The Duke of Sussex has branded his stepmother, the Queen Consort, a “villain” and “dangerous”, as he made more public allegations about his family in two televised interviews Monday.
Prince Harry told 60 Minutes journalist Anderson Cooper that Camilla was “the villain, she was a third person in the marriage, she needed to rehabilitate her image”.
He added: “The need for her to rehabilitate her image … that made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press. And there was open willingness on both sides to trade information and with a family built on hierarchy, and with her on the way to being Queen Consort, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street because of that.”
The estranged royal also revealed his pain at the death of his mother, Diana, saying that for a long time he refused to believe she was actually dead.
The 60 Minutes interview came on that same day Harry sat down with ITV’s Tom Bradby where he described a “Meghan versus Kate” competition between his wife and the future queen.
The interviews were made to promote his upcoming memoir, Spare, salacious sections of which have already been leaked.
During the 95-minute long ITV interview, Harry reiterated how he loved his family and his older brother, Prince William, the heir to the throne.
But he also touched on his strained relationship with his older sibling due to his marriage to Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex.
“I thought that you know, the four of us would, you know, bring me and William closer together, we could go out and do work together,” Harry told ITV.
“Before it was Meghan, whoever it was going to be. I always hoped that the four of us would get on, but very quickly, it became Meghan versus Kate.”
He went on to say Meghan and Kate being painted as rivals was partly the tabloid press’s fault, but also because his wife never felt welcome.
Harry suggested that perhaps because Meghan was a divorced, biracial, American actress, she was shunned by the royal family, particularly by Prince William and Princess Catherine.
The stereotypes surrounding Meghan that were being run in the press may have caused a “barrier” to her being welcomed by Kate, Prince Harry said.
Harry also said his brother aired his concerns with marrying Meghan, saying it would be “really hard” for Harry, though he denied William tried to dissuade him from the marriage.
“Still to this day, I don’t truly understand which part of what he was talking about,” Harry said in the interview.
“But maybe, you know, maybe he predicted what the British press’s reaction was gonna be.”
Harry also claimed when he and William were at the prestigious boys school Eton College, his older brother ignored him.
“He didn’t want anything to do with me and that hurt at the time,” he said.
Prince Harry and the press
A lot of blame was put on the British tabloids throughout the interview.
At one point, Harry said certain members of the family decided to “get in the bed of the devil” [the press] to “rehabilitate” their own image, while lies were told about Harry’s family.
“The saddest part of that is certain members of my family and the people that work for them are complicit in that conflict,” he said, indicating that included both Charles and Camilla.
He touched on the commentary provided by Jeremy Clarkson who was slammed for his vicious attack on Meghan.
“What he said was horrific and is hurtful and cruel towards my wife, but it also encourages other people around the UK and around the world, men particularly, to go and think that it’s acceptable to treat women that way,” Harry said.
As for King Charles’s second wife Camilla, the Queen Consort, Harry revealed that he and Prince William did not want their father to marry Camilla.
“William and I wanted our father to be happy and he seemed to be very, very happy with her,” he said.
“We asked him not to get married. He chose to. That’s his decision. But the two of them were and remain very happy together.”
Reaction to the interview
Early reactions to the interview was divided, as is anything related to Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle.
Some took issue with the fact that Harry clearly despises the press, given the circumstances surrounding his mother’s death and how Meghan has been treated, but seemed okay with releasing the Netflix series, his memoir and doing interviews to promote it.
As some pointed out, Harry doing interviews and releasing the Netflix series and Spare is just him taking control of his own narrative.
“There was a motto, a family motto of ‘never complain, never explain’. And what people have realised now … is that was just a motto,” he said when asked why he decided to pen the book.
“There was a lot of complaining and there was a lot of explaining and it continues now.
“If it had stopped, by the point that I fled my home country with my wife and my son fearing for our lives, then maybe this would’ve turned out differently.”
Commentators say the book has plunged the monarchy into its biggest crisis since the days of the royal soap opera in the 1990s around the break-up of Charles’ marriage to his late first wife Princess Diana, the mother of William and Harry.
It all comes just four months after Queen Elizabeth died and Charles acceded to the throne.
So far, there has been no comment from Buckingham Palace. Harry said he didn’t think his father or brother would read his book.
However, an unnamed friend of William told the Sunday Times that the Prince of Wales was “burning” with anger, but would not respond “for the good of his family and the country”.
