Prince Harry Takes Swipe at Prince William's View of Princess Diana
Prince Harry contradicted Prince William's account of Princess Diana's paranoia during his witness statement in a phone hacking lawsuit.
The Duke of Sussex has accused The Sunday Mirror of using illegal tactics to get a story on a "series of heart-to-hearts" he had with King Charles III in January 2003.
The article, according to his witness statement seen by Newsweek, contained "details of private conversations I had with my father about my future, mainly that I didn't want to go to University and would rather join the Army."
And he said articles of this kind caused him to doubt some of the people closest to him, echoing his mother, Princess Diana's experiences.
"It was so conflicting. It's only now, realising what the [Mirror Group's] journalists were doing, and how they were getting their information, that I can see
how much of my life was wasted on this paranoia," Harry said. "I've always heard people refer to my mother as paranoid, but she wasn't. She was fearful of what was actually happening to her and now I know that I was the same."
His wording is interesting because Prince William is among those to have described their mother as "paranoid," in a strongly worded statement condemning Princess Diana's treatment by BBC journalist Martin Bashir.
The investigative reporter faked financial documents suggesting staff was betraying Diana in order to secure a bombshell 1995 TV interview with Panorama.
William said in a May 2021 statement sent to Newsweek: "It is my view that the deceitful way the interview was obtained substantially influenced what my mother said. The interview was a major contribution to making my parents' relationship worse and has since hurt countless others.
"It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC's failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her."
William was not mentioned by name in Harry's account of Diana and paranoia, but this is not the first moment indicating a difference of perspective between the brothers.
The Prince of Wales condemned the entire interview in his statement, suggesting it should not be shown again while Prince Harry's Netflix show includes clips from the tell-all.
William's statement more than a year before the series was broadcast read: "It is my firm view that this Panorama programme holds no legitimacy and should never be aired again. It effectively established a false narrative which, for over a quarter of a century, has been commercialised by the BBC and others."
Harry said in his Netflix series Harry & Meghan: "I think she had a lived experience of how she was struggling living that life. She felt compelled to talk about it. Especially in that Panorama interview. I think we all now know that she was deceived into giving the interview. But at the same time, she spoke the truth of her experience."
Elsewhere in Harry's court statement, he described disagreeing with his brother in 2003 over whether to meet Paul Burrell, a butler who wrote a book revealing Princess Diana's secrets after her death.
"Both my brother and I had very strong feelings about how indiscrete Paul had proven to be with the way he had sold our mother's possessions and how he had given numerous interviews about her," Harry said.
"We firmly believed that she would have expected some privacy in death, especially from someone she had trusted, and we were so upset at the way he was behaving—I didn't want to hear his reasons for it.
"Therefore, our disagreement over how to handle the situation going forward was not something I wanted splashed across the [Mirror Group's] newspapers, and
I have no idea how the [Mirror Group's] journalists obtained the information within the article."
Mirror Group Newspapers denies hacking Prince Harry's phone. The hearing is ongoing.
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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