The letter, obtained by NBC New York, said after an investigation of the May 16, 2023 incident, the NYPD determined the paparazzi acted in a “reckless” manner, though no charges have been filed.

In a statement to NBC News back in May, the couple’s spokesperson said the “relentless pursuit” of the couple, who were leaving an event, lasted for over two hours and resulted in near collisions with other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD police officers.

The spokesperson added that the “near catastrophic car chase” came “at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi.”

Julian Phillips, the then-NYPD deputy commissioner of public information, said at the time that officers “assisted the private security team protecting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.”

“There were numerous photographers that made their transport challenging,” Phillips said in a statement. “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, or arrests in regard.”

In the NYPD’s letter, police said the paparazzi showed a “reckless disregard of vehicle and traffic laws and persistently dangerous and unacceptable behavior.”

The NYPD and Manhattan District Attorney’s Office determined there was not enough evidence to arrest anyone involved, but the incident would lead to a change in security for the royals in the future.

The NYPD said it will be “enhancing the security resources afforded to the Duke and Duchess on future visits to the city,” according to the letter, which said the NYPD will add extra resource for the couple’s protection.

Justice Peter Lane said in the High Court that the decision to provide security to Harry on a case-by-case basis was not unlawful, irrational or unjustified.

The Duke of Sussex claimed he and his family were endangered when visiting the U.K. because of hostility toward him and his wife on social media and relentless hounding by news media.

His lawyer argued that the government group that evaluated Harry’s security needs acted irrationally and failed to follow its own policies that should have required a risk analysis of the duke’s safety.

A government lawyer said Harry had been treated fairly and was still provided protection on some visits, citing a security detail that guarded him in June 2021 when he was chased by photographers after attending an event with seriously ill children at Kew Gardens in west London.

The committee that made the decision to reject his security request considered the wider impact that the “tragic death” of his mother, the late Princess Diana, had on the nation, and in making its decision gave greater weight to the “likely significant public upset were a successful attack” on her son to happen, attorney James Eadie said.

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Harry, 39, the younger son of King Charles III, has broken ranks with royal family tradition in his willingness to go to court to challenge both the government and take on tabloids in his effort to hold publishers accountable for hounding him throughout his life.

The lawsuit was one of six cases Harry has brought in the High Court. Three were related to his security arrangements and three have been against tabloid publishers for allegedly hacking phones and using private investigators to snoop on his life for news stories.

In his first case to go to trial, Harry won a big victory last year against the publisher of the Daily Mirror over phone hacking allegations, winning a judgment in court and ultimately settling remaining allegations that were due to go to trial. While the settlement was undisclosed, he was to be reimbursed for all his legal fees and was due to receive an interim payment of 400,000 pounds ($505,000).

He recently withdrew a libel case against the Daily Mail over an article that said he tried to hide his efforts to continue receiving government-funded security. Harry dropped the case after a judge ruled he was more likely to lose at trial because the publisher could show that statements issued on his behalf were misleading and that the February 2022 article reflected an “honest opinion” and wasn’t libelous.

Harry failed to persuade a different judge last year that he should be able to privately pay for London’s police force to guard him when he comes to town. A judge denied that offer after a government lawyer argued that officers shouldn’t be used as “private bodyguards for the wealthy.”

Speaking at the site of next year’s Invictus Games in Whistler, Canada, the Duke of Sussex was asked about his life in the United States and whether he could apply to become a citizen.

“I have considered it, yeah,” he said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday. Asked what might stop him applying, he said: “I have no idea.”

“It’s a thought that has crossed my mind but it’s not a high priority for me right now,” he added.

Harry was speaking weeks after his father, Britain’s King Charles III, received a cancer diagnosis. The prince said he heard the news from the king himself and then flew straight to London.

“I love my family, the fact I could jump on a plane and see him and spend any time with him — I’m grateful for that,” he said.

Harry would not comment on the king’s condition. “That stays between me and him,” he said.

Charles was diagnosed with a so-far unspecified form of cancer, which was detected by doctors when he went to a private hospital in London for a routine procedure to treat an enlarged prostate.

The news of his illness came eight months after Charles was crowned in Westminster Abbey, following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 2022.

Harry has had a famously strained relationship with his father and his elder brother, Prince William, for several years. He flew back to Britain earlier this month to briefly visit the king after his diagnosis, but there have been no reports of a reconciliation with William, the heir to the throne.

Asked whether he found it hard to be away from his family in London, Harry said he would see them as much as he could but added: “I have my own family.”

The royal family was the source of pointed criticism in Harry’s best-selling book, “Spare,” last year.

The British media has long obsessed over Meghan and the couple’s decision to quit as front-line royals and move to the U.S. Harry’s determination to tame the tabloid press has left him at odds with his family.

Harry, 39, has been promoting the Invictus Games, which he founded for wounded, injured or sick service personnel and veterans after he served in Afghanistan.

He was in Whistler to visit the site for next year’s event.

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Christopher Gibbons and Tyrone Patten-Walsh espoused racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, homophobic and misogynistic views and encouraged listeners of their “Lone Wolf Radio” podcast to commit violent acts against ethnic minorities, authorities said.

Using aliases on their show, the pair said “the white race was likely to be ‘genocided’ unless steps were taken to fight back.” They approved of a day when so-called race traitors would be hanged, particularly those in interracial relationships. Prince Harry’s wife, Meghan, is biracial.

In one episode, Gibbons said the Duke of Sussex should be “prosecuted and judicially killed for treason” and called Harry’s son, Archie, who is now 4, a “creature” that “should be put down.”

Gibbons, 40, was sentenced to eight years in prison, the Metropolitan Police said. Patten-Walsh, 34, was given a seven-year term. Both will be on the equivalent of probation for three years after their release.

“The evidence demonstrates that you desire to live in a world dominated by white people purely for white people. Your distorted thinking is that the white race has ceded too much influence to Blacks and Asians, to Jews and Muslims, to gays, to white liberals and to white people in mixed-race relationships,” Judge Peter Lodder said.

While Patten-Walsh and Gibbons were entitled to hold their beliefs — regardless of being “as preposterous as they are offensive to a civilized society” — Lodder said they had gone too far.

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The London men started “Lone Wolf Radio,” which had 128 subscribers and around 9,000 views of its 21 episodes in June 2020.

The two celebrated right-wing extremists who carried out mass murders in Norway, Christchurch, New Zealand and Charleston, South Carolina. They also posted images of a Nazi executing a Jewish man at the edge of a pit of corpses and Nelson Mandela being lynched.

A Kingston Crown Court jury convicted them in July of eight counts of encouraging terrorism.

Gibbons was also convicted of two counts of disseminating terrorist documents through his online neo-Nazi “radicalization” library that had more than 2,000 subscribers, authorities said.

Cmdr. Dominic Murphy, who heads the Met’s counter terrorism unit, said the material they disseminated “is exactly the kind that has the potential to draw vulnerable people — particularly young people — into terrorism.”

Justice Timothy Fancourt in the High Court found phone hacking was “widespread and habitual” at Mirror Group Newspapers over many years and private investigators “were an integral part of the system” to gather information unlawfully. He said executives at the papers were aware of the practice and covered it up.

Fancourt said he awarded the Duke of Sussex damages for 15 of the 33 newspaper articles in question at trial that were the result of unlawful information gathering and resulted in the misuse of Harry’s private information.

The judge also added damages for the distress the duke suffered and a further sum for aggravated damages to “reflect the particular hurt and sense of outrage” over the fact that two directors at Trinity Mirror knew about the activity and didn’t stop it.

“Instead of doing so, they turned a blind eye to what was going on and positively concealed it,” Fancourt said. “Had the illegal conduct been stopped, the misuse of the duke’s private information would have ended much sooner.”

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Harry, the estranged younger son of King Charles III, had sought 440,000 pounds ($560,000) as part of a crusade against the British media that bucked his family’s longstanding aversion to litigation and made him the first senior member of the royal family to testify in court in over a century.

His appearance in the witness box over two days in June created a spectacle as he lobbed allegations that Mirror Group Newspapers had employed journalists who eavesdropped on voicemails and hired private investigators to use deception and unlawful means to learn about him and other family members.

“I believe that phone hacking was at an industrial scale across at least three of the papers at the time,” Harry asserted in the High Court. “That is beyond any doubt.”

The judge said that Harry had a tendency in his testimony “to assume that everything published was the product of voicemail interception,” which was not the case. He said the Mirror Group was “not responsible for all of the unlawful activity directed at the duke.”

