This week, Prince Harry is offering up some surprising testimony in a UK court.
He is actually the first high-ranking member of the British royal family to take the stand in court in 130 years. (Despite who is uncle is)
The Duke of Sussex presented evidence that a nefarious British tabloid group unlawfully targeted him over the years. Among the alleged violations? Hacking his phone. He is one of over 100 victims making this claim.
However, this week, he found himself in an awkward situation. Harry had to delineate the differences between evidence and his own memoir.
Even though Prince Harry stepped down from duties with the royal firm in 2020, he still spent most of his life as part of this family of living national mascots.
A number of UK tabloids are infamous, on an international level, for spying upon public figures using electronics.
Harry alleges that a series of articles written over a decade and a half were the product of illegal phone hacking and other criminal information-gathering schemes.
Prince Harry says that this went on from 1996 until 2010.
Additionally, he specifies the alleged culprit — the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN).
Notably, the time span of this means that it began when he was a child. Harry specifies that he believes that this ruined past relationships and generally soured his adolescence. (And how could it not?
Harry is not the only victim who has come forward to accuse MGN of this hacking scheme. (MGN, for the record, denies doing anything unlawful … regarding Harry)
More than 100 people, some of whom are actors and actresses, accuse them of the same.
And this alleged invasion of privacy began even earlier — spanning from 1991 until 2011.
Now, one of the casualties of the alleged intrusions into Harry’s electronics was his relationship with Chelsy Davy.
Obviously, Harry is very happy to have ended up with his beautiful wife and two precious children.
But that does not mean that he wanted a notorious ring of tabloids to use his personal information to sabotage his love life for money. Which is what he accuses them of doing.
Prince Harry did run into one hiccup in his testimony this week. The opposing attorney pointed out that his evidence presented in court seemingly did not align with his memoir, Spare.
As a result, he had to discuss those contradictions on the witness stand.
It is possible that this could hurt his case or book sales or even both. And MGN is insisting that all of their information came from Buckingham Palace informants. (When it comes to badmouthing Meghan, few doubt that)
However, British tabloids have been notorious for phone hacking schemes for years. MGN has admitted to it in the past.
And Prince WIlliam settled a phone hacking lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s papers for a “very large” sum of money in 2020. It happened very quietly.
But to critics of Harry, his involvement in this lawsuit is just another “cry for attention.” That and an opportunity for them to roast him for daring to criticize the royal firm.