Transcription
Among the royals, there was a code to show genuine gratitude toward their staff, not only for their loyalty, but also for enduring long hours despite low salaries. Customary good manners, William believed, had been breached by Harry for siding with his wife. Harry denied the accusations. William, he said, shouldn't believe newspaper headlines about Duchess difficult. A violent argument broke out between the brothers. In Harry's account, William unexpectedly pushed his brother. Harry fell to the floor, broke a dog bowl, and discovered that his neck chain had been ripped. Dazed, he demanded that William leave the house to seek help. Since Megan was not at home, Harry called his therapist. At the age of 34, he still could not cope with such an argument.
Hello, how are you? Welcome to my channel. My name is Cheer Denise. We're going to keep going in betrayal. This is the book by Tom Bower that follows his book Revenge. And today we're going to be talking specifically about how abusive Megan was of her staff. We talked yesterday about how William and Catherine had been alerted to Megan's really negative interactions with staff and were very upset by it. I mean, that's just not the code of conduct. These people work for very little money. And the royal family has always been incredibly appreciative of the long hours, the low pay, and the faithfulness and loyalty of these employees. And for Harry and Megan to come in treating these people as though they are unimportant, as though they should be bossed around, playing all kinds of mental mind games, becoming frustrated and furious, just screaming and carrying on, was so against the way the family traditionally treats their staff that William was appalled, but specifically appalled that Harry not only did not curb his wife, but Harry joined in on the abuses. And so William and Catherine are really upset by that. And today we're going to be talking about how the staff is going to start looking for help. Like we we cannot exist under this kind of abuse and how the staff is going to start reporting and how Harry's going to work extremely hard to keep those reports under wraps. Now he claims he's going to talk to Megan, kind of explain the way things need to be. But even Harry's excuse is, well, you know, these people cannot accept some constructive criticism and Megan is only trying to make them better at their jobs. But the problem is they're all just so unbelievably unkind to her. Probably because she's black and they like all of you are racist. So, I mean, I suppose I could talk to Megan about maybe taking it down a notch, but should she should she have to take it down a notch considering the way she's been treated by all these racist staff members who have been poked and prodded into racism by all of you? So Harry is completely delusional with Megan in one ear and unwilling to even listen to his brother anymore. The only voice he listens to now is Megan and the only person who he thinks is on his side is Megan. So if Megan says hop, he hops. If Megan says this is the way we're going to go with it, he's like, "Sounds right to me." And everything they do, they do together in tandem with her at the reigns telling him how he's going to behave, what he's going to do, how he's going to defend her, what narrative they're going to use, what story line they're going to propagate, rather than listen to his brother who's been by his side lo these many years. Harry would rather listen to this upstart who's just charged in this interloper into the royal family who has decided that the whole place is racist. and she wants Harry to use that line. Anytime somebody questions, well, you know, it's just because you're racist, perhaps you don't realize it. But now that we have someone who's black who can let us know how we are so racist, I don't think we should contradict the black person. Look at her. She knows. She's had unbelievable experiences with white people treating her as dirt because she's black. So, these next two chapters that we're going to read today, one called briefing and the next one called a divisive agent are all about how Megan came in and just with all her little lies and all her little manipulations were making everybody's life hell.
During the weeks following the Tea Party process, Megan seemingly fed Harry suspicions, leading Harry to challenge his family. As his relationships with his family splintered, Harry seemed to be unaware how Megan had ruthlessly dished her own family, her uncles, aunts, cousins, and halfsister. and more important had done little to contradict the negative description of her generous father in order to justify repudiating him. Encouraging a similar break between Harry and Charles did not seem to trouble Megan. "They're racist," she suggested was the view to take. And publicly, too. "I'm beingounded by the media," said Megan. Like the media, she explained, his family distorted the facts to suit their agenda. They manipulated the media against him, just like against your mother. The mere mention of Diana by Megan triggered an outpouring of Harry's bitterness. My mother was chased to her death when she was in a relationship with someone who wasn't white, Harry recalled. And look what happened. Harry had refused for many years to even acknowledge that his mother was dead, only that she had disappeared. Harry chose not to believe that the car crash in Paris in August 1997 had happened because Muhammad Fied's drunken chauffeur Henry Paul drove over the speed limit into a dangerous curve or that his mother had contributed to her own death by failing to wear a seat belt. Contrary to the conclusions of two exhaustive investigations by a French judge and a former chief of New Scotland Yard and the verdict of a four-month corner's inquest in London of an accident, Harry unreservedly blamed the seven paparazzi on motorbikes for having chased Diana to her death. Journalists he cursed were all blood hunters. Shooting, shooting, shooting was Harry's description of events that night in the Paris tunnel. His mother, he believed, was murdered by the paparazzi's flashes blinding the car's driver. 21 years later, Harry declared, "History is repeating itself." The same tabloids were now hounding Megan. "They're not going to stop until she dies." Harry did not properly understand either his mother or grasp Diana's own misconception of her effect on others. Deeply disillusioned that her fairy tale marriage had been a disaster from the outset, Diana grappled with the awful fate of being a royal. Not just the hard work, but also the inevitable disloyalty of some she trusted. Among the betrayals was that of Panorama's Martin Basher, who used forged bank statements produced for him for the BBC to persuade her of treachery within the palace. Basher's lies persuaded Diana to agree to be interviewed. Once the BBC's dishonesty was exposed, her fears intensified, but one truth did emerge during her panorama interview. Her passion to destroy Charles reputation. Now, I will say she wanted to destroy Charles's reputation because she'd been told by Basher in no uncertain terms explicitly that Charles was in league with like MI5 and they were going to take her out and kill her and the rest of her family. So, if you'd been told this and then been shown documents, money transfers, and other documents to suggest that Charles was in league with MI5 to take her out should she become too much of a problem. Well, you wouldn't be very invested in his reputation either. Like, if you really believed that the next king was plotting your demise and that the only way to stop this tyrant from getting on the throne was to come on to national television and deride him and say, you know, perhaps we should put William on the throne. Well, you would probably do the same. I think I would if I if I had been told and truly believed, and I think she must have truly believed because who would do this if you didn't think this was true? who would have this kind of reputational damage if you didn't think this was really true. If you really thought that this tyrant was some kind of maniac behind the scenes plotting your death, then you would want to wreck the reputation, too. So, I don't think it was necessarily conniving on her part, which I remember thinking my whole life when I'd see that interview, I remember thinking, man, what a manipulative little quite frankly. I mean, the way she'd look out from underneath her eyelashes and say all these little phrases and things, never realizing that she had been goated into it. And of course, nobody realized that that at the time. We now know thanks to books like Diana Rammo, which we covered on the show. You can see the whole thing. There's a playlist for it. But I don't think anybody realized why she had done that. But that doesn't negate the fact that she was a manipulative person. I think in that instance, she