The Duke of Sussex is suing Associated Newspapers Ltd. over an article that said Harry tried to hide his efforts to retain publicly funded protection in the U.K. after leaving his role as a working member of the royal family.

Justice Matthew Nicklin ruled Friday in the High Court in London that the publisher has a “real prospect” of showing that statements issued on Harry’s behalf were misleading and that the February 2022 article reflected an “honest opinion” and wasn’t libelous.

“The defendant may well submit that this was a masterclass in the art of ‘spinning,’” Nicklin wrote, in refusing to strike the honest opinion defense.

Harry has claimed the article was “fundamentally inaccurate” and the newspaper defamed him when it suggested he lied in his initial public statements over efforts to challenge the government’s decision to strip him of his security detail after he and his family moved to the U.S. in 2020.

Harry, 39, the younger son of King Charles III, also has a lawsuit pending against the government’s decision to protect him on a case-by-case basis when he visits Britain. He claims that hostility toward him and his wife on social media and relentless hounding by the news media threaten their safety.

Nicklin said a libel trial lasting three to four days will be scheduled between May 17 and July 31.

The 48,447 pounds ($60,927) in legal fees Harry was ordered to pay by Dec. 29 is likely to be dwarfed by the amount paid to lawyers in another lawsuit the duke has brought against the publisher.

Associated Newspapers is one of three British tabloid publishers he’s suing over claims they used unlawful means, such as deception, phone hacking or hiring private investigators, to try to dig up dirt on him.

The Mail publisher failed last month in its bid to throw out that lawsuit, though it prevailed in getting some evidence barred from trial. Nicklin — who is also hearing that case — is considering what to award in lawyer’s costs for each party’s respective wins.

Harry and co-claimants that include Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley said they spent 1.7 million ($2.1 million) to prepare for and argue their case at a hearing over several days in March. The publisher, meanwhile, is seeking up to 755,000 pounds ($949,000).

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle turned a recent hockey game into a date night, watching the Vancouver Canucks take on the San Jose Sharks on Nov. 20. In fact, the Duke of Sussex took a cue from his late grandmother during the outing at Vancouver’s Rogers Arena.

Much like the late Queen Elizabeth II did in 2002, the prince came out on a black carpet to drop the ceremonial puck between the opposing team captains.

For the occasion, he kept it dapper in a black suit with a matching black sweater, while Markle donned an all-black outfit as well.

But the couple, who previously spent time in British Colombia after departing the royal family in 2020, weren’t just in the Canadian province to catch some hockey. After all, it’s also the site of the next Invictus Games. The event, a sporting event founded by Harry in 2014 for injured, sick and wounded active service members and veterans, will be held in Vancouver and Whistler in 2025.

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And at the September Invictus Games, Markle spilled the royal tea on why she was late.

“It is so special to be here, and I’m so sorry that I was a little late for the party,” she told the crowd, according to Hello!. “Just like so many of you, we know this is about family and friends and the community that Invictus has created, that Fischer House has created, and so I had to just spend a little bit more time getting our little ones settled home.”

Markle elaborated on what settling things at home looks like with her son Archie, 4, and daughter Lilibet, 2, adding, “getting milkshakes and doing school drop off.”

In fact, she recently gave insight into their holiday plans with family.

“We’re creating new ones now that our little ones are growing up,” Markle exclusively told E! News of the family’s evolving traditions on Nov. 17. “And we’re enjoying every moment of it.”

As for one jolly moment in particular? As the “Suits” alum put it: “I love trimming and decorating the tree with my children.”

The two will discuss the topic at a panel alongside Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and moderated by NBC host Carson Daly, who has talked about his struggles with anxiety in the past.

The event — held on World Mental Health Day — is being coordinated by Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation and is part of a second annual mental health awareness festival hosted by a nonprofit called Project Healthy Minds.

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In the United Kingdom on Tuesday, Harry’s brother, Prince William and his wife Kate also participated in a separate forum to draw awareness to young people’s challenges with mental health.

During their last public appearance in New York City, Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, set off alarms when they claimed they had been dangerously pursued by paparazzi in a “near catastrophic car chase” in Manhattan. That led New York City Mayor Eric Adams to condemn the paparazzi chasing them as “reckless and irresponsible.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped out for a dinner date at the Italian restaurant Tre Lune in Montecito to celebrate Markle’s 42nd birthday, according to photos obtained by the Daily Mail. The pair was also accompanied by their friend Matt Cohen.

For their late night outing, Markle wore a black-and-white striped strapless full-length dress paired with black sandals. As for Prince Harry, his ensemble included a blue linen shirt and light-colored pants.

The couple’s public appearance came just hours after they released a video in which they were seen surprising recipients who received the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund grants with phone calls. (The fund is an initiative created to supporting young leaders at the forefront of the technology movement.)

“Thank you for doing everything that you do,” Prince Harry, who shares kids Archie Harrison, 4, and Lilibet Diana, 2, with Markle, told the recipients, per People. “Our kids especially are incredibly grateful.”

Markle added, “They don’t know it yet, but they will!”

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Their outing also comes nearly three months after the couple, along with Markle’s mom Doria Ragland, were involved in a car chase after attending the Ms. Foundation Women of Vision Awards in NYC.

At the time, their rep told E! News that the “relentless pursuit” lasted “over two hours, resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD officers.”

Authorities also addressed the incident in a May 17 statement, telling E! News, “There were numerous photographers that made their transport challenging. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, or arrests in regard.”

The Duke of Sussex alleged the publisher of The Sun and the now-defunct News Of The World had hacked his phone and used investigators and deception to unlawfully gather information on him dating back two decades.

News Group Newspapers (NGN), which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, argued that the suit should be thrown because the claims were brought after the six-year limitation to do so expired.

Justice Timothy Fancourt said Harry was well enough aware of the phone hacking scandal to bring those claims sooner, but could proceed on allegations about other unlawful information gathering (UIG), such as the use of private investigators hired to dig up dirt on him.

“There is no evidence currently before me that the Duke knew before the (deadline to file a suit) that NGN had done anything other than hack his mobile phone (at the News of the World),” Fancourt wrote. “Knowing or being on notice of a worthwhile claim for voicemail interception does not of itself amount to knowledge or notice of a worthwhile claim for other forms of UIG.”

A spokesperson for News Group Newspapers called the ruling a “significant victory” that “substantially reduces the scope of his legal claim.”

The ruling was similar to one Fancourt made in May in a companion case brought by actor Hugh Grant, that also tossed out phone hacking charges.

Harry’s lawyer had argued he was prevented from bringing his case because of a “secret agreement” between the royal family and the newspapers that called for a settlement and apology. The deal, which the prince said was authorized by the late Queen Elizabeth II, would have prevented future litigation from the royals.

The publisher denied there was any secret agreement and Fancourt said Harry failed to produce evidence of such a deal.

Harry had said the rationale for the secret agreement was to avoid putting members of the royal family on the witness stand to recount embarrassing voicemails intercepted by reporters.

The case is one of three phone hacking lawsuits Harry has brought against British tabloid publishers in his battles with the press.

The decision comes less than two months after Harry testified in his lawsuit against the publishers of the Daily Mirror. He became the first senior member of the royal family to testify in a court in more than a century.

Spotify executive Bill Simmons described Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, as “grifters” after the couple’s partnership with the streaming platform came to a seemingly premature end Friday.

The partnership with Harry and Meghan’s production company Archewell Audio, first announced in Dec. 2020, was originally described by Spotify as a “multiyear partnership,” with the promise of delivering “podcasts that will inspire.” 

However, the collaborative efforts have resulted in just one, 12-episode series of the podcast “Archetypes,” which saw Meghan interview notable guests, including Serena Williams and Mariah Carey.

The deal was widely reported at the time to be worth around $20 million. 

“Spotify and Archewell Audio have mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together,” Spotify and Archewell Audio said in a joint statement.

This isn’t the first time that Bill Simmons, Spotify’s head of podcast innovation and monetization, has made disparaging remarks about the former working royals, having previously said that he was “embarrassed” to share the Spotify platform with Harry.

“Shoot this guy to the sun, I’m so tired of this guy,” Simmons said on his self-titled podcast in January.

Simmons has previously landed in hot water for voicing controversial views, including in 2014 when he was suspended by ESPN over comments that he made about a domestic violence case.

