Harry and Meghan make explosive claims but none land with a bang

Meghan and Harry's wedding photos shown in their Netflix series. Picture: Netflix

One thing is abundantly clear: the latest trailer for the Netflix series Harry & Meghan is definitely incendiary. Anything that talks about people being “happy to lie” to protect Prince William – at the expense, the trailer seems to imply, of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – is always going to land with a bang.

The question is, though: how much heat is being expended? And how much light is being shed?

Prince William, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, Prince Louis and the Princess of Wales in Norfolk earlier this year. The photo has been chosen for their 2022 Christmas card. Picture: Matt Porteous

After the first three episodes were aired one criticism was about how vague the accusations being levelled by the couple were. There was an awful lot of talk about what “they” had done to Harry and Meghan, without any real specifics of who “they” were. This is true of this trailer, in spades.

One noted source of confusion is the question of who these people are who were “happy to lie” to protect William. The implication from the trailer is that it is the palace. That would fit in with the way images of the palace flash on the screen, and it would also fit in with what Meghan has said before. One of the themes of her Oprah Winfrey interview was that the palace had refused to protect her by rejecting the story that she had supposedly made Kate cry in a row over bridesmaids’ dresses before her wedding to Harry.

If one looks at the trailer on Netflix, however, as opposed to social media, the subtitles say that Harry is talking about the British media. That is puzzling: it does not really make sense to accuse the media of lying to protect William: they are not really in the business of protecting anyone.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in their Netflix docuseries "Harry & Meghan." Picture Netflix

Some of the quotes in the trailer are less inflammatory than they appear. When Meghan says “our security was being pulled” it sounds dramatic but what is she talking about? If she is talking about Canada, well that is neither surprising nor particularly shocking. The whole world knows that when they were living on Vancouver Island the Canadian government was not prepared to pay for their security. Neither was the British government, given that they were living abroad and no longer carrying out royal duties. This is an old argument, which is no longer terribly exciting.

Meghan and Harry's wedding as shown in their Netflix series. Picture: Netflix

Then Meghan says: “I wasn’t being thrown to the wolves, I was being fed to the wolves.” That is a dramatic-sounding line but ultimately meaningless: what is the difference between being thrown to the wolves and being fed to the wolves?

Harry also talks about “institutional gaslighting”, which is another colourful phrase but raises the question: what on earth is he talking about? Gaslighting is generally defined as manipulating someone so as to make them question their own reality: the palace has been accused of all sorts of things, but that takes their alleged skulduggery to a new level. Yet again we will have to wait until Thursday to see what Harry means by this, if anything.

Their cheerleader Christopher Bouzy says that “they” – that’s right, them again – were “actively recruiting people to disseminate disinformation”. What? Who? How? We await the evidence with interest.

As with the first episodes, so much of this raises further questions. Meghan says that leaving Britain “gave us a chance to create that home that we had always wanted”, which prompts the thought: what on earth was Frogmore Cottage all about then? They spent pounds 2.4 million on that, and that is without the furniture, the decoration and all the fancy interior design: was it not the home they wanted?

Harry talks in the trailer about this being “a fight worth fighting for”, which is stirring talk but perhaps someone ought to explain to him that causes are the thing that one fights for, not fights. And at some point, the fighting has to stop.

The Times