kind of was easily manipulated. And I think if she had liked drama less, she may not have been so easily convinced. But there's plenty of instances, and this book will go on to describe some of them, where she was manipulative of the media and knew what she was doing and knew that she was trying to gain favor and put Charles in the doghouse. Again, Harry preferred to ignore that Basher was just one of the many journalists with whom Diana conspired during her charmingly manipulative conversations. After trusting Andrew Morton to write an excoriating book, Unleashing the War of the Waleses, she had frequently entertained trusted tablet journalists in Kensington Palace or met them in restaurants or even in their cars to incite mayhem. Her close ties to the paparazzi, especially Jason Frasier, climaxed when she holidayed in the summer of 1997 in the south of France with Dodie, the son of Herod's owner, Muhammad Ved, a cocaine addicted wastrol, spending his dishonest father's money. Tom Power does not mince words. On July 18th, the Mirror's editor, Piers Morgan, got a call from Fied in Sanrope with Diana barking instructions in the background. Morgan was told of the beach where the princess could be photographed cartwheeling wearing a leopard print bikini. Diana had plotted to dominate the following morning's front pages to eclipse the 50th birthday party Charles was hosting that evening for Camila at High Grove. Effortlessly attracting global attention, Diana enjoyed casting herself alternately as the victim and the rebel while at the same time using the media to attack Charles. You know, the first episode of this review, I said that Megan was no mastermind, and she wasn't. But you know who was a mastermind was Diana. She really played everybody. She could play that fiddle and make you feel so bad for her. And then at the same time, she was so good at cutting and hurting people while all the while seeming like this absolutely delightful person. But I do sometimes wonder if she would have had as much success in the age of social media where everyone is derided for all their actions because we have too much time on our hands and we spend too much time scrutinizing the actions of famous people constantly as though our opinion really matters. And I castigate myself in that. I mean really quite frankly what does it really matter what all these famous people do? But Diana was really good at being able to manipulate her image, but there there weren't as many independent outlets who could question the narrative. The narrative was what the paper set out. And then, you know, you could believe it or reject it privately, but there wasn't a place for all these people to sound off on what they really thought. And I do also think that we are in a much more scornful age. Like, nobody wants to be had, you know, so everyone's constantly questioning the motives of everyone else. So maybe in a less cynical era, she still could have managed to protect her image as this perfect princess. But I do wonder how she would fare now. Harry refused to believe that few people manipulated the media more successfully than his mother. Ignoring the truth, Harry would praise Netflix version of his mother's relationship with the Fiads and her death. The crown, Harry said, humanized them. It made them relatable. Rather than face reality, Harry preferred Netflix's sympathetic fiction. Portrayed as a scapegoat in the black sheep, Harry felt sorry for himself. "I'm way more comfortable with The Crown," Harry confirmed. "Then I am saying the newspaper story is written about my family, my wife, and myself." "Well, who wouldn't rather listen to some kind of sympathetic fiction," as Tom Power puts it? That's exactly what The Crown is. The Crown's not going in too hard on anyone. Harry was forgetting that communication was critical to the monarchy's survival. In all the royal households, the national newspapers were laid out every morning on the coffee table. The royal family hated the media, but relied upon relationships with trusted journalists to project the monarchy's popularity. Inevitably, there were risks. The same newspapers that one day glorified the royals would publish an embarrassing investigation on another. Harry confused the palace's daily media operations to secure good coverage and to bury bad news with deliberate distortion. I mean, it's all a game, but Harry doesn't seem capable of imagining that in order for the family to survive, they can't have the newspaper turn against them. They can't feed them ugly stories about each other because eventually that will take them all down. And the media had enough access to negative stories on their own. I mean, maybe people really are that material. And maybe there really were people in Williams office or even Prince Charles's office, King Charles now, who would have tried to take him down with a wellplaced story so that their royal, the one they're loyal to, could come out tops. But you also have to ask yourself, well, I mean, are you living a life that would mean nobody would have a negative story on you? Like when Harry was running the streets snorting cocaine and falling out drunk out of clubs, like is it your family's fault that you chose to do that and someone got your picture? You know, Harry thinks that everyone should be told to be quiet if it's a negative story about him. But then he's always saying, I just want the truth to come out. We just have to be honest. But transparency, which is a word that he loves, does not include transparency about his own actions. Everything has to be covered up for him and for Megan. But if William and Catherine had some drama, I don't think he'd care if that were splashed all across the pages. You know, certainly he wouldn't care if Camila was in the crosshairs of some newspaper. He doesn't care if other people are thrown in the bus. He just wants to be able to do whatever he wants to do and nobody's allowed to comment on it. Never just has to love him anyway, no matter what he does.
At the time of Diana's death in 1997, the establishment was grappling with an existential problem. how to protect the thousand-year institution from her sabotage. In 2019, palace officials realized that Megan posed the same threat. Harry and Megan were concocting their own scheme for destruction. In hindsight, Camila would conclude that in the months after their wedding, Harry had been radicalized by Megan. The son's famous royal photographer Arthur Edwards blamed Megan, too. Harry was a photographer's dream, he recalled. He always projected warmth and kindness across the world. He always had time for a drink, especially in Africa. During his famous tour of Jamaica in 2012, Harry told Arthur and others that he was there to make it work for them. Soon after he had met Megan, Edwards realized everything had changed. He could not even look at me, let alone talk to me. During his visit to Ireland in July 2018, Harry ignored the photographers's suggestion that he hit a ball with a hurling stick. Usually, recalled Edwards, he would join in with the children at schools. Girls would hug him. Great pics. After Megan, everything became awful. Something had ruptured. At heart, Megan remained commercially minded, a dedicated professional influencer. Unquestioningly, she obeyed the palace order to close down the TIG, her profitable website endorsing food and cosmetics and lifestyle after her relationship with Harry was formalized in 2016. Thereafter, the crown vetoed any commercial activity for personal gain. Just 2 years later, she questioned why she was not paid for visiting an English town to meet the public. What a lost opportunity. You know, you guys could be making money on this. Like, they should pay you guys to show up here. Like, you don't take a fee. I mean, no wonder you guys are so poor. Megan found the restrictions infuriating. She chafed at the wasted opportunity of exploiting the royal family as an invaluable money maker. Megan would have learned during her life on the fringes of Hollywood that control of the image maximized celebrities income. Instinctively, she'd live streamed Harry proposing marriage to her in Nottingham Cottage with a simultaneous commentary to her then best friend Jess Milron in Toronto. Oh my god, Jess. Jess, Jess, Jess, it's happening. It's happening. And then he's really doing it. The video recorded and the accompanying narrative, she calculated, would surely one day be valuable. Can you even conceive? Can you imagine being so driven by money, so thirsty and desperate for cash that you would take the opportunity to call your friend, video call your friend so that she can have this moment to monetize later on? Is Megan even a human or is she actually a demon? I mean, what in the world? How cold, calculating, and unromantic can you be to take that moment to monetize it for future gain instead of just being present in the