Britain’s Prince Harry has the publication of his autobiography in a television interview on Sunday Replacement (translated as Reserve) defense as a «necessary» act. He emphasizes in conversation that he never intended to hurt any of his family members.
On the British channel ITV, which broadcast the first interview on Sunday evening, and in the subsequent conversation on the American channel CBS, Harry denies having written ‘destructive’ things about his family or wanting to hurt them. He tries to explain that publishing his book was necessary because he could no longer watch his family destroy his and his wife Meghan Markle’s reputations through the press. “Silence just gives the abuser permission to abuse, doesn’t it?”
“The extent to which other family members have leaked stories to the press means in my head that they have already written countless books. At least millions of words have been devoted to trying to blacken my wife and myself to the point where I have to leave my country,” Harry told ITV interviewer Tom Bradby.
Leaks from Camilla
According to Harry, some of his family members had ‘decided to sleep with the devil’ – the tabloid press – ‘to restore their image’. “The moment where recovery comes at the expense of others – me, other members of my family – is where I draw the line,” he says on ITV.
The British prince has entered Replacement among other things, that his interests have been sacrificed on the personal altar of Camilla’s public relations. The tabloids had made her the villain and she had to fix her image of her, Harry explains to interviewer Anderson Cooper on CBS.
Harry and William had asked their father Charles not to marry Camilla, after which he began “a campaign” for “marriage and ultimately the crown”. Information has been exchanged. “Stories about her private conversations with Willy began to appear in all the newspapers (William, red.)‘ it seems. “Stories containing precise details, which obviously didn’t come from Willy. It could only have leaked from the other person present.’
Harry blames the press, which has led Camilla to believe she needs positive front pages to be accepted by the British people. But he said there were casualties.
According to Harry, a competition arose among the royals for positive media attention, which affected first his brother and then himself and Meghan. He seemed to fear that the new couple would steal the spotlight from the other royals. “Exactly what William and Kate experienced as Dad and Camilla happened to us, even from William and Kate’s administration.”
Harry describes in his interviews how the press has sown conflict in the royal family and that “the saddest part is that some members of the family and the people who work for them are complicit in that conflict”.
Prejudice
Harry had hoped, early in his relationship with Meghan, that they would bond well with William and Kate. But even preconceptions expressed in the media, “an American actress, divorced, of mixed race,” seemed to make William and Kate reluctant to welcome her into the family, she said. Almost from the start they didn’t get along with her, it seems. “Very quickly it became Meghan versus Kate. And when it’s so public, you can’t hide,” she says on ITV.
“You know, my family reads the tabloids. They are laid out on the breakfast table. So whether you say you believe it or not, it still leaves an impression in your head,” Harry explains to CBS. It’s mostly about the idea that “he’s changed and she must be a witch,” according to the prince. “I’ve changed and I’m really glad I’ve changed. Because instead of getting drunk, going clubbing or doing drugs, I had found the love of my life and now I had the chance to start a family with her.”
The Royal Family at the Queen’s funeral.
Photo: AP
Kill the queen
The conflict in the family continued even after Harry and Meghan retired from the royal family. And it also sounded after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. “I thought – and I think people all over the world felt the same way – it was a really good opportunity to get family together. But the day she died, there was a really, really awful reaction from my relatives,” Harry says in TV interviews.
Even then, it would have leaked to the press and Meghan would not have been welcome at the palace. Harry himself was in England and asked his brother how he was going to Balmoral, but it later turned out that the whole family was sharing a plane and he hadn’t been invited. When he arrived alone with the queen, she was already dead. He had learned of her death from the BBC flash news.
He also stresses that he and his wife have never called the British royal family “racist.” Here’s what the British press made of it. In his television interviews, he describes a family member’s infamous question about the skin color of Harry and Meghan’s son Archie as “subconscious bias,” not racism. The Williams Meter IncidentLady Susan Hussey, who kept asking a guest where she was from, is again ‘a prime example of the environment within the establishment’, but ‘she had no bad intentions at all’ and ‘Meghan and I love Susan Hussey’ .
Reconciliation
The Duke of Sussex continues to hope for a ‘reconciliation’ with the rest of the family. At the same time, he claims that the ball is in their court. “The silence is deafening,” he says of the building’s lack of response. “I don’t think being silent will make things better.”
“After 38 years of watching my story told by so many people, with deliberate distortion and manipulation, I thought the time was right to reclaim my story and tell it myself,” he said in an interview with UK channel ITV .
“I love my father, I love my brother, I love my family. And she will always love them. Nothing I have written in this book has been done with the intention of hurting or harming them.
