Prince Harry may not have had his immediate family’s support before striking up legal drama with various UK outlets, but Queen Elizabeth II was totally on board!
In Thursday’s ITV documentary Tabloids on Trial, the Duke of Sussex opened up about what his late grandmother thought of his decision to sue Mirror Group Newspapers for phone hacking in 2019 (as well as several other similar lawsuits). The MGN case marked the first time a royal had given testimony in court in over a century, and it dug up some other family secrets, so it was a big deal! Shockingly, despite The Firm’s usual stance to avoid public legal drama, the late monarch was very supportive, he said:
“We had many conversations before she passed, this is very much something she supported, she knew how much this meant to me.”
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While Her Majesty died in 2022, months before she could see the 39-year-old win his MGN privacy case in December 2023, Harry added:
“She is up there going, ‘See this through to the end,’ without question.”
Whoa!
A stark contrast to how the rest of his fam reacted! As we previously covered, elsewhere in the interview, Meghan Markle‘s husband claimed his family “rift” was largely caused by his decision to fight the tabloids. He declared:
“Yeah, that’s certainly a central piece to it. But, you know, that’s a hard question to answer because anything I say about my family results in a torrent of abuse from the press.”
The father of two expressed frustration that his relatives wouldn’t fight alongside him, adding:
“I’ve made it very clear that this is something that needs to be done. It would be nice if we, you know, did it as a family. I believe that, again, from a service standpoint and when you are in a public role, that these are the things that we should be doing for the greater good. But, you know, I’m doing this for my reasons.”
Hmm. So, his father King Charles III and his brother Prince William were so against it that they cut Harry out of their lives from it — but Queen Elizabeth was chill?? Inneresting!
To be fair, Elizabeth died a year before Harry took the stand to give his testimony — and before the media attention on the Spare author’s lawsuits really ramped up. We doubt she would’ve loved all the negative publicity. But, on the other hand, if she knew how personal this was for her grandson, especially as his battle related to his late mother Princess Diana‘s struggles with alleged hacking, maybe that’s why she was okay with it? Maybe she understood he was doing this for the “greater good,” as he said? If only the rest of his family could’ve seen it that way!
Hear Harry open up about his grandmother’s feelings about all this (below):
“She’s very much up there, going ‘see this through to the end’”
Prince Harry told our documentary, Tabloids on Trial, the late Queen supports him in his “mission” against the tabloids.
Catch up on ITVX pic.twitter.com/6QaySj8ROu
— Rebecca Barry (@BeccaBarry) July 26, 2024
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