moment? She never loved Harry. Somebody who was deeply in love wouldn't even think to call their friend about it. Would not even. But a person who's calculating, a person who's trying to get a certain thing done, a person who is working desperately overtime to manipulate this poor bastard into marrying you, that person would call a friend. Immediately after her wedding, Megan resumed contact with her agents in Hollywood and tasked them quietly to build the foundations for her return to California. Leaving Britain, Megan would say, gave us a chance to create the home we'd always wanted. The eventual split surfaced 4 months after the wedding in September 2018. The Queen's private secretary, Edward Young, had become angry with Harry for not playing by the rules. Observed one senior official. Harry was constantly making demands which were inappropriate for his position. He had a constant sense of feeling left out of the family's private conversations. He wanted to be invited and to participate in their decisions, but frequently he and Megan were excluded from major events. That was frustrating and hurtful. Both Harry and Megan were denied access to the queen. They decided that Young and his other officials were deliberately keeping them away from her. Young understood Harry was a problem, but he was not inclined to pause and produce a solution. I will say everybody does seem to have their head in the sand. If you know you have a tinder box over here in the form of Perry and Megan and you keep excluding them and you know they're coming up with their own sorry narratives and that everything is viewed as a slight and a snub, it seems like you would try to manage them a little bit better than letting them stew in their own anger. But at the same time, like I said, every olive branch extended was always viewed as a snub and a slight. Everything that people tried to do to help Harry feel seen, it was never enough. So, if the queen had spent all day with them, it would have been, "Well, why didn't you spend all month with us?" You know, "Why did you only give us a day?" Like, there's just nothing they could have done that Megan would have turned around to, "Well, you know, Harry, William and Catherine were given an opportunity to spend a whole weekend with the queen, and it seems weird to me that you've only got an afternoon of her time." I think if I was white, that wouldn't have happened. And I'm sorry to have to tell you that. I don't like having to show you who your family really is. But you know what I think is really a blessing? It's that you do get to know what your family's really like. Like for the first time, maybe ever. Maybe the veil's coming off your eyes. And I'm just really grateful I was here to help you through this because we can escape this. You know, you don't have to live like this with people who hate you this much. and they do hate you. Incited by Megan's unhappiness, Harry became visibly angry. Young and others stood silent as Harry fumed. Meghgan's complaints became vocal. Before the wedding, she was told in uncompromising terms the deal for marrying into the royal family, recalled an official. She began crossing red lines. But Young underestimated the developing crisis. And Young, like everybody else, had their head in the sand honestly when it came to how angry Harry was. Uh, but I don't think anybody could assume that this D-list actress would think that scampering back to California would ever be better than the situation that she had going for her in England because any normal thinking person would know that going back to California was a recipe for future disaster. So, I mean, I say they had their head in the sand, but maybe it's just that they were thinking logically, but they were dealing with people who were not.
In response to the Sussex's dislike of Nottingham Cottage, they were offered Frogmore cottages on the Windsor estate. The dilapidated buildings would need complete refurbishment. Anxious to leave Kensington Palace, they ignored the complications involved in those of leaving London for an undistinguished house under the flight path to Heathrow. Next, Harry declared that he could no longer share an office with William, not even in the same building, which was Kensington Palace. Instead of finding the Sussex's an office in Windsor Castle, the queen ordered that they should be allocated a few rooms in Buckingham Palace. But it was regarded by the Sussex's as a snub. What isn't a snub to these people? Amid that turmoil, the palace and the foreign office in consultation with the Sussexes finalized preparations for the couple to fly to Sydney on October 14th for a 16-day tour of Australia and New Zealand. What are the chances that we'd be reading about their original royal tour while they're in the midst of a faux royal tour of their own making? The last days of preparation were beset with problems. The good news was that Megan was pregnant. The bad news was that Megan stole the limelight by revealing her news at the wedding of Eujenei, Prince Andrew's daughter. Inevitably, the following day, the tabloids relegated the wedding and headlined Megan's revelation. But the biggest problem was the uproar among Megan's staff. On the eve of the Australian trip, two staffers submitted formal complaints to Jason Kof, communications director to the Duke and the Duchess of Sussex about Megan's behavior. Accused of being polite one moment and rude the next, or blanking a person entirely, the tearful women told Kaf they felt traumatized. Outraged that Megan was under attack, Harry urged Kaf not to pursue the complaints in exchange for urging Megan to show greater understanding. Employees cannot seem to take constructive criticism. The media, said Harry, should be told his version, and the employees should be asked to sign NDAs. Critical reports of Megan's behavior were reported in newspapers. My brother's to blame. They have a talent for intrigue, and they have a talent for bankstabbing, and everything they say is nothing but a lie made up for the media. He wanted Jason Kov to protect Megan, especially about the criticism of bullying her staff. But Kaf and his staff refused. Their policy was not to engage with the tabloid's title and certainly not to lie. The media reports about the fact of her staff's complaints were, after all, true. Harry's explanation was starkly different from his families. Harry understood so much better how he had been misled. The genuine truth was what Harry himself believed. The previously loyal Kenoff switched sides. He composed a memorandum to Simon Casease, Williams private secretary. I am very concerned, Kenoff wrote, that the Duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. According to her former staff, he continued, Megan was vindictive. The Duchess seems intent on always having someone in her sights. The treatment of one person, he wrote, was totally unacceptable, and her bullying of another seemed to be an attempt to undermine her confidence. Eyewitnesses reported her as very challenging and guilty of unacceptable behavior. Megan, he explained, played mind games with her staff. On one occasion, she'd encouraged a staff member in a meeting to undertake a task. But at the next meeting, she ignored that person and asked another person to do the same work. We have had report after report from people who have witnessed unacceptable behavior, Kenoff recounted, from what had been dubbed the Sussex Survivors Club. But since Harry and Megan were about to leave for Australia, Kof did not send his memorandum to case. on Harry's instructions. His lawyers would later deny that Harry had even discussed the issue with Kaf or had interfered. You know, not that it should surprise anybody. This is clearly no insight, but Harry is just so hypocritical because he says that his family is constantly interfering with the true narrative that they are constantly keeping things out of the press and encouraging other stories while discouraging other stories, feeding stories, and constantly papering over the realities in order that their personal narrative should break free. But Harry does that in spades with the impression that Megan is making. Everyone thinks Megan's a nightmare. And he keeps promising that he's going to talk to her, begging that these stories don't come out, telling Kaf not to send any memorandum to Simon Kay's, saying that people need to be signing NDAs. No one needs to be signing an NDA. If your behavior is adequate, there's nothing you should be ashamed of for anyone to come out and say. And if somebody wants to come out and lie to you, you'll have in spades a lot of eyewitnesses who say, "That's not true at all. That never happened. She never did that at work." But if you are forced to get people to sign NDAs because you cannot control your tongue, you are the loser in the situation, not the people who are tired of being traumatized.
