In an article in British newspaper The Telegraph, titled "Harry and Meghan's 'truth' has been exposed for what it is and I feel vindicated," and subtitled "Strip away the grievance, the victimhood and the drama, and what remains? A couple of former royals with a fading brand," Associate Editor Camilla Tominey shares her thoughts about Prince Harry and Meghan:
Confirmation that the Duchess of Sussex is in the UK, after all, with her children Archie and Lilibet arguably tells you everything you need to know about the world according to Harry and Meghan. After a huge drama over accommodation and security, the family, who have been in Europe, have just met with the King at Highgrove despite Harry’s well-documented security concerns.
Meghan did not attend yesterday’s Invictus Games event with her husband in Birmingham as originally planned. Buckingham Palace insists no imagery will be released of the royal reconciliation but don’t be surprised if carefully curated footage eventually emerges of the family of four, perhaps visiting Princess Diana’s grave at Althorp, the Spencer family seat.
The Sussexes thrive on drama. It’s the only real currency they have left, which goes some way to explaining Harry’s endless will-he-won’t-he Buckingham Palace invitation saga. I wouldn’t be surprised if behind-the-scenes footage is already being shot to appear on a television near you in the not too distant future.
Having been on the receiving end of Harry and Meghan’s “truth”, I admit to feeling rather vindicated following Mr Justice Nicklin’s judgment in the Prince’s case against Associated Newspapers Ltd. Dismissing all 97 claims made by seven claimants, including Harry, Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley, that the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday had carried out unlawful information gathering against them between the late 1990s and 2015, the judge was unequivocal.
In his devastating 436-page ruling, he rejected not only the most lurid accusations, but also concluded that the claimants had failed to prove any unlawful activity at all. Accepting the denials of Associated Newspaper journalists “who gave lawful explanations for the sourcing of the disputed articles and incidents”, he added: “Suspicion, even understandable suspicion, is not proof.”
What the judgment effectively said is that feelings are not facts; there is only ever one version of the truth – the one that can be proved, with evidence.
The court defeat leaves Harry et al potentially facing a £50m legal bill which may or may not be covered by the estate of Max Mosley, a man with a well-documented history of fascist politics and orgies. But the reputational cost for the Sussexes could be even greater. The judgment drives a coach and horses through their carefully cultivated narrative of victimhood.
Harry has long maintained that he and Meghan were hounded in the same way his late mother was. During the trial earlier this year, he became emotional while describing the impact of the coverage on those closest to him, saying Associated Newspapers had made Meghan’s life “an absolute misery”.
So why, then, did the couple’s media team allegedly provide Charlotte Griffiths, editor-at-large of the Mail on Sunday, with details of a meeting between Sussex representatives and a senior royal aide in 2025?
Griffiths says a close adviser arranged lunch with her at The Ivy in London during the summer of that year. She maintains information shared there led to several stories about the couple, including front-page reports suggesting efforts were underway to repair relations with King Charles.
If true, Harry and Meghan were doing precisely what they accuse others of doing: briefing the press.
Then there was last week’s accommodation saga. How exactly were reporters learning about rescinded palace invitations if not from Sussex sources? This, from a prince, who once grandly told his ITV chum Tom Bradby that members of the Royal family got into “bed with the devil” if they tipped off the media “to rehabilitate their image”.
Griffiths’ evidence also seems to suggest another uncomfortable inconsistency. Harry has long claimed to have had little to do with journalists. Yet the trial revealed flirtatious Facebook messages exchanged with Griffiths in 2011 and 2012, referring to a hedonistic weekend spent with Harry and his friends.
In those messages Harry happily disclosed personal details, including that he was “stuck in Cornwall doing Army stuff”. Again, Harry’s words to Bradby come back to haunt him. “If you need to do that, or you want to do that, you choose to do that. Well that is a choice,” he explained. Yes. Harry. If only you’d taken your own advice.
As I recall, when he wasn’t complaining about invasions of privacy, he and his friends were voluntarily sharing extraordinary amounts of their lives on public social media. They also kept returning to the same London nightclubs – Boujis, Amika and others – only to express outrage when photographers captured them stumbling out in the early hours.
In Spare, Harry never named me but described me as someone who “always made me ill”, adding: “She’d always, always got stuff wrong.” In reality, I got two rather significant stories right. First, that he was dating Meghan Markle, an exclusive I broke in October 2016. Second, that there had been an altercation between Meghan and Kate during a bridesmaid dress fitting that left Kate in tears.
Until that second story, I had enjoyed a perfectly good working relationship with Harry. Even after revealing his romance with the American actress, he personally invited me to cover parts of his Caribbean tour that weren’t open to other journalists. The truth – the whole truth, not the Sussexes’ version of it – is that they have always been entirely comfortable with publicity, provided it is flattering. Write a negative headline, even an accurate one, and suddenly it becomes a media witch hunt.
The reality was summed up perfectly by Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, after the verdict, which echoed South Park’s now infamous World Privacy Tour parody about the couple.
“There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes not just the biscuit, but the whole tin.”
He has a point. Harry and Meghan haven’t simply aired their family’s private business without offering anyone a right of reply. They have turned it into a lucrative business model.
And they will continue to do so. Because strip away the grievance, the victimhood and the drama, and what remains? A couple of former royals with a fading brand.
That, surely, is the real truth. (This is the article in its entirety.)
No comments:
Post a Comment