Spotify declined to respond to Simmons’ remarks when contacted by CNBC. Archewell Audio did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Archewell Audio, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s production company, said in a joint statement with Spotify late Thursday night that their deal has come to an end.

“Spotify and Archewell Audio have mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together,” the statement read.

The Sussexes entered the world of podcasting in December 2020 when they signed a multi-year deal with Spotify. It was reported that the agreement was for $20 million, but NBC News was unable to verify that figure.

The deal netted just one podcast series, “Archetypes,” which launched in August 2022 and was hosted by Meghan, and a 2020 holiday special. “Archetypes” featured interviews with Serena Williams, Mariah Carey, Paris Hilton and more stars across its 12-episode debut season and was later named the “Pop Podcast of 2022” during last year’s People’s Choice Awards.

A representative for Spotify said the end of the company’s deal with Archewell meant “Archetypes” would not be renewed for a second season. A representative also said that all episodes will remain on Spotify.

The split announcement comes after Spotify laid off 200 employees earlier this month.

He left the witness box Wednesday looking fatigued and with the outcome uncertain.

The Duke of Sussex said he was highly suspicious of how reporters obtained information about him for stories from 1996 to 2011 that had caused him anguish, but he had little to support his accusations. He said journalists used burner phones and destroyed records, relying on such evidence proven in other cases.

“I believe that phone hacking was at an industrial scale across at least three of the papers at the time,” he asserted in his second day of testimony in the High Court. “That is beyond any doubt.”

At the end of nearly eight hours of cross-examination over two days, defense lawyer Andrew Green asked if Harry was aware of any evidence that indicated he had his phone hacked over a period of 15 years.

“No,” Harry said. “That’s part of the reason why I’m here.”

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Harry is on a mission to reform the British media, and the phone hacking allegations are central to his legal battles against publishers.

The case against Mirror Group Newspapers, which has paid more than 100 million pounds ($125 million) to settle hundreds of unlawful information-gathering claims is the first of his three hacking lawsuits to go to trial. He says tabloid publishers invaded his privacy by eavesdropping on voicemails and hiring private investigators to report on the smallest details of his life, causing him great emotional turmoil.

Harry’s hostility at the U.K. media runs through his memoir, “Spare.” He blames paparazzi for causing the car crash that killed his mother, Princess Diana, and he said intrusions by journalists led him and his wife, Meghan, to flee to the U.S. in 2020 and leave royal life behind.

His lawyer said he wasn’t on a vendetta against the media, but is seeking accountability, though Harry’s 55-page witness statement suggested otherwise.

“How much more blood will stain their typing fingers before someone can put a stop to this madness?” he wrote.

His composure in court betrayed none of that acrimony.

He spoke softly and didn’t lose his patience as witnesses often do under cross-examination — even as he was repeatedly asked to explain how an article had caused him pain if he wasn’t certain he had read it at the time it was published.

“Most of the articles I don’t remember seeing,” he said. “Most of them were equally distressing then and more distressing today going through this process.”

The spectacle of the first senior member of the royal family to testify in court in more than 130 years drew dozens of reporters, photographers and curious onlookers lucky to get a seat.

Wearing a dark suit and white shirt both days, he smiled at times, joked and laughed at others.

He got laughs Tuesday from the roughly two dozen reporters when he dismissed a longtime royal family correspondent as someone he wouldn’t call a “specialist.”

As he juggled various large binders that contained the articles about him, he quipped, “I feel like I’m doing a workout.”

Someone in the gallery sneezed in the middle of testimony and he offered a “bless you,” without breaking stride.

Green, who has a reputation for his brutal cross-examinations, took a respectful but direct approach as he tried to dismantle Harry’s allegations.

Green asked Harry if he really thought that journalists would be foolish enough to risk getting caught phone hacking after a News of the World reporter and a private investigator went to prison for such activity in 2007.

“I believe the risk is worth the reward for them,” Harry answered.

Green, who has said Harry’s phone wasn’t hacked, asked the witness if he would be relieved or upset if the judge reached the same conclusion.

“To have a decision against me … given that Mirror Group have admitted hacking, yes, it would feel like an injustice,” Harry responded.

“So you want to have been phone hacked?” Green said.

“Nobody wants to be phone hacked,” Harry replied.

Justice Timothy Fancourt, who will deliver the verdict later in the year, asked how long Harry had noticed unusual activity on his phone that he only later attributed to hacking.

“From the moment I had a mobile phone. … It never stopped,” Harry said. “I remember a lot of missed calls that lasted one second, I remember a lot of people asking me, ‘Did you get my voicemail?’”

Harry’s skepticism of the press included suggestions that anonymous sources were fabricated and extended to people quoted by name.

More than once, he said that seeing something in print attributed to someone “doesn’t mean that it’s true” and said false information was added to stories “to put people like myself off the scent.”

When Harry couldn’t point to how information was unlawfully obtained about him, he told Green to ask the reporter of the story.

His own lawyer, David Sherborne, got that chance later as he grilled former Daily Mirror royal correspondent Jane Kerr, whose byline appears on several of the 33 stories cited in Harry’s lawsuit.

The lawyer expressed incredulity when she said she had never suspected that private investigators paid by the paper to find unlisted phone numbers and other details of individuals could have broken the law.

“I don’t recall ever instructing anyone to do anything unlawful or knowing they were doing anything unlawful,” Kerr said.

In a witness statement, Kerr said Mirror Group had acknowledged instructing one investigator, Jonathan Stafford, to unlawfully obtain private information, and that her name appeared in records relating to him.

“I had no reason to believe that the practices Stafford engaged in were unlawful nor did I instruct him to undertake such practices,” she said.

At the end of Harry’s testimony, his own lawyer had a chance to ask questions and concluded by inquiring how he was doing after a day-and-a-half in the witness box.

“You have had to go through these articles and answer questions knowing this is a very public courtroom and the world’s media are watching. How has that made you feel?” Sherborne said.

Harry appeared to choke up. He took a deep breath and puffed his cheeks as he exhaled.

“It’s a lot,” he said and offered a weary smile.

The hearing played out, coincidently, as the Duke of Sussex himself testified London in another lawsuit he filed against British newspapers. In Washington, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols told the Heritage Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security to work on the speed of the response, and he would rule if they could not reach an agreement on their own.

Harry moved to Southern California with his wife Meghan Markle and their young family in 2020 after they left royal life and embarked on new projects, including the release of his memoir “Spare” in January.

The book’s myriad revelations included an exploration of Harry’s grief after the death of his mother, Princess Diana, disputes with his brother William and his past drug use. Harry said he took cocaine several times starting around age 17, in order “to feel. To be different.” He also acknowledged using cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms.

The U.S. routinely asks about drug use on its visa applications, and it has been linked to travel headaches for celebrities, including chef Nigella Lawson, singer Amy Winehouse, and model Kate Moss. But acknowledgement of past drug use doesn’t necessarily bar people from entering or staying in the country.

With that history in mind, the conservative Heritage Foundation sent a public-information request to the Department of Homeland Security for Prince Harry’s immigration records.

They argue there is “intense public interest” in whether Harry got special treatment during the application process. The politically conservative group also linked those questions to wider immigration issues in the U.S., including at the southern border with Mexico.

“What this case is truly about is DHS,” said Samuel Dewey, a lawyer for the Heritage Foundation.

The request has largely been denied since the group doesn’t have Prince Harry’s permission to get the private information.

“A person’s visa status is confidential,” said John Bardo, an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security.

The agency’s policy does allow the release of information about issues of public interest, but the agency argued that media coverage of how Harry’s drug use connects to his visa status in the U.S. hasn’t been widespread among mainstream American publications.

The questions that have been raised, meanwhile, aren’t the kind of weighty queries about possible government misdeeds that warrant the fast processing the Heritage Foundation is asking for, federal attorneys argued.

A representative for Harry did not immediately respond to an email message seeking comment.

While two of the three agencies involved have denied the request, Department of Homeland Security headquarters hasn’t formally responded and is fighting the foundation’s push to act quickly. Nichols expressed frustration at being asked to decide the narrow question whether to order a fast response, but said he would rule if the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement on their own within a week.

Privacy is also at the center of the lawsuit Harry filed against the publisher of the Daily Mirror that was the subject of his testimony in London on Tuesday.

That suit is playing out thousands of miles away over 33 articles published between 1996 and 2011. He says they were based on phone hacking or other illegal snooping methods. Harry testified that Britain’s tabloid press had a “destructive” role throughout his life, but also faced sharp questioning from a newspaper’s lawyer about whether he could remember reading the articles.