Large crowds welcome the Sussex's on October 15th to Sydney. In Harry's eyes, the Australians excited admiration for his wife over the next 16 days proved that Megan, as Harry later proclaimed in his memoir, was more than a supporting act for the royal family and was stealing the limelight and doing a better job than the person who was born to do it, namely his own family. Harry was convinced that Megan was a global superstar, though any pleasure looked to be undermined by the undiluted resentment he had brought to Australia from Britain. Reading through the media reports every night, Harry and Megan were convinced that Buckingham Palace's silence about their success was born of jealousy. Harry blamed the media for distorting the truth and trying to manipulate the power of positive thinking. Harry was by now on his path to being determined to destroy the tabloids, the purveyors of bad news and worse. For her part, Megan never understood that when she was greeted by thousands of enthusiastic crowds was not just because of her celebrity, but to hail the royal family and its embodiment of Britain's best traditions, culture, and values. The Sussex's frustration was magnified by the ceaseless cascade of victriol spouted by anonymous trolls on the web. I would also like to add, though I know that Mr. Bower has to be careful with his words. He writes that Megan didn't understand that the enthusiastic crowds were not there just because of her celebrity. They weren't there at all because of her celebrity because as far as the rest of us were concerned, we didn't even know she was a celebrity. We didn't know she was someone quote unquote famous. We'd never even seen her face before. And so, if I were to write this sentence, I would say for her part, Megan never understood that when she was greeted by thousands of enthusiastic crowds, it had nothing to do with her celebrity. but everything to do with the royal family and its embodiment of Britain's best traditions, cultures, and values. Anyway, the next anecdote that Tom Bower describes is one having to do with David Beckham, but you know, he is an economist with words, Mr. Bower is, and he will tell you about an incident, and it's all very interesting, but sometimes we don't get the background. And this relationship that was degraded finally to its death in Australia has to do with David Beckham. Now, David Beckham and Harry had gotten on before the entrance of Megan. But when Harry met Megan, she was really sensitive about the fact that she really couldn't run with the big dogs, with the big celebrities, and that she was not really part of that pack at all. So, there was a part of her that wanted to be accepted by American celebrities, but British celebrities she wanted nothing to do with. So she already had harsh feelings towards the Beckhams and there was bad blood between them because they had not been invited to pre-wedding activities and they thought they ought to have been. So they felt slighted by that and I think that if Harry had been marrying a British woman, the Beckhams would have been invited to the pre-wedding celebrations. Anyway, they felt snubbed over that. Then Megan became convinced that Victoria was leaking and that stories in the tabloids had their source with Victoria. But in this instance, Harry is going to have a specific request that David Beckham come to Sydney for the Invictus Games that were happening at the same time. But when David actually got there, Megan refused for Harry to see him. So here, David had flown all the way to Australia only to be rejected. and Harry never met with him. And the prevailing belief is that Megan did not want to be upstaged by the far greater celebrity of David Beckham than of herself. And so she was fearing that the Beckhams and the pictures of Harry with David Beckham would be all anyone would talk about and they wouldn't talk about her and show her picture. She completely axed the meetup. And why Harry agrees to let this happen is beyond me. But he has not shown himself to be a man of any spine whatsoever. If he has a spine, it is made out of overcooked spaghetti. The book says that the arrival of David Beckham in Sydney stirred up more trouble. The football star had been invited by Harry to sit alongside him at the Sydney Invictus Games. Beckham had especially flown to Australia with his family to oblige the prince. But after arriving at the stadium, he was snubbed. In her anger, Megan forbade Harry to meet him. So Harry had ordered that under no circumstances would he meet Beckham or be photographed with him. After waiting for Lauren Leley, Beckham returned to his rented house on Northshore. The colossal rudeness of that. Harry should have just thrown off Megan's hands and said, "Be gone. We've invited somebody here. We've asked him specifically to come and sit with me at these games." No, you're just going to have to be mad about it. You're just going to have to be mad about it. I'm not asking somebody to fly all the way across the world to sit with me at a game and then refuse to see him when he gets here. The height of rudeness. Are you crazy? I'm with William. I think William's confusion with Harry is that Harry has been bred to have better manners than this. And we've seen Harry with good manners. He knows how to behave. He knows how to make people comfortable. We've seen his comfort in small talk and his ability to interact with people with a lot of ease. He knows how to be a likable person. And yet in Megan's presence, he absorbs all of her cattiness and coldness and rudeness. And he seems to think that that's the way he ought to be walking around in the world. He doesn't even seem to question like, "Oh, this this feels wrong. I asked somebody to come to something. They literally had to get on a plane and fly for hours and hours and hours to get here. Now they're here and I'm going to act like they've done something wrong and refuse to see them." Like, I can't do that. Never once does it seem that he bucked against this edict from his satanic wife.
Anyway, behind the scenes, Megan's conduct had become increasingly intolerable for her staff. Both Megan and Harry were accused of screaming and bullying their employees. Notice that that sentence says both. I think Megan gets a lot of heat for her bullying as she should. But it should not be lost on us that Harry had picked up Megan's behaviors and was acting just like her. Even though he had been trained to treat the staff with dignity and respect, Megan had thrown a cup of tea into the air at the high commissioner's residence. That's a nice way of saying she'd thrown it into someone's face. Her staff's renewed complaints from Australia to KAF triggered his decision to forward his summary to Simon Casease on October 26th. I am very concerned about some very serious problems, he wrote. The continuing Australian tour, wrote Kaf, was very challenging and made worse by the behavior of the Duchess. The head of human resources at Clarence House, Samantha Corthers, agreed that the situation was very serious. A few weeks later, a member of Megan's staff, Melissa Taly, accused Megan of being dictatorial and resigned after only 6 months employment. Hearing about the revolt, Megan would later conclude, "Most people need to find someone to blame. They're just miserable people. I'm not sure how that has anything to do with me." But, I mean, that's just that's the sad thing about humans. They're just always looking for a scapegoat. And since I'm the new person here, it just was the easiest for them to blame me. I don't fit in. Um they don't want me to fit in, if I can say that. And so when she was unhappy, it was just easy to blame me. Um and you know, I don't fault her for that. We all have like personal stuff we're working through. So maybe it was like a personal thing, but I, you know, like I said, everyone has to blame someone. It's just so much easier to blame somebody else than yourself, right? Like when you're the problem, it's just hard sometimes to see that. And um, you know, I wish her well, but it really wasn't anything that was happening here. Probably just something happening for her personally. Well, that excuse would bear little credibility after the queen drove across the Windsor estate to Frogmore to reprimand Megan for insulting a subgarder. The Sussex's welcome on returning to London was cool. Buckingham Palace's officials failed to congratulate them, and neither the Queen nor Charles mentioned their success. Reports about the turmoil on the Australian tour were appearing in newspapers and on YouTube channels. William was furious.
Among the royals, there was a code to show genuine gratitude toward their staff, not only for their loyalty, but also for enduring long hours despite low salaries. Customary good manners, William believed, had been breached by Harry for siding with his wife. William agreed to meet Harry at Nottingham Cottage. In Harry's version, William was a tinderbox when he stood in the kitchen berating his brother and Megan for insulting their staff. Some would say that behind an inscrutable veil, William's temper revealed his true character. His elder brother, Harry would say, had perfected a level of complexity of double betrayal. Harry denied the accusations. William, he said, shouldn't believe newspaper headlines about Duchess difficult. A violent argument broke out between the brothers. In Harry's account, William unexpectedly pushed his brother. Harry fell to the floor, broke a dog bowl, and discovered that his neck chain had been ripped. Dazed, he demanded that William leave the house to seek help. Since Megan was not at home, Harry called his therapist. At the age of 34, he still could not cope with such an argument. The other day, I was looking through old videos from when I had read Spare, which was my first book. So, I did so cringingly, but I did have to laugh at the way Harry recounted this particular incident because it is so overdramatic. But I needed to talk to someone, so I rang my therapist. Thank God she answered. He says he apologized for the intrusion and told her that he didn't know who else to call and he told her he'd had a fight with Willie and William had knocked him to the floor. I looked down and told her that my shirt was ripped and my necklace was broken. We'd had a million physical fights in our lives. As boys, we done nothing but fight, but this felt different somehow. Well, yeah, it is different cuz you made this one up.
