Prince Harry has gone on the offensive against his brother, Prince William, in the latest episodes of his Harry & Meghan Netlflix documentary released Thursday.
A friend of William’s already told the Daily Beast this week that the relationship between England’s future king and Harry was “over” and that the new episodes wouldn’t “make a great deal of difference.” But it’s hard to see how Harry’s latest remarks about William can do anything other than deepen the divide.
In one episode, Harry describes a high-stakes meeting convened at Sandringham to discuss his and Meghan’s future involvement with royal life in January 2020, in which Harry said he tried to negotiate going forward in a “half-in, half-out” arrangement with the royal family.
“It became very clear, very quickly that that goal was not up for discussion or debate,” Harry says. “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, you know, quietly sit there and take it all in.”
“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,” Harry adds. “They saw what they wanted to see.”
After the meeting, Harry says he was informed that a story had run saying he and Meghan wanted to leave royal life because William had “bullied” them out. Despite the furious row that had indeed taken place, he was told that a joint statement would be issued in his and William’s name slamming the report. “I couldn’t believe it,” Harry said, adding that no one asked his permission to include his name on the statement. “I rang [Meghan], and I told her, and she burst into floods of tears because in four hours they were happy to lie to protect my brother and yet for three years they never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”
Harry also makes the incendiary accusation that the press offices of the different senior royals trade negative stories to protect their own principals. He says: “If the comms team want to be able to remove a negative story about their principal, they will trade and give you something about someone else’s principal.”
The Daily Beast has never received such an offer of a deal from any royal press office in over a decade of covering the royal family.
Harry adds: “You can always say, ‘I didn’t know about this,’ or, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, this would never happen, are you suggesting I condone this?’ Like, ‘No—but what I am asking is, have you done anything to stop it?’”
Harry says he and William vowed they would never work against each other but he says William broke the deal. “To see my brother’s office copy the very same thing, which we had promised the two of us would never ever do; that was heartbreaking.”
Harry then said that after a Remembrance Day event in the early days of their marriage they came down to breakfast to find Meghan on the front pages after attending an event with other royals including the queen. Harry said Meghan said to him, “It’s not my fault.” Harry said he replied, “I know. And my mum felt the same way.”
The episode then cuts to a clip from Diana’s Panorama interview in which she says that her husband, Charles, became jealous of her popularity during their tour of Australia. Prince William has previously requested the interview never be aired again, after it was revealed that interviewer Martin Bashir used underhand methods to secure it, so its inclusion in a show co-produced by Harry is in itself a provocation.
Diana says, “With the media attention came a great deal of jealousy.” Another paid employee, James Holt, who is executive director at the Archewell Foundation, then comments that, “Some people in the institution around the family started to see that this new couple could destabilize the power dynamics. Whether actively talked about or not, the aim was to put them in a box or make them irrelevant.”