No ‘harm’ meant to his family: Prince Harry defended his memoir on television on Sunday, the first excerpts of which threaten to further divide the royal family four months before King Charles III’s coronation. The prince called them “necessary.”
“After 38 years of seeing my story told by so many people with intentional distortions and manipulations, I felt the time was right to take back my story and tell it myself,” the Duke of Sussex said in an interview with Britain’s ITV channel. , issued two days before the official publication of his book alternate. A few hours apart, another interview with journalist Anderson Cooper was broadcast on the US channel CBS.
However, the excerpts from the book that have been circulating in the media for a few days spare almost no one, especially his brother William, heir to the throne, already scratched in the documentary series. harry and meghan airing on Netflix in December.
• “Necessary” memories, with no intent to harm
“I love my father, I love my brother, I love my family and I will always love them. Nothing I wrote in this book was done with the intention of hurting or harming them, ”she insisted, assuring that she hopes. for a “reconciliation” on the condition of establishing “the responsibilities”, in particular regarding his departure with his wife Meghan Markle to California in 2020.
Harry considers his memories “necessary” to establish “historical facts” after having lived 38 years “of intentional distortions and manipulations” adding now feel “relief”. He says that he needed to speak because “some members [de la famille royale] decided to make a pact with the devil to rehabilitate his image”, at his own expense and that of his family.
• Not racism
On ITV, Prince Harry was asked about the interview he gave to American journalist Oprah Winfrey in 2021. The Sussexes revealed there that a member of the royal family had raised concerns about their son’s skin color at birth. Today the youngest son of King Carlos III denies accusing the royal family of racism.
“No, I didn’t. The British press said that,” he refuted. “The difference between racism and unconscious bias…these two things are different.”
A recent incident, in which a close friend of the late Queen Elizabeth II, Susan Hussey, repeatedly asked a black British activist, Ngozi Fulani, where she was “really” from is one example, she claims: him.
• At his mother’s funeral
Harry remembers the day of his mother Diana’s funeral in 1997 when, at almost 13 years old, he walked behind her coffin. He specifically remembers the “clattering of the bridles (…) the hooves hitting the concrete and sometimes… the gravel underfoot and the shouts of the crowd.”
“But for the rest, the total silence is something that will remain (engraved) forever in my memory.” She admits to having “cried only once, at his funeral.” He recounts his discomfort when he had to, together with his brother, shake hands with people who came to meditate at that time in front of Kensington Palace in London.
• About Diana’s death
Harry said he read the secret government file on Diana’s death, including the deletion by his private secretary of photos of the car crash. He explains that, as an adult, he took the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, where Diana died.
“There are many things that remain unexplained,” he said. “But I’ve already been asked if I wanted to open (…) another investigation. I really don’t see the point at this point.”
• On his difficulty in accepting Diana’s death
In front of Anderson Cooper, Prince Harry admitted to having believed “for a long time” that Lady Diana had staged her own death. According to the independentwho recounts her statements, had considered the possibility that she had “decided to disappear for a while” and that she called them to accompany her.
“I refused to accept that she was gone. On one hand, I thought she would never do this to us, and on the other, I thought maybe it was all part of a plan.”
A belief he held for “many years”: “William and I talked about it. I had similar thoughts.”
• About your drug use
The trauma of his mother’s death led him to various excesses, he explains: “I started drinking a lot,” he reportedly said. variety. “I wanted to numb my feelings, or I wanted to distract myself from how I felt.”
In his memoirs he also talks about his cocaine use: “At someone’s house, during a hunting weekend, they offered me a line and then I took it again,” writes the prince. “It wasn’t very fun, it didn’t make me especially happy”, “but it made me feel different, and that was my main goal, to feel, to be different”. “I was a 17-year-old who wanted to try anything to challenge the established order.”
• About his relationship with his brother William
Harry talks about his longstanding rivalry with his brother William, how they used to fight when they were kids, how William ignored him at school and even tried to get him to shave off his beard before marrying Meghan.