In the background, aggravating the Sussex's was Thomas Markle's continuing denunciation of his daughter on TV and in newspapers. Thomas's coriscating condemnation of Megan was watched by millions across the globe. Despite the tension within her office, Megan still relied on Kana to solve her problems. With his help, in August 2018, Megan had handwritten a letter to her father urging him to refrain from public criticism. Although she assumed that her letter would eventually be leaked to a newspaper, it was sent to her Los Angeles business manager, Andrew Mayor, for delivery to Thomas in Mexico. Simultaneously, Megan asked to spend two hours briefing journalist Ommed Scobby about her background for his proposed book about the Sussexes. At the time, it was untitled, but eventually published under the title Finding Freedom. Despite anticipating that Scoby's book would support Megan and represent her case against the royal family, Kana helped the journalist with personal information provided by Megan. Later, Megan would sign a legal statement that said she had never asked Kaf to speak with Omid Scobby. Everyone else is a liar except Megan, right? Everybody else is out there pedalling on truth except Megan. She is the worst. Few outsiders knew about the fractured relationship when the royal family gathered at Sandringham for the annual Christmas party in December 2018. Photographs of the family's famous walk to church on Christmas Day showed the smiling fab for together. Their performance was perfect. Within Sandringham, though, eyewitnesses saw entrenched frostiness between the two families. The Sussex's had every reason to feel isolated. Distrusted by his family, Harry watched his wife spiral into misery after reading the media's account from his conduct. Sandingham offered Megan no comfort under gray skies on flat Norfolk countryside. Its old furnishings rire of the post-war era with antiquated bathrooms installed shortly after 1945. Visitors were offered sausage sizzles and walks. The hierarchical atmosphere within the gloomy house was deemed to be the legacy of Queen Mary, the austere wife of George V. Her rigid rules imposed unnatural formalities on close relatives. Your father, she told her two sons, is the king. Address him as sir. Her legacy still permeated Sandingham 70 years after she died. "It's hell to live as a hangover of Mary," said one of Mary's descendants. "It's hell to be a royal." "Oh, poor things."
On her return to London, Megan poured out her grief to her American girlfriends. The golden days of the wedding, a mere seven months earlier, were long forgotten. During those frequent calls, Megan's family commiserated and encouraged her disdain about the royal family. They supported her desire to shine like Californian Glitterati, not live like a hermit with the discretion demanded by Buckingham Palace. They listened sympathetically to her complaints that the hierarchy was stifling her potential. They're suppressing my creativity, she complained. I can't express my true self. She was fighting in the trenches, she later recalled. Being ordered by palace officials to wear nude panty hoes all the time made her feel inauthentic. A homaly offered by the NBC executive who launched Suits, Bonnie Hammer, appealed to Megan, namely the importance of self-love, having a very strong sense of self and finding someone who believes in you. Harry had failed that role. And Harry, Megan said, should also adopt self-love, which in their definition should really be called selfobsession. Whether anyone realized that Megan had reached a tipping point is doubtful. In Megan's version, on January 16th, 2019, she felt suicidal. I just didn't want to be alive anymore. She would say, "If she could not be the queen, then she would destroy her enemies just as she had her father and anyone who frustrated her ambition." The publication of America's People magazine on February 6th, 2019 sealed her fate. Actress Abigail Spencer had approached Dan Wakeford, the magazine's editor, and revealed Megan's deep misery. Four of the girlfriends of Megan also agreed to speak anonymously to the magazine about the horrors Megan was facing. Two of those women also disclosed a version of Megan's letter to her father. The confirmation of the existence of that letter and the quotes of Megan's words could only have originated from Megan. The global reaction to people's revelations was explosive. Once again, to the world, it seemed that Megan had betrayed her father. The fact that Megan would think that she could deputize her friends to speak on her behalf and even offer them a sample of the letter that she had sent her father and we're all supposed to think she didn't have a hand in this is so ridiculous and once again goes to highlight the theme of this book. Megan is no mastermind although she thinks that she is. Where would her friends have gotten a copy of the letter that she sent to her dad if not from Megan? Also, it would appear that the version of the letter that her friends had received, which they shared with people, was not the original letter that she had sent to her father. But what I also think is Megan fully believed that her dad would leak the letter to the media because she saw her dad at this point as nothing but a moneyhungry ogre, which I would call projection. But she believed that he would leak that letter to the media. And when he didn't, she then had to dispense her friends with a new version of the letter, which we were all supposed to believe they had somehow organically obtained. How are we supposed to believe that this was not an orchestrated event? It's like, but the clunkiness of it all is what offends me so deeply. the fact that she'd just be so rabid and impatient, so eager to get the show on the road so that she could have her big moment where she runs away from the royal family after having been there for like 5 minutes is so obnoxious to me. I don't support this manipulative behavior, but if she could at least be cunning about it, we could at least almost respect the game. But she's over here being so sloppy about it, so ham-handed, so obvious and transparent in the way that she's going about things. It's like an embarrassment to me that she thinks that she was really going to get away with any of this and that at the end of it, she would be this poor little victim who would rise from the ashes as a victor. It just disgusts me that she couldn't have been more cunning about it. Anyway, she sends her friends to people and peoples over there tripping over themselves like they always are to be there for Megan.