Harry held a Bible in one hand as he was sworn in at the High Court in London, where he is suing the publisher of the Daily Mirror. Earlier, he’d arrived at court in a black SUV and entered a modern wing of the court past dozens of photographers and TV cameras.

Harry accuses the publisher of the Mirror of using unlawful techniques on an “industrial scale” to get scoops. He faced hours of cross-examination by a lawyer for the defendant, Mirror Group Newspapers, which is contesting the claims.

Sitting in the witness box and dressed in a dark suit and tie, Harry told Mirror Group attorney Andrew Green that he had “experienced hostility from the press since I was born.” The prince accused the tabloids of playing “a destructive role in my growing-up.”

The 38-year-old son of King Charles III is the first senior British royal since the 19th century to face questioning in a court. An ancestor, the future King Edward VII, appeared as a witness in a trial over a gambling scandal in 1891.

Harry has made a mission of holding the U.K. press to account for what he sees as its hounding of him and his family.

Setting out the prince’s case in court Monday, his lawyer, David Sherborne, said that from Harry’s childhood, British newspapers used hacking and subterfuge to mine snippets of information that could be turned into front-page scoops.

He said stories about Harry were big sellers for the newspapers, and some 2,500 articles had covered all facets of his life during the time period of the case — 1996 to 2011 — from injuries at school to experimenting with marijuana and cocaine to ups and downs with girlfriends.

“Nothing was sacrosanct or out of bounds” for the tabloids, the lawyer said.

In a written witness statement published Tuesday, Harry said he felt “as though the tabloid press thought that they owned me absolutely.”

“I genuinely feel that in every relationship that I’ve ever had – be that with friends, girlfriends, with family or with the army, there’s always been a third party involved, namely the tabloid press,” he said.

Hacking — the practice of guessing or using default security codes to listen to celebrities’ cellphone voice messages — was widespread at British tabloids in the early years of this century. It became an existential crisis for the industry after the revelation in 2011 that the News of the World had hacked the phone of a slain 13-year-old girl. Owner Rupert Murdoch shut down the paper and several of his executives faced criminal trials.

Mirror Group has paid more than 100 million pounds ($125 million) to settle hundreds of unlawful information-gathering claims, and printed an apology to phone hacking victims in 2015.

But the newspaper denies or has not admitted any of Harry’s claims, which relate to 33 published articles.

Defense lawyer Green said Monday there was “simply no evidence capable of supporting the finding that the Duke of Sussex was hacked, let alone on a habitual basis.”

Green said he plans to question Harry for a day and a half.

Harry had been expected in court Monday for the opening of the hacking case, the first of his several lawsuits against the media to go to a full trial.

He was absent because he’d taken a flight Sunday from Los Angeles after the birthday of his 2-year-old daughter Lilibet, Sherborne said — to the evident chagrin of the judge, Timothy Fancourt.

“I’m a little surprised,” said Fancourt, noting he had directed Harry to be prepared to testify.

Harry’s fury at the U.K. press — and sometimes at his own royal relatives for what he sees as their collusion with the media — runs through his memoir, “Spare,” and interviews conducted by Oprah Winfrey and others.

He has blamed paparazzi for causing the car crash that killed his mother, Princess Diana, and said harassment and intrusion by the U.K. press, including allegedly racist articles, led him and his wife, Meghan, to flee to the U.S. in 2020 and leave royal life behind.

While Harry’s memoir and other recent media ventures have been an effort to reclaim his life’s narrative, which has largely been shaped by the media, he will have no such control when he faces cross-examination in a courtroom full of reporters taking down every word.

The Duke of Sussex is scheduled to testify in the High Court after his lawyer presents opening statements Monday in the first of his legal cases to go to trial and one of three alleging tabloids unlawfully snooped on him in their cutthroat competition for scoops on the royal family.

Harry will be the first member of the British royal family in more than a century to testify in court and is expected to describe his anguish and anger over being hounded by the media throughout his life, and its impact on those around him.

Harry, 38, has blamed paparazzi for causing the car crash that killed his mother, the late Princess Diana, and said harassment and intrusion by the U.K. press, including allegedly racist articles, ultimately led him and his wife, Meghan, to flee to the U.S. in 2020 and leave royal life behind.

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Articles he has cited date back to this 12th birthday when the Mirror reported he was feeling “badly” about the divorce of his mother and father, now King Charles III.

The reports made Harry wonder who he could trust as he feared friends and associates were betraying him by leaking information to the newspapers, he said in court documents. His circle of friends grew smaller and he suffered “huge bouts of depression and paranoia.” Relationships fell apart as the women in his life – and even their family members – were “dragged into the chaos.”

He says he later discovered that the source wasn’t disloyal friends but aggressive journalists and the private investigators they hired to eavesdrop on voicemails and track his to locations as remote as Argentina and an island off Mozambique.

Mirror Group Newspapers said it didn’t hack Harry’s phone and its articles were based on legitimate reporting techniques. The publisher admitted and apologized for hiring a private eye to dig up dirt on one of Harry’s nights out at bar, but the resulting 2004 article headlined “Sex on the beach with Harry” was not among the 33 in question at trial.

Mirror Group said it has settled more than 600 of some 830 unlawful information-gathering claims and paid out more than 100 million pounds ($125 million).

The opening statements being presented on Monday mark the second phase of the trial in which Harry and three others have accused the Mirror of phone hacking and unlawful information gathering.

In the first part, attorney David Sherborne, who represents Harry and the others, including two actors from the “Coronation Street” soap opera, said the unlawful acts were “widespread and habitual” at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, and carried out on “an industrial scale.”

The publisher has presented former executives and lawyers who denied knowing about wrongdoing when it was happening or engaging in a cover-up. The first lawsuits against Mirror Group were filed in 2012 and the newspapers printed an apology in 2015 to hacking victims.

Two judges — including Justice Timothy Fancourt, who is overseeing the trial — are in the process of deciding whether Harry’s two other phone hacking cases will proceed to trial.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and Associated Newspapers Ltd., which owns the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, have argued the cases should be thrown out because Harry failed to file the lawsuits within a six-year deadline of discovering the alleged wrongdoing.

Harry’s lawyer has argued that he and other claimants should be granted an exception to the time limit, because the publishers lied and deceived to hide the illegal actions.

The Duke of Sussex is set to testify in the first of his five pending legal cases largely centered around battles with British tabloids. Opening statements are scheduled Monday in his case.

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Harry said in court documents that the royal family had assiduously avoided the courts to prevent testifying about matters that might be embarrassing.

His frustration and anger at the press, however, impelled him to buck convention by suing newspaper owners — allegedly against the wishes of his father, now King Charles III.

If Harry testifies as scheduled Tuesday in his lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mirror, he’ll be the first member of the royal family to do so since the late 19th century, when Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, testified twice in court.

The man who would go on to become King Edward VII testified in the divorce proceedings of a woman he was accused of having an affair with (he denied it) and in a slander case involving a man who cheated at cards. Edward VII was the great-grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, Harry’s grandmother.

A look at Prince Harry’s legal battles:

HARRY’S HISTORY WITH PHONE HACKING AND PAPARAZZI

The Daily Mirror case is one of three Harry has brought alleging phone hacking and other invasions of his privacy, dating back to when he was a boy.

In court documents, he described his relationship with the press as “uneasy” in court documents, but it runs much deeper than that. The prince blames paparazzi for causing the car crash that killed his mother, the late Princess Diana.

He also cites harassment and intrusion by the British Press and “vicious, persistent attacks” on his wife, Meghan, including racist articles, as the reason the couple left royal life and fled to the U.S. in 2020. Reforming the news media has become one of his life’s missions.

News that British journalists hacked phones for scoops first emerged in 2006 with the arrest of a private investigator and the royals reporter at the now-defunct News of the World. The two were jailed, and the reporter apologized for hacking phones used by aides of Harry, his older brother, Prince William, and their father.

A full-blown hacking scandal erupted five years later when it was revealed that the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid eavesdropped on voicemails on the phone of a slain girl, forcing the paper to close and launching a public inquiry.

Since that time, other newspapers have been accused of illegal intrusions that extended to tapping phones, bugging homes and using deception to obtain phone, bank and medical records.

WHO IS HARRY SUING?

The duke is taking on three of Britain’s best-known tabloid publishers.

