The Duke of Sussex has claimed his brother screamed and shouted at him, and his father said things “that just simply weren’t true” at the fraught Sandringham summit that led to Harry and Meghan quitting the UK and royal duties.
The prince also claimed palace wars left him heartbroken, suggesting Prince William’s office deliberately briefed against him and Meghan, despite a promise the brothers had made not to copy the same tactics used by Charles’s office.
Of the bitterness caused throughout the process of the couple’s departure as working royals, Harry said of the royal households: “I think from their perspective, they had to believe that it was more about us and maybe the issues that we had, as opposed to their partner, the media and themselves, and that relationship that was causing so much pain for us. They saw what they wanted to see.”
He added: “I mean, the saddest part of it was this wedge created between me and my brother so that he’s now on the institution’s side – and I get, part of that I get. I understand, right? That’s his inheritance, so to some extent it’s already ingrained in him that part of his responsibility is the survivability and the continuation of this institution.”
In other revelations made in new episodes of the Netflix Harry & Meghan documentary, released on Thursday, Harry claimed a joint statement was put out without his permission in his and William’s name on the day of the summit denying a story that William had bullied him out of the royal family.
Recounting what went on behind the scenes at Sandringham in January 2020, Harry said: “It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that just simply weren’t true, and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in.”
He added: “Once I got in the car after the meeting, I was told about a joint statement that had been put out in my name and my brother’s name, squashing the story about him bullying us out of the family.
“No one had asked me permission to put my name to a statement like that. I rang M and I told her and she burst into floods of tears, because within four hours they were happy to lie to protect my brother, and yet for three years they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.
“So there was no other option at this point. I said: ‘We need to get out of here.'”
Harry claimed that a letter in which he had told his father, now the king, that he and Meghan were willing to relinquish their Sussex titles if a move to Canada did not work out, had been leaked by “the institution”.
“I was like: ‘Wow, our story, our lives, literally got taken from underneath us.'”
In a direct attack on Kensington Palace, Harry said: “William and I both saw what happened in our dad’s office, and we made an agreement that we would never let that happen to our office.”
But, he said, the relationship between the royals and the press was “a dirty game”.
“I had 30 years’ experience of looking behind the curtain and seeing how this system works, how it runs. I mean, just constant briefings about other members of the family, about favours, inviting the press in.”
He said if the palace communications team for one royal “want to be able to remove a negative story about their principal [royal boss], they will trade and give you something else about someone else’s principal, so the offices end up working against each other.”
He said there was a “kind of weird understanding and acceptance that happens”.
He added: “I would far rather get destroyed in the press than play along with this game, this business of trading … to see my brother’s office copy the very same thing that we promised the two of us would never, ever do … that was heartbreaking.”
His comments imply William and Kate’s aides briefed against the couple, as Meghan speaks of how she thought of taking her own life after a barrage of negative press coverage.
She said: “It was like all of this will stop if I am not here. And that was the scariest thing about it. It was such clear thinking.”
Harry said he was “devastated” and felt “angry and ashamed” that it had got to that stage, saying he did not deal with it “particularly well”.
“I dealt with it as an institutional Harry as opposed to husband Harry”, saying he now hated himself for putting his royal role first.
Meghan said she “wanted to go somewhere to get help, but I wasn’t allowed to. They were concerned about how that would look for the institution.” She made similar claims in the couple’s Oprah Winfrey interview.
As footage of newspaper headlines about Kate and Meghan flashed on screen, including pictures of the two women touching their baby bumps when pregnant, Harry contrasted the coverage. “If you don’t see the difference and understand why it’s being reported in that way, or why, then I can’t help you, I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
Problems between the palaces had begun when Meghan began receiving more coverage than other royals, the couple claimed.
“The issue is when someone who is marrying in and should be a supporting act is then stealing the limelight, or doing the job better than the person who was born to do this. That upsets people. It shifts the balance,” said Harry, as footage of Diana speaking in her Panorama interview of upstaging Charles on royal tours was then shown.
As coverage of Meghan then became increasingly negative, Harry said he spoke to Charles. “My dad said to me: ‘Darling boy, you can’t take on the media. The media will always be the media.'” I said: ‘I fundamentally disagree.'”
Speaking of his wife’s privacy action over the leaking of her private letter to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, he said: “I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what the Mail did. I watched the whole thing. Now, do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was caused by that – course we don’t.
“But bearing in mind the stress that caused, the lack of sleep and the timing of the pregnancy – how many weeks in she was – I can say from what I saw, that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her.”
Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace both declined to comment on allegations made in the documentary.
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