Despite Megan's hysterical demands that Kaf deny the truth on her behalf, he refused to reply to the hundreds of media inquiries. Stonewalling the world with no comment, the royal family and palace officials concluded that Harry, influenced by Megan's vengeance, had become her uncontrollable accomplice. In Mexico, Thomas Markle was outraged by the magazine's portrayal of the letter as Megan's bid for reconciliation. A total lie, he told the Mail on Sunday's Caroline Graham. Megan's a total liar and very controlling. To prove Megan's duplicity, Markle showed Graham his daughter's letter. In Thomas's version, Megan's letter was a reprimand combined with implicit threats. Excerpts were published in the London newspaper. The battle between the media and Megan had become public and brutal. Her supporters, alias, the Sussex Squad, condemned journalists as sexist, racist, and snobs. Not those words. Oh, I've been cut to the quick. Sexist racist snobs. Wow, they really know how to just cut you to the bone, don't they? Those the Sussex squad. They really told us, didn't they? Okay, chapter six is entitled A Disive Agent. So, more on the same theme. Megan sensed a turning point. Throughout her life, she had desired media attention. To many, her ambition and opportunism had spurred her eagerness to marry Harry. But her ultimate goal was unattainable. Ever since the wedding, she'd felt trapped. Having given Harry emotional security, her influence bestowed power and an opportunity to influence Harry's relationship with the crown, his family, and finally with Britain. Every step to resolve the complications of his life, especially his obsessions about his mother, the media, and his mental health was carefully considered. Either genuinely disturbed or the master of a Hollywood performance, Megan gradually convinced Harry that like Diana, she too was the victim of palace intrigue. to escape persecution and as the cure to his unhappiness, Megan suggested they might need to leave Britain. It was bittersweet, you know, Megan reflected later, knowing that none of it had to be this way. If palace officials in the royal family had bowed to her demands, she suggested she would not have returned to California. The realities dictated it was her way or the highway. The gaslighting of it all, it's just really bittersweet, you know? It's just it's hard knowing that none of it had to go this way. It didn't have to be this way. You're damn right it didn't have to be this way. But do you understand that you were the reason it went this way? Like to constantly try to readjust the narrative, sort of fix the focus on all of this and make it somebody else's problem when she
Is the reason it all fell apart and fell apart spectacularly. It's just really sad it didn't have to be this way.
Yes, we all agree, but we don't all see it the way you do. Recollections vary. As they discussed the solution to their combined misery, Harry did not contemplate his disloyalty to his family. On the contrary, he accused them of treachery.
I was obsessed. Harry would admit about the hours he spent during the day and night searching the internet. British media, Harry said, was toxic and destroying my mental health. Like Megan, he wasn't able to resist reading the online condemnation. He was consumed by the media's refusal to regard Megan as utterly perfect, a paragon of virtue. Eager to destroy his and Megan's lives, the wolves were distorting the truth. Every slight confirmed that the monster was devouring him. Creeping isolation nod at his self-confidence.
"Don't read it," Charles told Harry about the media, but his son clearly could not resist. Harry was certain that his family was complicit in the pain and suffering inflicted on Megan by trolls in the tabloids. In Harry's version, there was conspiracy between palace officials and the media to plant negative stories about the Sussex's. The royal family's motive, he said, was self-protection from the media's possession of a ton of dirt on my family. Probably, he said, Kate and William were fueling the antagonism. His beloved Megan now shared his own fate as the victim of institutional gaslighting. Both the reputations were being trashed. His mother's murderers he was convinced would destroy his next great love.
In the midst of that discussion, on February 20th, 2019, just 6 weeks before giving birth to Archie, Megan arrived in New York for a baby shower hosted by Serena Williams, the extravagant party for 15 Americans in a $57,000 a day penthouse suite at the Mark Hotel signaled Megan's rejection of drab royalty and her embrace of Hollywood glitz. All of her friends were later seen to monetize their relationship with the Duchess just as she used the trip to lay the foundations for her return to Los Angeles.
Two years later, Megan ridiculously accused the palace of taking away her passport to prevent her from traveling. The lies. The egregious obvious lies again. Where is your game, mastermind? You know, it's like, you've got to be kidding me with the clunkiness of all this, this dramatic storyline that has clear evidence to the contrary.
"They took away my passport, so I couldn't even travel. I was under lock and key. And I just didn't want to live anymore under those conditions." Well, that's great. I guess you didn't really want to commit suicide then because you weren't under those conditions. So great news. You want to be alive since no one was locking you down since no one was taking away your passport. Since you were free to go anywhere you wanted to go. Everyone had you locked down, did they? So tell us what what story of intrigue did you have to go through to get your your passport? Did you have to like wake up in the middle of night and sneak into some kind of an office and steal a key?
Anyway, on the advice of her Hollywood agent, Megan swiftly organized a new website to promote brand Sussex. She can call her own shots, said her spokesman. In a familiar pattern as she opened her new website. She told an audience, "I don't read any social media." Okay, so I guess that's why you want to be part of the fabric of the internet since you're totally disinterested in it.
While Megan secretly negotiated her return to California and openly pitched to Hollywood producers to reestablish her acting career, Harry went through the motions of creating a separate office for the Sussex's own charities in London. Disingenuously, Buckingham Palace's announcement on March 14th about the creation of two offices for the Sussexes and Camidages denied that there had been a rift between the Fab Four. In reality, the split was even deeper than insiders acknowledged because everyone had their head in the sand, as we've already described many times.
Amid a deliberate plan to confuse the public in the palace about the timings, Harry's son Archie was born on May 6th at the Portland, a private hospital in London. Although the gynecologist was named as Melissa Drake with over the following weeks due to the lack of information being made public, conspiracy theories flourished and Megan's critics became convinced that Archie was delivered by a surrogate mother.
"I mean, it's hard not to get conspiratorial when we have pictures like this. But okay, to protect her family's privacy, Megan broke convention by forbidding any pictures of Archie with the Queen and Prince Philip to be shared with the media. Can you imagine saying, 'I don't want a picture of my baby with their great-grandparents. I I refuse to allow that to happen.' But then to have the great grandparents be the queen and Prince Phillip and you're like, 'No.' Mm- I know everyone else did it. I'm not that kind of a person. Mm- Like at this point, you're just being obnoxious for the sake of being obnoxious. What exactly would the fear have been? Everyone knows you just had a baby. So, if you're worried about the safety for your kid, well, everyone knows he's around. If you're worried, I don't want anyone to know what he looks like. Don't worry, he'll look different by the end of the week. Like, what exactly could the argument have been to say no one gets a picture with Archie?"
And it certainly isn't going to be published in the media, but it gets so much worse because Megan's story has to continually change as she realizes that her initial victim statements aren't exactly falling the way she'd hoped. The book goes on to say that Buckingham Palace's most senior officials quietly agreed for the first time that Megan was a liar.
"We weren't asked to take a picture," Megan initially explained that was part of the spin. That was really damaging. Clearly realizing that was inaccurate. She then admitted that she herself had banned photographs. That was, she told Oprah Winfrey her protest about the palace denying Archie a prince's title and also police protection. "I was very scared of having to offer up our baby knowing that they weren't going to be kept safe."
Both those explanations were untrue, but contradictions in Megan's narrative were not unusual. Imagine fumbling all over yourself to tell a lie at this scale when you know you are the source of the reason there's no pictures out there and everyone knows that you're the source of the reason there's no pictures out there.
More lies continue. After his birth, Megan announced that Archie would be a private citizen without a title. "It's our choice, and that's what we want for him. We don't want him mixed up in all of this ridiculous snobbery and racism." But then later, she insisted that the royal family had denied Archie a title, and because he had no title, he would not be protected by the police. And her reason for both denials was the royal family's objection to Archie's brown skin.
"How does that make sense?" she asked Oprah Winfrey. "Yeah, how does that make sense? Because the fact that he didn't have a title was completely untrue." The book goes on to say that on his birth, Archie became Lord Dumbarton, a traditional title given to the Duke's son, a vital detail Megan left out of the conversation.
