One of the most unsavory aspects of Prince Harry’s feud with his brother is his apparent desire to claim ownership of his mother’s inheritance. Hardly a speech or interview can go by without a reference to the late Princess Diana and his assertions about her wishes.
Harry’s latest television interview reveals that he is now also trying to evoke the memory of his late grandmother.
The courtiers I have spoken to over the past few days are decidedly unimpressed.
In the interview with the wily ITV News correspondent Rebecca Barry, Harry claimed that Queen Elizabeth had fully supported his legal battle against the popular press and had personally urged him to continue.
“We had many conversations before she passed away and this is something she was absolutely supportive of,” he said in a documentary, Tabloids on Trial.
“She knew how much this meant to me and she always said, ‘Follow this to the end.’”
In last Thursday’s interview with ITV News’ Rebecca Barry, Harry claimed that Queen Elizabeth had fully supported his legal battle against the popular press and had personally urged him to
Unfortunately, the Queen is no longer available to support or deny Harry’s claim, so perhaps it would be instructive to look at her actions.
It is a tribute to the warm bond the late Queen had with her grandchildren, all eight of whom she considered very much loved.
Harry, however, was convinced that he was somehow unique, claiming in an interview with an American journalist five months before her death that he had a “special relationship” with the monarch.
The absurdity of his claim was that he was ‘protecting’ Queen Elizabeth from those around her, even though he had been living in North America for over two years.
Harry was convinced that he was indeed special, but became increasingly frustrated at being unable to meet his grandmother in person to discuss his plans to move abroad with his new wife Meghan.
In his best-selling book Spare, the prince portrayed the queen as a weak, elderly woman manipulated by officials, and gave her a series of childish nicknames, such as “The Wasp” and “The Fly.”
Indeed, as the two prime ministers she met days before her death testified, the Queen was as sharp as a knife to the end. And even as her physical strength declined, she was prepared to speak her mind – whether it suited Harry and Meghan or not.
One courtier Richard Eden spoke to is far from happy with Harry’s “tasteless” attempt to gain his grandmother’s support for his ongoing “crusade”, adding: “There is something distinctly ‘odd’ about it.”
Harry became increasingly frustrated at not being able to see his grandmother in person to discuss his plans to move abroad with his new wife Meghan in 2020
For example, rather than backing their plans for a “half-in, half-out” role in the royal family, she made it clear that Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, should not combine their lives as civil servants with money-hungry Hollywood bigwigs.
What, then, are we to make of Harry’s bold new claim that the late Queen supported his controversial legal campaign against the press?
Was she really that enthusiastic about these things?
It was certainly true that the late Queen took the decision in 2018 to threaten News Group Newspapers with legal action over its lack of response to the hacking allegations – as revealed in emails provided to the High Court.
But Harry has also claimed in court documents that his grandmother was aware of a so-called “secret agreement” between Buckingham Palace and the publisher of The Sun newspaper in which, he claimed, the royals agreed not to prosecute him.
Not only was the allegation vigorously denied by all parties, Harry’s claim was also rejected by a judge because it did not “meet the necessary threshold of plausibility and persuasiveness.”
One courtier I spoke to this week was far from pleased with Harry’s “tasteless” attempt to gain his grandmother’s support for his ongoing “crusade.”
As he told me, “There’s definitely something strange about it.”
“We will never know what was said between grandson and grandmother. What we do know is that we will only ever know one side of the story.”
Harry’s attempts to use the late Queen’s memory for his own ends will be seen by many as tasteless, especially given his disruptive behaviour in her final years.
The facts speak for themselves: Meghan and Harry delivered an explosive interview with America’s talk show queen, Oprah Winfrey, despite the fact that the Duke of Edinburgh was 99 years old and in failing health.
The royal couple made deeply hurtful claims, including an accusation of racism against unidentified senior royals. By the time the interview aired, Philip was in hospital with his final illness. Terminally ill, he died four weeks later.
The Californian couple spent the next 17 months, until the Queen’s death, working on projects that further damaged the royal family.
Just two months before our beloved Queen passed away at Balmoral at the age of 96, her ‘special’ grandson announced the forthcoming publication of his ‘intimate’ memoir, Spare.
Harry should be ashamed that he is now trying to use the memory of his grandmother, whom he caused so much pain in her last years.
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