Harry’s salvo at royal family: men marry ‘women who fit the mould’
Prince Harry says he warned the royal family his wife, Meghan, needed special protections due to her race and claims, unlike his male relatives, he followed his heart and married for love.
Prince Harry says he warned the royal family that his wife, Meghan, needed special protections because of her race and claims his male relatives marry “women who fit the mould” instead of following their hearts, in the first salvo of the couple’s explosive Netflix series.
Declaring that he is his “mother’s son”, the Duke of Sussex has also revealed he and his wife were filming themselves while they were undertaking their split from the royal family in early 2020, with the couple explaining the “video diaries” were “sensible”. Meghan adds: “A video diary, we know right now, does not make sense; one day it will make sense.”
In the documentary, Harry says he has blocked out early memories of his late mother, Princess Diana, and accused the royals of “unconscious bias”.
The couple signed a $US100m ($149m) deal with Netflix shortly after leaving Britain for California. In the first three episodes of their documentary released on Thursday night, the Sussexes save most of their attacks for the media.
Harry compares his wife to his late mother, while suggesting other men in his family have married women who fit into royal life, rather than women they love.
“For so many people in the family, especially the men, there can be a temptation or urge to marry someone who would fit the mould as opposed to somebody you perhaps are destined to be with,” he says.
“The difference between making decisions with your head or your heart … And my mum certainly made most of her decisions, if not all of them, from her heart. And I am my mother’s son.”
Harry reveals he does not have many early memories of his mother, adding “it was almost like internally I blocked them out”.
He says he witnessed his mother in tears, brought about by the public pressure on her.
“I guess those were the moments when I thought OK, what am I, who am I, what am I part of?” he says.
Later in the series, Harry reveals he fell in love with Meghan because “so much of how Meghan is so similar to my mum”.
He adds: “She has the same compassion, she has the same empathy, she has the same confidence – she has this warmth about her.”
Harry also says there is a “huge level of unconscious bias” in the royal family, with the documentary showing Princess Michael of Kent wearing a blackamoor-style brooch to an event attended by Meghan in 2017.
Harry admits that when he wore a Nazi uniform at a party in 2005, it was “one of the biggest mistakes of my life”.
Until now, Buckingham Palace has refused to respond to the couple except for the Queen’s statement in relation to the Sussexes’ claims of racism that while they were concerning, some recollections may vary.
The accusations of racism in the royal family are now so sensitive that last week one of the Queen’s longest-serving ladies in waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, 83, stood down after 60 years of service when a palace guest objected to being asked repeatedly where she was from.
The first tranche of the Netflix series – the final three episodes will be released late next week – shows how Meghan was warmly welcomed by Britons, and seen as a breath of fresh air and modernity.
But 18 months after their expensive fairytale wedding at Windsor Castle, the couple had left Britain and crossed the Atlantic to set up home, ultimately, in California.
The series opens with a stark message: “This is a first-hand account of Harry and Meghan’s story, told with never-before-seen personal archive footage. All interviews were completed by August 2022. Members of the royal family declined to comment on the content within this series.”
Meghan was walked down the aisle by Prince Charles because of the beginnings of a bitter dispute with her now ostracised and estranged father, Thomas Markle, who was in hospital after having a heart attack.
Her mother, Doria, was the only family member at the wedding and she appears in the series saying “the past five years have been challenging”.
Harry and Meghan said having divorced parents who had made mistakes had had an impact on the way they raise Archie and Lilibet.
In a pointed dig at King Charles and also at Thomas Markle, whom he has never met, Harry says: “What’s most important to the two of us is to make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes that perhaps our parents made.”
Harry says his wife being an American actor has “clouded” his family’s view of her, leading them to think “Oh, this won’t last”.
Meghan adds: “The actress thing was the biggest problem, funnily enough. There is a big idea of what that looks like from the UK standpoint – Hollywood – and it’s just very easy for them to typecast that.”
Meghan has spoken before about feeling suicidal while she was pregnant with Archie and struggling to get support.
Harry says they had to leave Britain for their mental health and to escape the media scrutiny. As well as documenting “their truth”, Harry pre-empts questions about why they have included their children in the series, co-produced by their own production company, Archewell Productions, after earlier being highly protective of photographs of them.
“Consent is a key piece, it should be your consent what you share,’’ he said.
His comments alluded to a furore over the official notification of Archie’s birth, with the couple lying in a release about Meghan being in labour, when the baby had already been born.
Harry repeats many of the gripes previously levelled about their lives as a privileged royal couple, and is shown saying in 2020 “the level of hate stirred up in the last three years against my wife and my son, (I’m) concerned about the safety of my family”.
Meghan is then shown with her hair wrapped in a towel, saying “I really want to get to the other side of this, I don’t know what to say any more’’, before adding “they are destroying us”.
Later in the series, Harry says other members of the royals, alluding to his brother, Prince William, had questioned why Meghan should be protected from damaging newspaper headlines when they, too, had also been under such scrutiny. Harry says: “What people need to understand is, as far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well.
“So it was almost like a rite of passage, and some of the members of the family were like, ‘My wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why should you get special treatment? Why should she be protected?’
“I said ‘The difference here is the race element’.”
While receiving the Ripple of Hope award for their claims of racism against the royal family, the couple explained their mission to pull down the walls of oppression. Harry, 38, said at the event: “As we all face a ... challenging time in the world, we choose the path of optimism of care for each other and our communities.”
The couple has been accused of using footage in two trailers for the series that misrepresent press events, which have nothing to do with them, to create the illusion of an out-of-control media pack.
This falls straight into Meghan’s narrative, as described by a former best friend since discarded, that she had always wanted to be a Princess Diana 2.0.
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