"I think what it really comes down to is her own colossal ignorance about the way the system worked. I don't even think she knew he had a title. And you know that if anybody had told her, it would have gone in one ear and out the other. Lord Dumbarton, so not prince. You've got to be kidding me. She would have been told clearly what his titles would have been and when they would change and when they would not because obviously titles change as you move through the ranks of life and as you know some people die and some people move up then you're moved up. But she wouldn't have even known this because as we know her eyes glazed over anytime anybody tried to tell her the way things worked."
Three years later, Megan gave another reason. She refused to allow the first photos of Archie to be distributed to the British media because the tabloids were the very people that are calling my children the n-word. It was a statement that was clearly designed to shock, but inaccurate. The original reference in question coming from a tabloid headline highlighting niggling doubts, an old Danish phrase that can be traced back to the Vikings with no connection to race.
"Imagine how ignorant you are as a human being. How ignorant you are of your own language that you would read the word niggling and think that it was the n-word. Also, how would that even make sense if you had a headline that said the n-word doubts? What exactly are nword doubts? Do you know what I'm saying? Like that wouldn't have even made sense anyway. But niggling doubts, these damn tabloid editors have turned it into an adjective. I didn't even know you could do that, but they did it. You stupid idiot. Niggling does not mean the n-word. Bleeping crazy fool. I can't even believe it. Like, imagine how dumb you'd have to be. And imagine the embarrassment of claiming the n-word had been used only for somebody to come around and be like, 'That does not mean that.' and you'd made a big stink about it. I'm sure she didn't even feel embarrassed at all. I don't even think she can feel embarrassed."
The real truth to many senior officials was that since the newspapers would not pay her for the photographs, Megan decided that there was no reason to cooperate. Unknown to the public in the palace before Archie's birth, Megan had already laid the groundwork for an agreement leading to her interview in 2021 with Oprah Winfrey and the American broadcaster CBS. The first photographs of Archie were available only to CBS.
"The slap in the face to the British people. We're going to be really weird about when the baby was actually born. We are not going to show you the baby. We're going to be incredibly caustic and difficult about showing any of you a picture of this baby, but we will send some pictures over to CBS so that the people in my home country can see them. I'm really getting fired up. I need to calm down."
Harry was aware of Megan's transaction to establish the Sussex's financial foothold in America. Harry had also agreed to tell his personal family story in a series called Mental Wellness with Apple TV. The producer would be Oprah Winfrey. What a surprise. Everything was falling into place for a headline-grabbing exit from Britain. Williams' original fear was materializing. Megan had become a divisive agent. To please her, Harry was ignoring his old friends. He'd even changed his telephone number without telling his family.
During the summer of 2019, the Sussex's office was more chaotic than usual. While anger and hysterics raged within the Sussex's home, Harry's few remaining friends witnessed a man transformed. The jovial lad about town had become possessed by seeking revenge. Increasingly, his character mirrored Megan's. Emotionally, he veered towards extremes. Simple dislikes became passionate hatred.
"Megan's brainwashed Harry," Camila told a friend. Harry's and Megan's behavior had prompted another two aides, Samantha Cohen and Amy Pickerrell, to resign. "We had very exhausting principles," admitted Marne Gaffne, Buckingham Palace's media assistant, attached to the Sussex's. Owing to Megan's self-love and Harry's mean-mindedness, the couple blamed the staff for the fallout.
Harry conjured the scenario for their departure. "The breaking point for me was finding Megan in tears while breastfeeding Archie. The cause was the poisonous tabloid reports about Duchess difficult, and she's someone who doesn't read the stories. She would be dead if she was reading the stories." How Megan became aware of the media stories highlighting her impertinence without reading them online was unexplained, nor whether her tears were genuine. As she once boasted to fellow actors, she could produce tears on demand. "I can do that so well. Oh my god, it's crazy."
In July 2019, Megan rejected the Queen's invitation to visit Balmoral. Archie, she explained, was just too young to fly. Days later, though, she flew with her two-month-old baby to the south of France as guests of Elton John. "Oh, so we can't leave our little cottage and go up to Scotland. That's far too big a journey. He's too young to fly. He's only 2 months old. But then days later, oh, Elton John called. Southern of France. You betcha."
The world assumed that the Sussex's jaunt on Elton John's private jet was for a holiday. No one knew that the singer had arranged for Harry to meet David Sherborne, a barrister specializing in suing newspapers. Aged 50, Sherborne was mocked as a vain slick operator dressed in unusually tight suits with dyed hair and skin tone by a sunbed. He was also notorious for his colorful relationships with women. Following two marriages and two divorces, he had brushed with scandal after enjoying an affair with a fellow lawyer while both worked on the Leveson inquiry, a controversial investigation in 2011 into the illegal practices by newspapers to invade celebrities' private lives in search of news and scandal.
Sherborne was on a mission consumed by his desire to expose newspaper crimes. He had represented actors and entertainment professionals including Elton John and Hugh Grant. His loathing of newspapers appeared to be matched by his desire to push himself in front of cameras alongside his famous clients. Adding Harry would naturally hugely boost his campaign. Not only would a royal inclusion be unprecedented, but the chances of success would improve.
"We needed someone with money," Hugh Grant admitted in an ITV documentary. In the warm, affluent atmosphere of Elton John's Mediterranean villa, Harry willingly fell into Sherborne's lap. Whose lap has he not willingly fallen into? You offer him the moon and hand him a moon pie and he knows no difference. His sales pattern was no doubt enticing. Among his past clients, said Sherborne, were Michael Douglas, Tony Blair, and Harry's mother, Princess Diana.
Critically, as a lawyer in the Leveson inquiry, Sherborne had seen a list of payments by the newspapers to private investigators between 2005 and 2011. Only with great reluctance had the newspapers handed over that potentially incriminating evidence, relying on Judge Leveson's promise that their documents would never be published. They would be sealed by law, promised Leveson, and would not be published without ministerial permission. Sherborne did not forget what he had read.
Sherborne added a critical ingredient to his fluent sales pattern. In 2015, he'd won a notable victory against the Mirror Group. The judge, Anthony Mann, had decided that the Mirror's journalists and editors were immersed in a widespread culture of extensive and habitual unlawful activities, including hacking telephone voicemails. Habitual meant that illegality was routine for the journalists during that period. If a journalist had contact with a hacker, said Sherborne, the journalist was himself a hacker. Many journalists he believed had lied to Leveson and destroyed incriminating evidence. Eight claimants won against the Mirror. Rival lawyers were stunned by Judge Mann's antagonism towards the newspaper group and his generosity to Sherborne. Demolished by that judgment, the Mirror Group, which had published an apology for phone hacking even before the first trial started, thereafter settled other claims, paying damages and costs.
Dear Glee, Sherborne added that Rupert Murdoch's News UK, was equally culpable. Rebecca Brooks, the former editor of the News of the World and the Sun, had been identified by Leveson as knowing about her journalist's unlawful activities. Brooks had been prosecuted and acquitted, Sherborne acknowledged, but she could still be sued to recover damages. News UK's records continued, Sherborne showed hundreds of payments by their newspapers to private investigators. Among their targets was Harry's former girlfriend, the Zimbabwean Chelsea Davy. Unlawfully, they had hacked into her voicemail, emails, and Facebook account. It would later be claimed.
