\u201cThe saddest part of it was the wedge created between me and my brother so that he’s now on the institution’s side, and part of me, I get that \u2014 that’s his inheritance,\u201d Harry said in the documentary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Prince Harry and Meghan in Netflix documentary seek to control their story<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
The newest installations tell a story of rising resentment within the palace over the family’s most recent addition which evolved in a \u201creal kind of war,\u201d according to the couple’s attorney, Jenny Afia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI’ve certainly seen evidence that there was negative briefing from the palace against Harry and Meghan to suit other people’s agendas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Lucy Fraser, a friend of Meghan, told the filmmakers that the duchess became a kind of scapegoat to deflect negative press from other members of the family. \u201cThey would feed stories on her, whether they were true or not, to avoid other less favorable stories being printed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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For her part, Meghan said, \u201cyou would just see it play out. Like a story about someone in the family would pop up for a minute and [the palace would think] ‘got to make that go away.’ But there’s real estate on website homepage, there’s real estate there on a newspaper front cover and something has to be filled in there about someone royal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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And that someone, Meghan suggests, was her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\nNetflix’s documentary series, which premiered Dec. 8, delves into the couple’s courtship, marriage and exit as senior members of the royal family. (Video: The Washington Post)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It all started out so well, as outlined Episode 4, which began with Harry and Meghan’s picture-book wedding \u2014 but according to the couple, their emerging fame was upsetting the natural royal order of things.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The situation began to change after their tour to Australia and New Zealand. \u201cThey were so popular, so popular with the public, that internals at the palace were incredibly threatened by that,\u201d Fraser said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Harry explained that there is a strict hierarchy and role expectation for those joining the royal family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe issue is, when someone who is marrying in and should be a supporting act, is then stealing the limelight or doing the job better than the person who is born to do this, that upsets people, it shifts the balance,\u201d he said .<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The people around the family then feared that the new couple would destabilize the \u201cpower dynamics\u201d inside the palace, and something had to be done, said James Holt, Harry and Meghan’s former spokesman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe aim was to put in them in a box or make them irrelevant,\u201d he said. \u201cAll of a sudden, these tabloid stories started to appear, criticizing Meghan for every little thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Meghan described how during a royal walkabout \u2014 or walking tour \u2014 of Liverpool, someone told her, \u201cWhat you’re doing to your father was not right,\u201d and it was the first time she realized that \u201cpeople actually believe this stuff,\u201d referring to tabloid stories claiming that she was mistreating her father (who admitted being paid by the tabloids to pose for photos and do interviews).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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She described how this sent her into a dark place, to contemplate suicide. \u201cI was like, all of this will stop if I’m not here, that was the scariest thing about it, it was such clear thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI remember her telling me that, she wanted to take her own life,\u201d said Doria Ragland, Meghan’s mother. \u201cAnd that really broke my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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‘Harry & Meghan’ series trashes British tabloids, but spares royals \u2014 so far<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Harry laid out how the dueling priorities of the palace’s different press offices began to play out, with consequences for family relations. The whole process of supplying negative stories to counteract existing ones is known as \u201ctrading.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cIf the comms team want to remove a negative story about their principal, they will trade and give you [the press] something about someone else’s principal, so the offices end up working against each other,\u201d he said. \u201cWilliam and I both saw what happened in our dad’s office, and we made an agreement we would never let that happen to our office.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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But, he said, soon his brother’s press office was doing \u201cthe very same thing that we promised the two of us would never, ever do. That was heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Matters reached a head when Harry and Meghan proposed relocating to Canada but continuing to work on behalf of the queen \u2014 something that was promptly leaked to the press, forcing the disastrous emergency family summit in Sandringham.