In addition to Mirror Group Newspapers, he is suing Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and Associated Newspapers Ltd., which owns the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

The claims are similar: that journalists and people they employed listened to phone messages and committed other unlawful acts to snoop on Harry and invade his privacy.

In a sign of how much the cases matter to him, Harry attended several days of hearings in March in the case against the Mail publisher.

Several celebrities with similar allegations have also filed claims being heard alongside Harry’s, including Hugh Grant in the News Group case, and Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley in the Associated Newspapers case.

Associated Newspapers “vigorously denies” the claims. News Group has apologized for News of the World’s hacking but The Sun does not accept liability or admit to any of the allegations, according to spokespeople.

Both publishers argued during High Court hearings this spring that the lawsuits should be thrown out because Harry and the others failed to bring them within a six-year time limit.

The lawyer representing Harry and other claimants said they should be granted an exception because the publishers lied and concealed evidence that prevented them from learning of the covert acts in time to meet the deadlines.

WHAT’S THE CURRENT TRIAL ABOUT?

At the outset of the proceedings, Mirror Group appeared to fall on its sword, acknowledging instances when its newspapers unlawfully gathered information. It apologized in court papers and said Harry and two of the other three claimants in the case were due compensation.

But the admission involving Harry — the hiring of a private eye to dig up unspecified dirt for an article about his nightclubbing — wasn’t among the nearly 150 articles between 1995 and 2011 for which he claimed Mirror Group reporters used phone hacking and other illegal methods to gather material. The trial is focusing on 33 of those stories.

Harry’s lawyer, David Sherborne, said unlawful acts by reporters and editors at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People were “widespread and habitual” and carried out on “an industrial scale.” He pointed the finger at management, in particular TV personality Piers Morgan, a former Daily Mirror editor.

Morgan has publicly denied involvement in phone hacking, as has Mirror Group in its court submissions. Mirror lawyer Andrew Green said a substantial proportion of the articles at issue involved a “breathtaking level of triviality” and that with the exception of a few instances of unlawful information gathering, the company’s reporters had used public records and sources to legally obtain information.

The trial is a test case involving four claimants, including two members of Britain’s longest-running soap opera, “Coronation Street.” But the verdict could determine the outcome of hacking claims also made against Mirror Group by the estate of the late singer George Michael, former Girls Aloud member Cheryl and former soccer player Ian Wright.

The case is broken into two parts: a generic case that lasted nearly three weeks in which Harry’s lawyer laid out evidence of alleged skullduggery at the newspapers; the second part, starting Monday, with the four claimants testifying about specific acts targeting them.

WHAT ARE THE OTHER LAWSUITS ABOUT?

Harry’s fear and loathing of the press intersects with two active cases that center around the government’s decision to stop protecting him after he abandoned royal duties.

Harry argued his security is compromised when he visits the U.K., saying that aggressive paparazzi chased him after a charity event in 2021. He sued the British government for withdrawing his security detail.

With that lawsuit pending, he unsuccessfully tried to challenge the government’s subsequent rejection of his offer to pay for his own police protection.

A judge is weighing whether Harry’s libel suit against Associated Newspapers for reporting that he tried to hide his legal efforts to get the British government to provide security should go to trial.

“How Prince Harry tried to keep his legal fight with the government over police bodyguards a secret… then — just minutes after the story broke — his PR machine tried to put a positive spin on the dispute,” the Mail on Sunday wrote in its headline.

In past cases, Meghan won an invasion of privacy case in 2021 against the Mail on Sunday for printing a private letter she wrote to her father. That led to a 1-pound settlement for violating her privacy and an undisclosed sum for copyright infringement.

The couple has also settled lawsuits against photo agencies for flying a drone over their California home and a helicopter over a home where they were living in England.

Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and her mother, Doria Ragland were involved in a “near catastrophic” car chase in New York City on Tuesday night “at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi,” according to their spokesperson.

Paparazzi were said to have been chasing the Duke and Duchess of Sussex following their appearance at the Ms. Foundation for Women’s Annual Gala earlier that night.

According to two senior law enforcement sources, at around 10 p.m. Harry and Meghan had private security with them as they were leaving the Ziegfeld Theater and trying to get back to where they were staying on the Upper East Side.

Sources say that a crowd of paparazzi were at the theater and wanted to follow them since the press did not know where they were staying.

One NYPD vehicle ended up escorting their vehicle, sources say.

The couple was taken to the 19th Precinct and stayed there around 15 minutes before police helped them get off the block and get into a different vehicle so they could get to their destination without being followed.

In a subsequent statement Wednesday, the NYPD said: “On Wednesday evening, May 16, the NYPD assisted the private security team protecting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.  There were numerous photographers that made their transport challenging. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, or arrests in regard.”

Meanwhile, the couple’s spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News, the “relentless pursuit” lasted for over two hours and resulted in “multiple near collisions” with other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD police officers. Three additional senior law enforcement officials say that although it was not a chase, they were being followed.

While the couple described the whole chain of events as “near catastrophic,” officials describe it as a bit of a chaotic scene, although they continue to put together an official timeline of what exactly transpired Tuesday night.

The cab driver, Sukhcharn Singh, told The Associated Press that he instantly recognized his passengers when they scooted in. “They were following us the whole time,” he said of the paparazzi, though he said he wouldn’t call it a chase.

Singh, the cab driver, was on 67th Street near an NYPD precinct when a security guard waved him down. Singh pulled the yellow taxi to the curb and in came Harry, Meghan and her mom.

“They had this look on their faces,” he said. They were about to give their destination when a garbage truck blocked their path.

“All of a sudden paparazzi came out and started taking pictures,″ he said.

Instead, one of the royals told him to circle back to the precinct.

A video posted by TMZ showed the couple in a yellow cab stuck in traffic several blocks away from the ballroom, as photographers recorded them through the windows. The cab was being escorted by NYPD vehicles with flashing lights.

“They didn’t say much,” Singh said. “They just asked my name and then after that Harry said thanks and have a good day.”

They paid $17 in fare — and left a generous tip.

“It was pretty good man,″ Singh told The Associated Press. “They gave me a $50.”

“I mean, when I’m going around the block that’s more than enough.”

TLC Commissioner David Do hailed the driver’s efforts, saying “New York City yellow cab drivers are as safe as they are legendary. This is no exception.”

During an unrelated press conference Wednesday morning, NYC Mayor Eric Adams addressed the incident.

“It’s clear that the paparazzi they want to get the right shot, they want to get the right story, but public safety must always be at the forefront,” he said, adding that in the briefing he received “two of our officers could have been injured.”

“New York City is different from a small town somewhere,” the mayor went on to say. “You shouldn’t be speeding anywhere, but this is a densely populated city and all of us — I don’t think there are many of us who don’t recall how his mom died and it would be horrific to lose innocent bystanders during a chase like this and something to have happened to them as well.”

Reports of the incident recalled the tragic death of Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, who passed away in 1997 following a car crash in France.

Paparazzi were said to have been chasing the Duke and Duchess of Sussex following their appearance at the Ms. Foundation for Women’s Annual Gala earlier that night.

In a statement to NBC News, the couple’s spokesperson said the “relentless pursuit” lasted for over two hours and resulted in near collisions with other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD police officers.

The spokesperson added that the “near catastrophic car chase” came “at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi.”

Julian Phillips, NYPD’s deputy commissioner of public information, said officers “assisted the private security team protecting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.”

“There were numerous photographers that made their transport challenging,” Phillips said in a statement. “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, or arrests in regard.”

Two senior law enforcement sources said Harry and Meghan left an NYC theatre around 10 p.m. Wednesday with private security.

There were multiple photographers at the theatre, and the press was not aware of where they were staying, so to keep the photogs off their trail, they were driven up and down the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive, the main thoroughfare of Manhattan’s East Side, in a 75-minute chase, sources said.

They were then driven to NYPD’s 19th Precinct Station House, on East 67th Street between Lexington and Third Avenue, where they stayed briefly before getting into a taxi and leaving without being followed.

The taxi flagged down by the couple’s security team was driven by Sonny Singh, 37, of Queens, NBC News reported.

Instead of going to their ultimate destination, they simply drove around the neighborhood and ran up a $17.80 fare before Harry and Meghan got out of the cab back at the police station and back into their car.

They paid the fare and left a $50 tip, said Singh, who was unfazed by the celebrity pickup.

