely feel that.’
He is also defensive about including a raft of prurient details in the book such as losing his virginity to an older woman in a field behind a pub, saying it was just ‘four lines’.