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father saying things that simply weren’t true and my grandmother quietly sitting there and sort of take it all in,\u201d Harry said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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As Harry was leaving the meeting, he read that a \u201cjoint statement\u201d from himself and his brother went out without his input or permission. The statement denied claims that Harry was pushed out by William’s bullying, calling the accusation \u201coffensive and potentially harmful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI couldn’t believe it.\u201d said Harry. \u201cNo one had asked me. No one had asked me to put my name to a statement like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Harry said her rang Meghan, who burst into \u201ca flood of tears, because within four hours they [the palace] were happy to lie to protect my brother and yet for three years they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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In another incident, one of William’s aids submitted evidence against the couple in their legal battle with the Daily Mail, which they saw as a direct attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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That’s why I am now living in a different country, because all the comms teams try to out do each other,\u201d said Harry, who described himself at peace with his decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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While he still missed family reunions and much also about Britain, \u201cI can’t be that angry, because I genuinely feel that I and we are at exactly where we are supposed to be. We have made it to the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Harry and Meghan are quitting the castle, but who’s going to pay for the butler?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
So far the first few episodes of the series appear to have done little to change British minds about the royal renegades, who in 2020 quit <\/b>as \u201csenior working royals,\u201d moved to California and \u2014 having freed themselves from rules constraining how they could make their money \u2014 <\/b>secured a multimillion-dollar production deal with Netflix.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Some admire Harry and Meghan and appreciate their struggle \u2014 but many find them happy to exploit their remaining titles with little to sell but privileged <\/b>grievance<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
A YouGov poll<\/a> found that 4 percent of British adults had a more positive view of the couple after the first three episodes, while 14 percent reported a more negative view. Some 45 percent said their opinion hadn’t changed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
The couple complained that their version of the story had not been told before. And so the need for six hours of documentary film, plus the planned publication of Harry’s memoir next month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The first half of the series repeated themes the couple hit in previous interviews. TV reviewers in Britain mostly found the series tiresome \u2014 less revelation, more infomercial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Reaction by royal correspondents and the British tabloids \u2014 who are the main culprits in Harry and Meghan’s narrative \u2014 has been defiant. They spent the days after the first tranche of episodes picking them apart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Nathan Sparkes, chief executive of activists group Hacked Off, applauded Harry and Meghan for being more willing than some other members of the royal family to confront the press.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cWhat they have achieved with their successful legal actions, and now this Netflix documentary, has exposed the press’s strategy \u2014 of intimidating critics into silence with relentlessly hostile coverage \u2014 as having failed in the most public and spectacular way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Hannah Hamad, a senior lecturer in media and communications at the University of Cardiff, said Harry and Meghan’s description of \u201cracial undertones\u201d in some of the media coverage is indeed fair and \u201cdemonstrates skills some good critical media literacy on the part of the Duke and Duchess.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Yet some in Britain have objected to the couple’s docuseries as a one-sided assault on the monarchy itself \u2014 and there has been a lot of grumbling that the show was airing just three months after the death of Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The Conservative Party lawmaker Bob Seely said he is planning to bring forward legislation to strip the Duke and Duchess of Sussex of their royal titles, charging the couple with \u201ctrashing his family and monetizing his misery for public consumption, [Harry] is also attacking some important institutions in this country.\u201d A government minister called on Britons to boycott Netflix.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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But, of course, plenty of people have been watching. The series is Netflix’s highest-viewed documentary ever, and it was the most-watched show in Britain this past week. The latest series of \u201cThe Crown\u201d was the No. 4 most popular shows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Sally Bedell Smith, who has written a best-selling biography of Charles, wrote in the London Times that Harry’s claim that he had to \u201cdeal with the loss of his mother without any support or guidance\u201d was \u201cpatently untrue.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cBoth Charles and the late Queen dedicated themselves to consoling the two grieving princes,\u201d Smith wrote. \u201cWhen Harry grew despondent in his early thirties, Prince William persuaded him to seek therapy. His father, who had seen a psychotherapist for 14 years to deal with his marital problems, fully endorsed Harry’s decision to undergo mental health treatment. \u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n