“I pulled over to the side, and the next you know, Prince Harry and his wife are running into my cab,” Singh said in front of 30 Rockefeller Plaza after he had dropped off an airport fare.

“I picked up [rock star] Keith Richards [once], [he] was in my cab, and I had [former New York Police Commissioner] Ray Kelley in here one time, as well. So I picked up a lot of people. It’s New York; you don’t know who you’re going to pick up.”

When the couple made the decision to step down as senior royals in January 2020 and move to California, Harry cited the intense scrutiny they faced, which mirrored that of his mother, the late Princess Diana.

Harry has said that his biggest fear is “history repeating itself.”

Princess Diana died in a Paris car crash in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi.

The admission was made in court filings outlining Mirror Group Newspapers’ defense.

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The group continued to deny that it hacked phones to intercept voicemail messages, and said that Harry and three less-well-known celebrities brought their claims beyond a time limit.

But it acknowledged there was “some evidence of the instruction of third parties to engage in other types of UIG (unlawful information gathering) in respect of each of the claimants,” which includes the Duke of Sussex. It said this “warrants compensation” but didn’t spell out what form that might take.

“MGN unreservedly apologizes for all such instances of UIG, and assures the claimants that such conduct will never be repeated,” the court papers said.

The publisher said its apology was not a tactical move to reduce damages but was done “because such conduct should never have occurred.”

The trial is Harry’s opening salvo in his legal battle against the British press. Harry and the other celebrities are suing the former publisher of the Daily Mirror for alleged invasion of privacy.

The case is the first of the duke’s three phone hacking lawsuits and threatens to do something he said his family long feared: put a royal on the witness stand to discuss embarrassing revelations.

The activities in question stretch back more than two decades, when journalists and private eyes intercepted voicemails to snoop on members of the royal family, politicians, athletes, celebrities and even crime victims. A scandal erupted when the hacking was revealed.

Harry is expected to testify in person in June, his lawyer has said. It won’t be his first time in the High Court, following his surprise appearance last month to observe most of a four-day hearing in one of his other lawsuits.

He did not show up for opening statements in the trial. Harry breezed through London for Saturday’s coronation of his father, King Charles III, before leaving immediately after the ceremony to fly back to California to be with his family for his son’s birthday.

The prince has waged a war of words against British newspapers in legal claims and in his best-selling memoir “Spare,” vowing to make his life’s mission reforming the media that he blames for the death of his mother, Princess Diana. She died in a car wreck in Paris in 1997 while trying to evade paparazzi.

Harry has also sued the publishers of the Daily Mail and The Sun over the phone hacking scandal that metastasized after a year-long inquiry into press ethics in 2011 revealed that employees of the now-defunct News of the World tabloid eavesdropped on mobile phone voicemails.

Harry has outlined his grievances against the media in court papers, saying the press hounded him since his earliest days and created a narrative that portrayed him as “the ‘thicko,’ the ‘cheat,’ the ‘underage drinker.’” His relationships with girlfriends were wrecked by “the entire tabloid press as a third party.”

“Looking back on it now, such behavior on their part is utterly vile,” he said in a witness statement in a similar case.

His lawsuits could further roil family relations that have been strained since Harry and his wife, Meghan, left royal life in 2020 and moved to the United States after complaining about racist attitudes from the British press.

Mirror Group Newspapers and other publishers have primarily defended themselves by asserting that Harry failed to bring his cases within a six-year year time limit. The duke’s lawyer has argued that an exception should be applied because publishers actively concealed the skullduggery.

In a stunning revelation last month that dredged up an embarrassing chapter in his father’s life, Harry blamed his delay in bringing suit, in part, on his family.

He asserted he was barred from bringing a case against The Sun and other newspapers owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch because of a “secret agreement” — allegedly approved of by Queen Elizabeth II — that called for reaching a private settlement and getting an apology.

“The reason for this was to avoid the situation where a member of the royal family would have to sit in the witness box and recount the specific details of the private and highly sensitive voicemails that had been intercepted,” Harry said in a witness statement against News Group Newspapers.

“The institution was incredibly nervous about this and wanted to avoid at all costs the sort of reputational damage that it had suffered in 1993,” he said, alluding to a transcript of a leaked recording — published in the Sunday Mirror — of an intimate conversation his father, then Prince of Wales, had with his paramour, now Queen Camilla, in which he compared himself to a tampon.

Harry said his brother, Prince William, had quietly settled his own hacking claims with News Group for “huge sum of money” in 2020. He also claimed his father had directed palace staff to order him to drop his litigation because it was bad for the family.

Murdoch’s company denied there was a “secret agreement” and wouldn’t comment on the alleged settlement. The palace hasn’t responded to requests for comment.

Harry has alleged that reporters at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People used illegal methods to gather material from his family and friends for nearly 150 articles. The newspaper has said he is wrong about how its reporters got information, saying they used legal methods for many articles.

In 2015, publishers of The Mirror printed a front-page apology for phone hacking and tripled its fund to 12 million pounds ($15 million) to compensate victims.

Mirror Group said more than 600 of some 830 claims had been settled. Of the remaining 104 cases, 86 were brought too late to be litigated, it said in court papers.

“Where historical wrongdoing has taken place, we have made admissions, take full responsibility and apologize unreservedly,” a spokesperson for Mirror Group Newspapers said in advance of the trial. “But we will vigorously defend against allegations of wrongdoing where our journalists acted lawfully.”

The lawsuits were combined as a test case that could determine the outcome of hacking claims also made against Mirror Group by former Girls Aloud member Cheryl, the estate of the late singer George Michael, and former soccer player Ian Wright.

J.R. Moehringer got candid about working with the Duke of Sussex on his memoir “Spare,” which was released earlier this year. And as he noted, it wasn’t always smooth sailing, recalling the time he screamed at the prince during a 2 a.m. Zoom call.

“I was exasperated with Prince Harry,” Moehringer wrote in a The New Yorker essay published May 8. “My head was pounding, my jaw was clenched and I was starting to raise my voice.”

At one point during the heated exchange, the 58-year-old thought he may get fired.

“Some part of me was still able to step outside the situation and think, ‘This is so weird. I’m shouting at Prince Harry,'” Moehringer confessed. “Then, as Harry started going back at me, as his cheeks flushed and his eyes narrowed, a more pressing thought occurred: ‘Whoa, it could all end right here.'”

As for what caused their argument?

Prince Harry and Prince William’s Feud: A Timeline

According to Moehringer, it was over an anecdote where Harry recalls being “captured by pretend terrorists.”

“He’s hooded, dragged to an underground bunker,” the Tender Bar author explained, “beaten, frozen, starved, stripped, forced into excruciating stress positions by captors wearing black balaclavas.”

In his memoir, the Harry & Meghan star wrote that his kidnappers threw him against a wall, proceeded to chock him and and throw insults—including a dig at his late mother, Princess Diana. Harry wanted to include what he said back to his attackers, but Moehringer wasn’t convinced it was right to add to “Spare“—becoming a point of contention as they worked on the memoir.

“Harry always wanted to end this scene with a thing he said to his captors, a comeback that struck me as unnecessary,” the Pulitzer Prize winner wrote, “and somewhat inane.”

On their tense Zoom call, Harry took the opportunity to advocate once again for why it was important to add how the kidnapping ended in his memoir.

“He exhaled and calmly explained that, all his life, people had belittled his intellectual capabilities,” Moehringer said, “and this flash of cleverness proved that, even after being kicked and punched and deprived of sleep and food, he had his wits about him.”

But nonetheless, the novelist stood his ground with Harry eventually conceding and telling him, “‘I really enjoy getting you worked up like that.'”

Aside from their disagreements, working with Harry was a positive experience for Moehringer, who even spent time at Harry and wife Meghan Markle‘s Montecito, Calif., home while working on “Spare.” In fact, he revealed that while staying in their guest house, Meghan would visit with her and Harry’s four-year-old son Archie. (The couple also share daughter Lilibet, 23 months).

And Harry and Moehringer’s efforts had an impact on the royal, who even paid tribute to the writer during his book party.

“He mentioned my advice, to ‘trust the book,’ and said he was glad that he did, because it felt incredible to have the truth out there, to feel—his voice caught—‘free,'” the journalist wrote. “There were tears in his eyes. Mine, too.”

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And keeping with tradition, other working royals joined the couple for the notable moment including Prince William, Kate Middleton and Lady Louise Windsor, among others. Plus, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis waved to the crowd. But it was the absence of Prince Harry that had royal fans chattering.