She accuses William of naively believing the way British tabloids portrayed Meghan, leading to a physical altercation between the two brothers. He says that William and Kate however were fans of the American series. Suitsin which Meghan Markle starred.
But his brother and sister-in-law did not expect him to be in a relationship with a divorced, mixed-race American actress. “There have been a lot of stereotypes” about him that have “created an obstacle” to welcoming him into the family. William, however, “never tried to dissuade (him) from marrying Meghan, but expressed concern for him,” Harry specifies.
• On the welcome to Meghan by the royal family
On CBS, Prince Harry revealed that the royal family reads what is said about them in the press, and that its members live “more in the tabloid bubble than reality.” Therefore, he believes that his brother and his wife, Kate Middleton, were influenced by Meghan’s mediocre portrayal in British newspapers.
“I thought the four of us would bring me and William closer… but I don’t think they expected me to get involved with someone like Meghan, who had a successful career.”
• On the links of the royal family with the British press
Also on CBS, Prince Harry accused the royal family of having close ties to the British press:
“They’ll talk to a pen pal, and that pen pal will literally be given all the information to write an article,” he says. “And at the end (of the article) he will say that they tried to contact Buckingham Palace for comment. But the whole article is Buckingham Palace comment.”
So as reported variety, assured that its members have worked so that unflattering articles about Meghan Markle appear in the British press. It guarantees, in particular, as reported by the hollywood reporterthat William and his team have spent years tearing down his and Meghan’s image in the media.
• He “begged” his father not to marry Camila
As CNN reports, Harry confided that he and his brother asked King Charles (then Prince of Wales) not to marry Camilla, with whom he had an affair during their mother’s lifetime:
“We felt it was unnecessary. We thought it would do more harm than good.” Before giving up: “We wanted her to be happy, and we saw how happy she was with her.”
He also believed that Camilla was “dangerous”. Because the tabloids had made her responsible for the failure of Carlos and Diana’s marriage, and that she needed to recover her image: “It made her dangerous, because of the links she was forging with the British press. And there was a will, on both sides, to exchange information “. She also assures that some details of private conversations published in the media “could only have been leaked” by her.
• On his exclusion on the death of Queen Elizabeth II
A few hours before Elizabeth II’s death on September 8, the British royal family rushed to her bedside at Balmoral Castle. Prince Harry assured Anderson Cooper that he was not included in the trip:
“I asked my brother, ‘What are you planning? How are you and Kate going to get there?’ And Ascot was flying together. A 12, 14, maybe 16-seater plane.”
The queen died before Harry reached Balmoral. In his memoirs, he says that he heard the news from a BBC article.
• About his desire for reconciliation
Harry claims to believe “100%” that he can reconcile with his family, which could have a “ripple effect around the world.” But he admits that he “doesn’t think his father or his brother read the book.”
“I don’t think staying silent will make things better,” he adds, adding that he hopes to have a “conversation” with his family. About his possible participation in the coronation of Carlos III, on May 6 in London, he leaves room for doubt:
“A lot can happen by then,” but “the ball is in their court,” he said in his interview with ITV.
In an interview with CBS, Harry clarified that he and William are not currently on speaking terms and that he had not spoken to his father “for quite some time.”
Buckingham Palace has so far remained officially silent about this spate of confidences, but denials and comments have begun to surface in the British media. Tea sunday time He quotes people close to Prince William as saying that he is “sad”, “on fire inside”, but “remaining silent for the good of his family and country”.
For a week, the revelations of the Substitute (put on sale on Thursday by mistake for a few hours in Spain) make the monarchy and the British press tremble. The 38-year-old Duke of Sussex calls William a “beloved brother and sworn enemy” and accuses him of knocking him to the ground during a 2019 fight over Meghan, whom Harry had married last year.
He also accuses his brother and his wife Kate of having “prejudice” towards Meghan, a mixed-race American actress, who “created an obstacle” to fully accept her into the family. He also reiterates his accusations against certain members of the royal family whom he considers “accomplices” of articles hostile to him and his wife.
Source: BFM TV
