, Harry said he had “a huge amount of compassion” for her being “the third person in my parents’ marriage”—repeating his mother’s infamous soubriquet for Camilla.
“We haven’t spoken for a long time. I love every member of my family… we’re perfectly pleasant with each other. I don’t see her as a wicked stepmother,” but rather as “someone who married into this institution and done all she can to improve her image for her own sake.”
On the allegations of racism made against the British media towards Meghan, Harry said: “My wife is not visibly Black, but that’s the way she is.” The way she has been written about was “incredibly relatable to everybody of color,” Harry said.
Harry repeated that he was worried about “history repeating itself” when it came to Meghan suffering a similar fate to Diana.
“There has always been this competition between us weirdly,” Harry said of his relationship with William. “Again, I think it really plays into, or is played, by the heir/spare.”
“If there’s something that will terrify the British press more than anything, it’s William and I being aligned.”
— Prince Harry
“I hope that we will be joined at the hip again,” Harry said of reconciling with William. “Because, you know, if there’s something that will terrify the British press more than anything, it’s William and I being aligned.”
The fresh revelations followed two blockbuster interviews on U.S. and U.K. television on Sunday night, in which Harry spoke of not being invited on the royal plane north the day Queen Elizabeth died, his drug-taking, grief, his anger of how he and Meghan had been treated, his lifelong fury with the media, and his fractured relations with his father and brother.
Harry told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes that Queen Consort Camilla had been “dangerous” in plotting her ascent within the royal family, especially with her alleged dealings with the British media. Harry said Camilla had “left bodies in the street.”
In the memoir, Harry writes of his stepmother Camilla campaigning in the British press for acceptance after Diana’s death: “I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she’d be less dangerous if she was happy.”
“She was the villain. She was the third person in their marriage. She needed to rehabilitate her image,” Harry told Cooper of Camilla’s position after Diana had died.
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Anderson Cooper interviews Prince Harry for’60 Minutes.’
CBS via Getty Images
Asked by Cooper how Camilla was dangerous, Harry replied, “Because of the need for her to rehabilitate her image,” which made her dangerous “because of the connections that she was forging within the British press. And there was open willingness on both sides to trade off information. And with a family built on hierarchy, and with her, on the way to being Queen Consort, there was gonna be people or bodies left in the street because of that…
“If you are led to believe, as a member of the family, that being on the front page, having positive headlines, positive stories written about you, is going to improve your reputation or increase the chances of you being accepted as monarch by the British public, then that’s what you’re gonna do.”
Meanwhile, Harry told Tom Bradby of ITV in the U.K. that the royal family were “abusers” who had got “in bed with the devil” by cooperating with the media—and he could not remain silent in the face of “distortions” of the truth in his first solo interview Sunday night on British television.
However, Harry, who insisted he is now happy, also told ITV’s Tom Bradby that he loved his brother Prince William and father King Charles, speaking tenderly about them and saying he wanted to reconcile with them, and “100 percent” believed “forgiveness” could happen.
Asked how he could expect to reconcile with them despite having “taken a flamethrower” to family bridges, Harry said, “Well they’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile up until this point. And I’m not sure how honesty is burning bridges. You know, silence only allows the abuser to abuse. Right? So I don’t know how staying silent is ever gonna make things better. That’s genuinely what I believe.”
Harry also said he felt “very at peace” and had “never been happier,” despite fleeing his “home country” with wife Meghan Markle and son Archie “fearing for our lives,” at the time of their so-called “Megxit.”