Why?

The reigning moment featuring Charles and William alongside other family members comes nearly three years after the Duke of Sussex announced that he and his wife Meghan Markle would take a step back from royal duties. Since then, family tensions have only seemed to grow, undoubtedly made more complicated by the recent release of Harry’s bombshell memoir, Spare. (For a full timeline, bow over here.)

Not to mention, the gathering of the royal family on the balcony is usually reserved for working members, and this moment was no different.

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“Harry has written a whole book about how he felt that he was playing second fiddle to his brother, the entirety of his life,” royal correspondent Sharon Carpenter exclusively told E! News ahead of the coronation.”So, I think this was Charles’ opportunity to really show Harry, ‘You are just as important as Prince William when it comes to family.'”

But with a technical hierarchy in place when it comes to the royal family, the moment proved to be more complex.

While Harry reunited with his cousins Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice, Meghan stayed back in the U.S. with their children Archie, 4, and Lilibet, 22 months. After all, the day not only marked Charles and Camilla’s coronation but it is also Archie’s birthday.

“It’s a little hard to explain, ‘Sorry, your party is going to have to wait, your granddad’s more important,'” Carpenter said, noting, “Harry is fulfilling his obligations. I think this is the simplest and probably the best solution.”

Though his brother Prince William was front and center with wife Kate Middleton and kids Prince George, 9, Princess Charlotte, 8, and Prince Louis, 5, Prince Harry claimed a spot in the third row of London’s Westminster Abbey alongside cousins Princess Eugenie, Princess Beatrice and their husbands, Jack Brooksbank and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi.

The family reunion came just months after the release of Harry’s explosive memoir Spare. And despite any lingering tensions between the brothers, “I do think that both of these gentlemen are, you know, mature enough to at least be cordial with each other,” royal correspondent Sharon Carpenter predicted to E! News ahead of the coronation. “Maybe there’s not going to be any deep conversation going on, but they’re very aware that the eyes of the world are going to be on them. Everyone is watching their every move.”

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And while they may not have time to discuss everything this weekend, she still considers having both of the king’s sons at the coronation to be a positive sign.

“It’s going to be a jam-packed weekend,” Sharon noted. “They may save this deeper conversation for the next trip. But I think it’s just fantastic that they’re all going to be together again. That is a big, grand move in the right direction.”

While it was initially unclear whether Harry would make the trip across the pond for the historic occasion given the state of his relationships with William and Charles, his rep confirmed in April that he would be attending the coronation.

However, the rep said Harry’s wife Meghan Markle would remain at the couple’s California home with their son Prince Archie — whose fourth birthday falls on the same day as the coronation — and their daughter Princess Lilibet, 23 months.

Harry’s appearance comes nearly four months after the release of his bombshell memoir “Spare” — which, among the many revelations, includes his accounts of his relationships with Charles and William. In one instance, Harry writes about a 2019 argument that he says resulted in his brother knocking him to the ground. The Palace has not publicly responded to any allegation detailed in the book.

In addition to his memoir, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex shared their experiences about life before and after they stepped back as working members of the royal family in their 2022 Netflix docuseries “Harry & Meghan” and in their 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey.

However, Harry has said that the divide between him and William goes back even further.

“My brother and I love each other. I love him deeply,” he told Anderson Cooper in a January “60 Minutes” interview. “There has been a lot of pain between the two of us, especially the last six years. None of anything that I’ve written or anything that I’ve included is ever intended to hurt my family, but it does give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up and also squashes this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers.”

At the time of the interview, Harry said he hadn’t spoken to William or Charles in “a while.” Still, he expressed his hope to have healing one day after certain conversations are had.

“I really look forward to having that family element back,” he noted. “I look forward to having a relationship with my brother. I look forward to having a relationship with my father and other members of my family. That’s all I’ve ever asked for.”

The king’s scandal-plagued younger brother, who stepped back from his royal duties in November 2019, wore his Order of the Garter robes to the May 6 event at Westminster Abbey, where he sat in the third row along with daughters Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice and their spouses.

Also noticeably in their row was Prince Harry, who donned a plain morning suit for the occasion, pinned with his military medals. He took a seat next to Eugenie’s husband Jack Brooksbank as the ceremony got underway. Andrew sat at the end of the row, next to Beatrice and her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi.

Though Andrew and Harry shed their working-royal status for polar-opposite reasons, the question of what each would wear — both having served in the military — previously came up ahead of Queen Elizabeth II‘s funeral in September. They both wore suits that day, though they were also granted permission to wear their military uniforms when they stood vigil as the late monarch lay in state at Westminster Hall.

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There was no question that Andrew, who is still eighth in line to the throne, would attend the coronation, but he wouldn’t have any special duty as brother of the sovereign. He also isn’t expected to join Charles and Camilla on the balcony at Buckingham Palace later, an honor usually reserved for senior royals and their families, plus others who played a key role in the ceremony, such as the eight Pages of Honour.

Though he wore his blue velvet robe Saturday, Andrew was not at the Order of the Garter ceremony at Windsor Castle last June despite being a Knight of the Garter. He has kept a very low public profile since the queen died in September.

Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, did not receive one of the 2,000 invitations to the coronation, which she attributed to it being a “state occasion,” telling Good Morning Britain that, “being divorced, I don’t think you can have it both ways.

The Duchess of Sussex has signed for representation with William Morris Endeavor, the talent agency confirmed to E! News on April 27. Archewell, the organization and content creation brand she founded with husband Prince Harry in 2020, will also be represented by WME moving forward.

Markle’s team now includes powerhouse agents Ari Emanuel, Brad Slater and Jill Smoller, whose combined client list boasts the likes of Dwayne Johnson and Serena Williams.

The partnership will focus on Markle’s business and creative ventures—but not on acting, according to Variety.

News of the deal comes three years after Markle, 41, and Harry, 38, stepped back as working members of the British royal family and relocated to California.

Since the transatlantic move, they’ve signed a production deal with Spotify—part of which includes Meghan’s Archetypes podcast—and released a docu-series titled Harry & Meghan under their multi-year partnership with Netflix.

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The pair also welcomed daughter Lilibet “Lili” Diana in June 2021, expanding their family that includes son Archie Harrison, now 3.

On May 6, Markle will miss her in-laws King Charles III and Queen Camilla‘s coronation in London in order to celebrate Archie’s fourth birthday, which falls on the same day, at home. However, a rep for the couple confirmed to E! News that Harry will still be attending the crowning ceremony.

A spokesperson for Markle also recently debunked a report that the Suits alum was skipping the royal gathering over allegations of unconscious bias in the family around the time of her and Harry’s 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey. (During the sit-down with Oprah, Meghan alleged that “several conversations” were had with Harry and an unidentified royal about “how dark” their firstborn child’s skin would be.)

“The Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago,” her spokesperson told E! News in an April 22 statement. “Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous.”

Prince Harry’s lawyer made the revelation in a summary of arguments about why Harry’s lawsuit against the publisher of The Sun and now-defunct News Of The World should not be thrown out. The suit alleges the newspapers unlawfully gathered information in a scandal dating back two decades.

News Group Newspapers, which Murdoch owns, argued that a High Court judge should throw out phone hacking lawsuits by the prince and actor Hugh Grant because the claims were brought too late.

But Harry, the Duke of Sussex, said he was prevented from bringing his case because of a secret agreement between the royal family and the newspapers that called for a settlement and apology. The deal, which the prince said was authorized by the late Queen Elizabeth II, would have prevented future litigation from the royals.

Harry began pushing for a resolution in 2017 but said he “had enough” after the publisher “filibustered.” He filed suit in 2019.

The papers said William, Prince of Wales, later settled for a large, but undisclosed sum.

“It is important to bear in mind that in responding to this bid by NGN to prevent his claims going to trial, (Harry) has had to make public the details of this secret agreement, as well as the fact that his brother, His Royal Highness Prince William, has recently settled his claim against NGN behind the scenes,” attorney David Sherborne wrote. “This is used very much by (Harry) as ‘a shield not a sword’ against NGN’s attack.”

The lawsuit is one of several that Harry has brought against British newspapers, including two other phone hacking cases.

Buckingham Palace announced on April 12 that the Duke of Sussex is set to attend his father’s ceremony, while Meghan Markle will not make the trip overseas. According to the statement, the Duchess of Sussex will be staying in the United States with kids Archie Harrison, 3, and Lilibet Diana, 22 months. (The coronation happens to fall on Archie’s 4th birthday.)

