Prince Harry goes nuclear against family with 31-page statement

As if Prince Harry hasn’t shared enough about his family already, he has now released 31 pages dragging various royals through the mud.

COMMENT

Look, just in case you were worried, breathe easy: the coronation loo paper situation has probably been sorted. (I know, it’s a big weight off my mind too.)

Detailed records kept from Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s crowning have gone on display at the UK’s National Archives, revealing that on the morning of her big day in 1953 it was discovered that much of the toilet paper inside Westminster Abbey had been nicked.

Forewarned is forearmed, so I think we can assume that King Charles has the triple-ply situation under control.

But unfortunately, this is where the good news ends for His Majesty and Buckingham Palace.

With a scant week to go before his turn at the history-making event, there are more headline-grabbing histrionics by his younger son, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, is at it again. Picture: Daniel Leal / AFP

Lest anyone assume that Harry’s recent six hours of on-camera catharting for Netflix, along with him penning 400-plus pages of hurt feelings and “todger” tales, would have gotten the truth-bomb throwing urge out of his system, think again.

Like a man with too much time on his hands and a new subscription to Microsoft Word, the duke has been at the keyboard again, and it turns out he has authored an explosive 31-page witness statement that was tendered to the London High Court this week.

In this latest legal skirmish, Harry is suing News Group Newspapers (NGN), publishers of The Sun and the now defunct News of the World, over alleged unlawful information gathering. (NGN is owned by News Corp, which also owns news.com.au.)

In a bad case of deja vu, Harry’s latest incendiary claims are sure to have rattled a few courtiers, and the King’s, fillings.

Where to start? With Harry’s claim that the royal family and NGN came to a “secret agreement” that would help “smooth the way” for his stepmother to end up as Queen?

Or that the King allegedly intervened and tried to get his son to drop his legal action in 2019? (“I was summoned to Buckingham Palace and specifically told to drop the legal actions because they have an ‘effect on all the family’,” he writes.)

Or that his brother Prince William received “a huge sum of money” from NGN after privately settling his claim against the company in 2020?

The irony and hypocrisy of the duke pursuing multiple cases in defence of his own privacy while tramping all over his family’s is truly something. Picture: Daniel Leal / AFP

Let’s all just have a long wistful sigh here.

Things had been looking maybe, kinda promising on the Harry front. First, he accepted his invitation to the King’s coronation even though that of his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex somehow ended up in the compost bin. Then, The Sun reported that father and son had had a “heart to heart” talk recently.

Given that Harry is due to give evidence in the third privacy court case he has bubbling away, this time against The Mirror, the week after the coronation, there was even the most tentative of glimmers that maybe Harry would hang about in London for a bit. Who knows? Crumpets might have been toasted, feelings shared, deeply frayed family bonds slowly mended in a fog of Queen Camilla’s Benson & Hedges smoke.

Except that was before Harry penned his 31-page statement and dragged his family into his latest fight, though they clearly want no part of it.

(The irony and hypocrisy of the duke pursuing multiple cases in defence of his own privacy while tramping all over his family’s is truly something.)

At the heart of the matter here is the question of loyalty – to Harry’s father and to the institution that his grandmother devoted 70 long years to. Picture: Daniel Leal / AFP

I know, by now it should not surprise me every time Harry, Spotify’s least useful hire, throws his family under the bus and yet it always does …

At the heart of the matter here is the question of loyalty – to Harry’s father and to the institution that his grandmother devoted 70 long years to, no matter that she would clearly have preferred a lifetime of horsey upper-class wifery and discreet mid-afternoon G&Ts.

But Her late Majesty did her duty as her son the King is doing now, proving their loyalty to both their throne and to their family.

And Harry? Has he shown any faithfulness to his relatives and to the family business, so to speak, especially during what would have to be the biggest weeks of Charles’s life?

No, he’s off on his one-duke crusade with seemingly no thought for the consequences on his family or the monarchy.

Any lingering notions of those buttery crumpets and touching paternal bonding sessions – PFFFFTTT. They’ve just gone up in smoke and so too has the prospect of any sort of family peace and smooth-sailing for the King.

Any lingering notions of those buttery crumpets and touching paternal bonding sessions – they’ve just gone up in smoke. Picture: Stefan Rousseau / POOL / AFP

Poor old Charles now faces the possibility of what is meant to be an august day of pomp, pageantry and hastily dry-cleaned ermine being overtaken by his son’s latest offensive.

And there are other cracks appearing too, when it comes to the Duke of Sussex and his relatives.

It is an absolute given that on May 6 he will face a reception from Prince William and his wife Kate, the Princess of Wales, so wintry that Aitch should probably pack his thermals.

It’s a given Prince William and wife Kate will give Harry a chilly reception at the coronation. Picture: Samir Hussein/Samir Hussein/WireImage

So too will he likely be shunted off to sit with the lower-rung members of the royal family while watching the Waleses being feted by the public, press and every Fleet Street pundit worth their liver spots.

Harry at least seemed to have in his corner his cousins, especially the capering good-natured Tindalls and Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

Au contraire.

While Eugenie is the only Windsor who has actually visited the breakaway state of Sussex in Montecito, attending the Super Bowl with Harry and appearing in their Netflix “docuseries”, this week she was photographed doing the unthinkable – lunching with the Sussexes’ most thunderous UK critic.

Shots taken outside a Notting Hill pub show that both York gals attended a private lunch held at a Notting Hill pub with Piers Morgan, a TV presenter and columnist who has devoted an extraordinary number of words to expressing his intense dislike of the Duchess of Sussex.

So, grab your smelling salts because not only did the two princesses dine with the loudmouthed Morgan but later Beatrice was photographed happily hugging him.

I’m guessing that seeing the princesses casting their lot in with his sworn enemy must have made for some grim early morning reading in Montecito for Harry.

There have been other clues in the last year that things might not exactly be as chummy as they once were with his cousins. Last year after the Jubilee, the Express reported that Mike Tindall had allegedly described Harry’s behaviour as that of a “b*****d”.

There are cracks showing in the Sussexes’ relationship with their royal cousins Picture: James Whatling / MEGA

It was also later reported by the Telegraph that during the Jubilee, the royal cousins skipped a planned visit to the Sussexes’ Frogmore Cottage to have a “quite boozy,” “celebratory” lunch that “went on well into the early evening.”

If anyone had been worried that the coronation might end up being a snoozefest, hang onto your (overpriced) hat. Within a matter of days Harry will be returning to his home country and to a father and brother who find themselves as Sussex collateral damage. Again. Will they react or respond? Or have all those breathing exercises William has been practising done the trick?

With pieces on the royal chessboard moving all over the place, with allegiances seemingly shifting, with court documents and family revelations swirling and eddying about London, drama, like loo paper, is one thing that seems all but guaranteed.

Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Prince Harry goes nuclear against family with 31-page statement