Prince Harry said he has publicly revealed his differences with the British royal family and confronted the press in an effort to help the monarchy and change the media, in what his father, King Charles, described as a “suicide mission”.
In the first of a series of television interviews broadcast yesterday before the publication of his memoirs, Harry accused his family of collaborating with the devil, the yellow press, to improve their reputation at his and his wife Megan’s expense. He told British channel ITV that he fled Britain with his family to California in 2020 “fearing for our lives”.
He added, “After many years of lies that were told about me and my family, there came a stage, going back to the relationship between certain members of the family and the yellow press, in which these certain members decided to cooperate with Satan … to improve their image. I put a watershed when improving their image came at the expense of others, namely me and other members of my family.”
The Harry (Spear) book went on sale in Spain on Thursday, five days before its official release date. The book not only gives personal details, such as how the British prince used drugs, but also reveals more intimate examples of family disharmony. The book says that Prince William, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne, and Harry’s older brother knocked his brother down in a quarrel, and that the two brothers begged their father, King Charles, not to marry Camilla, who is now the queen consort.
Commentators say the book sparked the royal family’s biggest crisis since a 1990s series about the breakdown of Charles’s marriage to the late Princess Diana, mother of William and Harry. All this comes just four months after the death of Queen Elizabeth and the accession of Charles to the throne.
During his interview with ITV, Harry repeated and explained in detail the accusations that he and Megan had made since leaving royal duties, which is that members of the royal family and their aides not only failed to protect them from hostile and sometimes racist press, but actually leaked stories about them through anonymous sources. .
“The saddest thing about that is that some of my family and people who work for them are complicit in this conflict,” Harry said, noting that this includes both Charles and Camilla. So far, there has been no comment from Buckingham Palace. He added that he did not think his father or brother would read his book.
An unnamed friend told the Sunday Times that the Prince of Wales was “flashing” but would not fight back “for the sake of his family and country”. Harry told ITV that he wanted to reconcile with his family, but said they had not shown any interest, which gave the impression that it was better for him and Meghan to remain the bad guys.
He said, “I sincerely believe and hope that the reconciliation between my family and us will have a multiplier effect all over the world. It may be a noble thing, or it may be a naive thing.”
In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” program, which was broadcast on Sunday, Harry indicated that the ball is in his family’s court to mend fences. “It all started with daily declaring lies against my wife to the extent that my wife and I had to flee our country,” he said.
Harry also told ITV he hoped the multiple legal actions he has taken against newspapers will help change the media, saying it is “the epicenter of a lot of trouble across the UK”. “My father told me that trying to change journalism might be a suicide mission,” he said.
Harry told CBS that what Meghan went through with the press was similar in some ways to what Camilla and Kate, William’s wife, went through, but the circumstances were completely different. He continued that the fact that she is an American, actress, divorced, black, biracial mother of a black mother. These were just four of the typical stereotypes that became fertile material for attack in the British press.
Opinion polls indicate that many Britons are fed up with the entire royal family melodrama and that revealing more surprises will not change their views, whether sympathetic to Harry and Megan or those critical of them.
“I love my dad, I love my brother, and I love my family,” Harry said. And I will always be. Nothing I ever did in this book or otherwise…was to harm or injure them.”