Prince Harry didn’t hold back in Volume 2 of Harry & Meghan, a Netflix docuseries that dives deep into the challenges and complications he and Meghan Markle faced as working senior royals.
The Duke of Sussex claims that palace insiders knowingly leaked stories about him and Meghan to the press, thwarting their plans to relocate outside of England.
After the couple scrapped plans to move to New Zealand back in 2018, they decided to set their sights on moving to South Africa.
"The palace signed off on us moving to South Africa. So my father’s office knew about it, my brother’s office knew about it, and my grandmother’s office knew about it. No one else knew. It was very much an internal document," Harry says in Episode 5. "Then it was leaked to The Time newspaper. Then that whole plan was then scrapped because it’s now become a public debate. Once plans like that become public debates, nine times out of ten, it’s gonna fail."
After spending a holiday break on Vancouver Island, Harry and Meghan seized on Canada as a contender for their move.
"At the end of December, the beginning of January, I’ve been on the phone to my father, saying, ‘We’ve got a plan,’" Harry recalls. "By the time I was speaking to my father from Canada, the family and their people knew that we were trying to find a different way of working for a minimum of two years."
He continues, "I was speaking to my father, ‘This is the plan.’ He says, ‘Can you put that in writing?’ And I said, ‘I’d rather not because of what happened last time.’ He says, ‘I can’t do anything unless you put it in writing.’ Sent him emails on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of January. And in one of those, I’d mentioned that if this wasn’t gonna work out, then we were willing to relinquish our Sussex titles, if need be."
Before returning from their vacation in Canada, Harry says he rang up his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, to let her know of their return date. "She knew that we were finding things hard. I’d spoken to her many times about it," he says. "She said, ‘Well, why don’t you come up? You can have tea, but why don’t you stay the night, you and Meghan?’"
However, as the two prepared to board their flight, Harry received an urgent message telling him that he could no longer see the queen. "I was like, ‘That’s certainly the opposite to what she had told me.’ Once we were back in the U.K., I rang her and said, ‘I’m now told that you’re busy,’" he says. "She goes, ‘Yes, I didn’t know I was busy. I’ve been told that I’m busy. I’ve been told that I’m busy all week.’"
Meghan adds, "This is when a family and a family business are in direct conflict. Because they’re blocking you from seeing the queen, but really what they’re doing is blocking a grandson from seeing his grandmother."
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Soon after, reports emerged of the couple’s pending plans to move to Canada. "His dad said, ‘Put it in writing.’ And he did," Meghan says, "and it was just five days later it was on the front page of a newspaper."
"It became clear that the institution leaked the fact that we were going to be moving back to Canada," Harry claims. "And the key piece of that story that made me aware that the contents of the letter between me and my father had been leaked was that we were willing to relinquish our Sussex titles. That was the giveaway. … Our story, our life, literally got taken from underneath us."
In Episode 4, Harry details the ways in which communications teams for different royal family members are sometimes set up to be in competition with each other.
"There’s leaking, but there’s also planting of stories. So if the comms team wanted to be able to remove a negative story about their principle, they will trade and give you something about someone else’s principle," Harry says. "So the offices end up working against each other, There’s kind of this weird understanding or acceptance that happens."
Though royals may claim that they had no involvement in those processes, Harry says, "What I am asking is: Have you done anything to stop it? And the answer is no."
This dynamic has ultimately put a strain on Harry’s relationship with his brother, Prince William.
"William and I both saw what happened in our dad’s office and we made an agreement that we would never let that happen to our office," the duke says. "And to see my brother’s office copy the very same thing that we promised the two of us would never ever do, that was heartbreaking."
