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Prince Harry vows to continue legal battle against UK media: ‘The mission continues’
Prince Harry's victorious battle against media intrusion revealed in a landmark hacking case.
The Duke of Sussex felt a sense of justice as he won his hacking case against Mirror Group Newspapers, after years of legal struggles with some parts of the British media.
He said in a statement: “I’ve been told that slaying dragons will get you burned,” and added firmly, “The mission continues.”
Prince Harry has always been frustrated by the royal family’s reluctance to confront the press. His father, King Charles, had warned him it would be a “suicide mission”.
He seemed to have paid a high price for his stance. In June, he became the first senior British royal in 130 years to testify in court at a trial, and when he was asked about the impact of his fight, he paused, lowered his head, and looked close to tears. “It’s a lot,” he eventually said.
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Harry's crusade against press intrusion
But Harry was determined to continue his cause, especially after the Duchess of Sussex joined him, and haunted by the fear of his wife facing the same fate as his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. He gave a powerful witness statement and oral evidence to the court, describing how tabloid coverage had shaped him since childhood. He said he started as a “blank canvas”, but then the newspapers decided how to label him, and he became either the “playboy prince”, the “failure”, the “dropout” or, in his case, the “thicko”, the “cheat”, the “underage drinker”, the “irresponsible drug taker”, and so on.
He felt “hunted by the media, under constant surveillance”. He was bullied at Eton after reports of a normal rugby injury made him a target “for being a ‘sickn*te’ or a "pu**y’”. When he was 20, the “paparazzi seemed to turn up” everywhere he went, and sometimes he had to hide in a car boot.
He found the baseless rumours that Charles was not his father “very damaging”, “hurtful, mean and cruel” and he wondered why they were spread.
“Were the newspapers keen to put doubt into the minds of the public so I might be ousted from the royal family?” He held the media responsible for the “devastating” effect on his relationship with Chelsy Davy. He suspected that articles about his relationship with Caroline Flack, the late television presenter, were the result of phone hacking.
Harry ‘felt it necessary to speak publicly’
It was not surprising, then, that the Duke of Sussex took a bold step when his relationship with Meghan Markle became public. Breaking the royal rule of “never complain, never explain”, he issued an angry public statement in November 2016.
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He said the coverage had “seen a line crossed”. His girlfriend had faced “a wave of abuse and harassment” in newspapers and “racial undertones” in comment pieces. He said he had “felt it necessary to speak publicly”, and clearly hoped his message would deter the newspapers. He excluded the rota royal correspondent from his 2018 wedding ceremony.
This was a major departure from royal protocol, but there was more to come in 2019 when the Sussexes finished their very successful tour of South Africa with the shocking news that Meghan was suing the Mail on Sunday, a case she later won, for publishing her private letter to her estranged father, Thomas Markle. Days later, Harry announced he was suing the Sun and the Daily Mirror for alleged phone hacking.
