LONDON, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Prince Harry said he had gone public about his differences with the British royal family and attacked the press in an attempt to help the monarchy and change the media, the latter described by his father, King Charles, as a “suicidal mission”.
In the first of a series of TV interviews airing on Sunday ahead of the launch of his memoir, Harry accused family members of sleeping with the devil – the tabloid press – to smear him and his wife Meghan, to improve their own reputation. .
He told Britain’s ITV he fled Britain with his family for California in 2020 ‘in fear for our lives’ and said he no longer recognizes his father or older brother Prince William. ‘heir to the throne.
“After many years of lying about me and my family, there comes a time when, going back to the relationship between certain family members and the tabloid press, those certain members decided to go to bed with the devil. . to rehabilitate their image,” he said.
“The moment that this rehabilitation comes at the expense of others, me, other members of my family, then that’s where I draw the line.”
On Thursday, Harry’s book ‘Spare’ mistakenly went on sale in Spain five days before its official release, chronicling not only extremely personal details, such as how he lost his virginity and took illegal drugs, but more intimate private cases of family discord.
His older brother had knocked him down in a fight, and the two siblings begged their father not to marry his second wife, Camilla, now the queen consort, the book says.
Commentators say the book plunged the monarchy into its biggest crisis since the days of the royal soap opera in the 1990s around the breakdown of Charles’ marriage to his late first wife Princess Diana, the mother of William and Harry .
This all comes just four months after the death of Queen Elizabeth and Charles’s accession to the throne.
In the ITV interview, Harry repeated and expanded on the accusations he and Meghan have made since stepping down from royal duties; that the royal family and their aides not only failed to protect them from a hostile and sometimes racist press, but actively leaked stories about them through unnamed sources.
CONFLICT
“The saddest thing is that some of my family members and the people who work for them are complicit in this conflict,” he said, indicating that this included both Charles and Camilla.
So far there has been no comment from Buckingham Palace. Harry said he didn’t think his father or brother would read his book.
An unnamed friend of William’s told The Sunday Times the Prince of Wales was ‘burning’ with anger but would not respond ‘for the good of his family and the country’.
Harry told ITV he wanted reconciliation with his family members but said they had shown no interest, making it seem like he and Meghan were best kept as villains.
“I sincerely believe, and I hope, that the reconciliation between my family and us will have a ripple effect around the world. Maybe it’s noble, maybe it’s naive,” he said. -he declares.
Harry, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired later on Sunday, said the ball was in his family’s court to heal the breakup.
“It all started with their briefing, daily, against my wife with lies to the point where my wife and I had to flee our country – my country,” he said.
Harry also told ITV he hopes his multiple legal actions against newspapers will help change the media, saying they are “at the epicenter of so many problems across the UK”.
“My dad told me it was probably a suicide mission to try to change the press,” he said.
Harry told 60 Minutes that what Meghan went through with the press was similar in some ways to what Camilla and William’s wife Kate went through, but the circumstances were very different.
“The fact that she’s American, actress, divorced, black, biracial with a black mother. Those were just four of the typical stereotypes that are — are becoming a feeding frenzy for the British press,” he said.
Polls suggest many Britons are bored with all the royal melodrama, and new revelations are unlikely to shake their view of whether they are sympathetic to Harry and Meghan, or those they criticize.
“I love my dad. I love my brother. I love my family. I always will. Nothing I’ve done in this book or otherwise was ever…to hurt them or their hurt,” he said. .
Reporting by Michael Holden and Sarah Mills; Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis in Washington; Editing by Frances Kerry, Paul Simao and Diane Craft
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