Sherborne then surely delivered the final inducement. The litigation would cost Harry very little. He would bear no financial risk. The reason was that all the claimants' lawyers worked on a contingency basis. No win, no fee. All Harry needed was an insurance policy to cover the newspaper's costs in the unlikely event that he lost. And Sherborne had never lost. That formula would win Sherborne at least 40 million pounds and enriched Temple Legal Protection, the insurance company which pocketed a large slice of the damages awarded by the judges to the claimants. To monetize the litigation, Sherborne and the solicitors staggered their cases. First, The Mirror, next News UK, and finally they would target the Daily Mail Group.
Sherborne, Harry decided, was a lovely fellow. He knew more about the hacking scandal than anyone I'd ever met. With that, he unleashed his fury. He damned newspapers for ruining his life and vowed to get his revenge. For over 10 years, Harry believed the tabloids had targeted him by unlawful means. Sherborne crafted his sentiments about the tabloids.
"They would very quickly seek to try and break up every relationship by putting as much strain on it and creating as much mistrust as humanly possible. This twisted objective is still pursued to this day, even though I'm now married. The tabloid press thinks that they own me. Absolutely." Trusting the lawyer, Harry admitted, "I could have been hacked on a daily basis. I simply don't know." All he knew was their intrusion had been horrendous. Similarly, he also said that Megan was the prey for online hunters.
Harry went further, though. He blamed the media for his own mistakes. Drunkenness, drugs, wearing a Nazi uniform at a party, and being filmed nude at a Las Vegas hotel. Newspapers, he believed, should have suppressed the truth. How dare they take notice of his wild behavior falling out of clubs and snorting cocaine, wandering around naked in Las Vegas.
"I mean, was it any of their business if that's what he chose to do on a public street, showing up at a party in a Nazi uniform? It was their fault they noticed. Wasn't his fault he put it on. >> How dare they notice? They shouldn't have written anything about it. I was young and I was impressionable and I was hurting. The fact that they would exploit it so they could sell newspapers is really vile." Never once were the thought in his head, you know, maybe it was really vile of me to snort cocaine, put on a Nazi uniform, and go strip in Vegas. He made no allowance that other royals had suffered worse, not least Charles and Camilla with the excruciatingly embarrassing Tampon Gate recorded in 1989, and his mother was Squidgy Gate. tape calls of her conversations in the late 1980s with her lover James Gilby.
"How can we find a way to stop the abuse and the intrusion and the hate that's coming towards me and my wife?" In the past, his desire to attack the media had been blocked by the palace. But now he wanted to wage war with Sherborne, except in public he spoke about his life's mission to reform the media. The palace, he explained, had blocked his previous attempts for retribution by setting a secret agreement between News Group and Buckingham Palace concluded in 2012 or earlier. To keep the media on side while Charles smoothed Camila's path to become queen, the royal family had agreed not to sue News Group for hacking their telephones. In 2017, continued Harry. The royal family with the Queen's agreement concluded a statement with Murdoch for News Group's unlawful information gathering. William was paid a million pounds, but Harry received nothing. Thereafter, said Harry. Charles discouraged him from bringing a claim against News Group.
"There was no evidence Charles had said that Harry had been hacked. My father was involved in a cover up, and that's what I'm here to tell you right now. Why would William receive a million pounds and no one bothered to give me anything? I I didn't receive a single cent because all they do is care about Willie, and nobody cares about me. And here I am alone in the streets with not a penny to my name because they're all too busy handing it over to William. Oh, precious Willie."
"Why not hire your own lawyer?" asked Sherborne. By suing newspapers, he could discover if he had been hacked. That had never occurred to Harry. Under Sherborne's tutelage, the prince let him dictate the next steps. Of course, he did. Harry would rather somebody carry him on their back for the rest of his life than to get down and take a few steps of his own.
The Sussexes had crossed a boundary. They were about to embark on an 8-year battle against Britain's newspapers. On their journey to London, Harry consulted the royal family's trusted solicitor, Gerard Tyrrell of Harbottle and Lewis. Yet, the lawyer advised against suing News Group. Swiftly, Megan convinced Harry that Tyrrell was taking directions from Clarence House. The same solicitor had advised Megan not to sue the Mail on Sunday for breaching her privacy and copyright by publishing excerpts from her letter to her father. Megan had ignored Tyrrell and the palace and on Sherborne's advice hired Schillings. Keith Schillings is an aggressive London solicitor not previously employed by the royal family. Proudly he is the antithesis of Tyrrell.
Before he acted, Harry called William. His brother suggested that I seek permission from granny. Harry called the Queen and he claimed she had agreed that he could bring an action. Palace officials were not consulted. The timetable for what followed was set by Schillings. Relying on Sherborne and his publicists, Harry also agreed to issue court claims against Mirror Group newspapers and News UK for their unlawful activities. At the same time, Megan would ignore the palace's advice and claims against the Mail on Sunday. Schilling's argument was precise. Megan's relationship with her father was private and no public interest could justify breaching her copyright in privacy by publishing her letter. Attacking the media would be the Sussex's curtain raiser to leaving Britain. Their declaration of war was to be broadcast in South Africa.
"I can't wait to read tomorrow because Megan's tearful complaints in South Africa as people without legs hobble past is one of the greatest, most tonedeaf moments of all time. I love that story because it so perfectly exemplifies the sort of people that Harry and Megan are. Constantly complaining about their own problems when all hell and degradation is breaking loose around them. and they say they want to help others, but all they want to do is complain about all their fake problems. I hope you enjoyed today's readings as much as I did. I love Tom Bower's rapid disclosure of events. But my only complaint is that sometimes he goes so quickly that I feel that I cannot properly marinate in the horror that I've just read because as soon as I've read one anecdote, there comes another. So, I know I have stopped a lot in today's reading to discuss and marinate in certain events, but it's just it's a very rapid pace. And I do appreciate that he is very economical with words and terms, probably because he's a lawyer and he's got to make a point and make it quickly and precisely. But sometimes I just want to sit for a minute in the chaos because it still astounds me that somebody as clunky and incapable as Megan has managed to cause such global disruption with the royal family when she is somebody who nobody should have even taken a second glance at. I mean, they should have instantaneously told Harry the way the wind blew. You want to bring that hag in here? There's the door. We're not going to try to deal with her. We're not going to try to work with her. They had every ability to see what her past was. And I will go to my grave saying that they have covered for her and covered for her still on some of the scandalous behavior that she was involved in before Harry ever got to know her. They knew who she was. But there was this strange suspension of reality that somehow she would be able to manage with them. How can she if she's the sort of person that would throw a cup of tea into somebody's face because she gets mad on a tour? Everyone was going out of their way to make life easier for her in Australia. Yet, she had the gall to throw a cup of tea in someone's face. And of course, Tom Bower in his lawyerly way is going to say that she threw it up into the air. But to what purpose would that be? She didn't trip. So, I'm looking forward to tomorrow, and I hope that I'll see you then. All right. Bye."