This update comes one month after a rep for the Harry, 38, and Meghan, 41, confirmed that they’d received “email correspondence” from the king’s office about the coronation.

At the time, the couple’s spokesperson told the Associated Press, “An immediate decision on whether the Duke and Duchess will attend will not be disclosed by us at this time.” However, they’ve now come to a decision that just Harry will join his family at the coronation at London’s Westminster Abbey.

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During the service, which will be conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles will be formally crowned alongside Queen Consort Camilla. “The coronation will reflect the monarch’s role today and look towards the future,” the Palace previously said, “while being rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry.”

On April 4, more details were announced about the royal ceremony, including the role Prince William and Kate Middleton‘s eldest son Prince George will play in the coronation.

The 9-year-old will serve as one of the eight Pages of Honour that will walk the procession and carry the robes inside Westminster Abbey. Joining George in this duty will be Camilla’s grandchildren Freddy Parker Bowles, Gus Lopes and Louis Lopes, along with her great-nephew Arthur Elliot.

The royal family has also made sure that the late Queen Elizabeth II‘s spirit is felt during the coronation proceedings, even featuring the lily of the valley — a favorite flower of the monarch — on the invitations.

Charles previously honored his mother after her death in September. “Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years,” he said in his first speech as sovereign. “May ‘flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.'”

“Throughout her life, Her Majesty The Queen—my beloved Mother—was an inspiration and example to me and to all my family, and we owe her the most heartfelt debt any family can owe to their mother; for her love, affection, guidance, understanding and example,” he added. “Queen Elizabeth was a life well lived; a promise with destiny kept and she is mourned most deeply in her passing. That promise of lifelong service I renew to you all today.”

The Duke of Sussex did not hold back in a witness statement submitted as a part of his legal case against Associated Newspapers Ltd, the U.K. publishing company behind The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. In court documents obtained by E! News, Prince Harry not only accused the publisher of “criminality” for allegedly obtaining his private information through illegal means and using it in news stories, but he also called out the royal institution.

“Following the death of my mother in 1997 when I was 12 years old and her treatment at the hands of the press, I have always had an uneasy relationship with the press,” he said in reference to his mom Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash while evading the paparazzi. “However, as a member of the Institution the policy was to ‘never complain, never explain.'”

He continued, “There was no alternative; I was conditioned to accept it. For the most part, I accepted the interest in my performing my public functions.”

Prince Harry noted he became “increasingly troubled by the approach of not taking action against the press in the wake of vicious persistent attacks on, harassment of and intrusive, sometimes racist articles” against Meghan Markle during the early days of their relationship. And when Markle became pregnant with the couple’s son Prince Archie in 2018, Prince Harry recalled that the “situation got worse.”

Elsewhere in his statement, Prince Harry claimed the royal institution withheld information from him to prevent legal action from being taken amid the News Group Newspapers phone hacking scandal back in the early aughts. Prince Harry said that, due to Palace policy, he didn’t realize he could actually bring a claim to court until years later.

“The Institution made it clear that we did not need to know anything about phone hacking and it was made clear to me that the Royal Family did not sit in the witness box because that could open up a can of worms,” he wrote. “The Institution was without a doubt withholding information from me for a long time about NGN’s phone hacking and that has only become clear in recent years as I have pursued my own claim with different legal advice and representation.”

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The 38-year-old said “the bubble burst” when he and Markle, 41, stepped back from their roles as senior royals in 2020 and relocated to California.

“To this day, there are members of the Royal Family and friends of mine who may have been targeted by NGN and I have no idea whether they have or have not brought claims,” he wrote. “There was never any centralised discussion between us about who had brought claims as each office in the Institution is siloed. There is this misconception that we are all in constant communication with one another but that is not true.”

Prince Harry is suing Associated Newspapers Ltd in England’s High Court over alleged unlawful practices used to gather information, including phone tapping. Several other prominent figures, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, are also taking legal against against the publisher.

As seen in photos, the “Spare” author appeared in London court on March 25 and 26.

“I am bringing this claim because I love my country and I remain deeply concerned by the unchecked power, influence and criminality of Associated,” Prince Harry wrote in his witness statement.t. “The British public deserve to know the full extent of this cover up and I feel it is my duty to expose it.”

Associated News Ltd previously denied the allegations, with a company spokesperson telling the BBC: “We utterly and unambiguously refute these preposterous smears which appear to be nothing more than a pre-planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the Mail titles into the phone hacking scandal concerning articles up to 30 years old.”

NBC News has reached out to the Buckingham Palace but hasn’t receive comment. The Palace has previously said it would not comment on the on-going proceedings.

The case is one of several brought by the Duke of Sussex in his battle with the press and alleges the publisher hired private investigators to illegally bug homes and cars and to record phone conversations.

Associated Newspapers Ltd. denies the allegations and is seeking to throw out the case, arguing that the claims are too old and rely on information they turned over in confidentiality for a 2012 probe into media law breaking.

Actresses Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, and John’s husband, David Furnish, are also parties to the case.

The lawsuit alleges Associated Newspapers, which publishes The Daily Mail and The Mail On Sunday, commissioned the “breaking and entry into private property,” and engaged in other unlawful acts that invaded the privacy of the famous plaintiffs.

Attorney David Sherborne, who represents the prince and others, said the intrusions were “habitual and widespread” and later “concealed or covered up.”

Articles were falsely attributed to “friends,” a family source, palace sources, royal insider, or similar unnamed individuals to throw subjects “off the scent” of the true origin, Sherborne said.

Among the allegations in court papers were that Associated Newspapers unlawfully obtained the birth certificate of John and Furnish’s child before they saw the document and illegally gleaned information on Harry’s previous relationship with Chelsy Davy, a jewelry designer from Zimbabwe.

The publisher is also alleged to have hired a private investigator to hack Hurley’s phone, stuck a mini-microphone on a window outside her home and bugged ex-boyfriend Hugh Grant’s car to gather financial information, travel plans and medical information during her pregnancy.

The case is to some extent a replay of a British phone-hacking scandal that was front page news a decade ago and eventually brought down another tabloid and ended with the conviction of the former spokesperson for then-Prime Minister David Cameron.

The allegations date primarily from 1993 to 2011 but also stretch beyond 2018, Sherborne said.

Associated Newspapers claims the information about the scandal was so widely known the subjects could have sued years ago.

“It would be surprising indeed for any reasonably informed member of the public, let alone a figure in the public eye, to have been unaware of these matters,” attorney Adrian Beltrami said in writing.

John and his husband, David Furnish, who is also a claimant, also attended the hearing.

Harry’s presence at the High Court in London is a sign of the importance he attaches to the case, one of several lawsuits the Duke of Sussex has brought against the media. The hearing is expected to last four days.

The case alleges Associated Newspapers Ltd., which publishes titles including the Daily Mail, commissioned the “breaking and entry into private property,” engaging in unlawful acts that included hiring private investigators to bug homes and cars and record private phone conversations.

“They were the victim of numerous unlawful acts carried out by the defendant, or by those acting on the instructions of its newspapers, The Daily Mail and The Mail On Sunday,” attorney David Sherborne said in a court document.

Other plaintiffs include actresses Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, who was also in court. Harry sat near the rear of the court and took notes as attorneys discussed preliminary matters.

The allegations date back to 1993 and continue beyond 2018, Sherborne said.

The publisher said the claims are too old to be brought now and should also be thrown out because because they rely on information the newspapers turned over in confidentiality for a 2012 probe into media law breaking.

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“It would be surprising indeed for any reasonably informed member of the public, let alone a figure in the public eye, to have been unaware of these matters,” attorney Adrian Beltrami said in writing.

Britain held a year-long inquiry into press ethics after revelations in 2011 that News of the World tabloid employees eavesdropped on the mobile phone voicemails of celebrities, politicians and a teenage murder victim.

Owner Rupert Murdoch shut down the newspaper amid a criminal investigation and public uproar. Several journalists were convicted, and Murdoch’s company paid millions in damages to dozens of hacking victims.

In the inquiry’s 2012 report, Lord Justice Brian Leveson said “outrageous” behavior by some in the press had “wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people whose rights and liberties have been disdained.”

Judge Matthew Nicklin, who is hearing the current eavesdropping case, is also overseeing a separate libel lawsuit Harry brought against Associated Newspapers over an article about his quest for police protection when he and his family visit the U.K.

Harry, the younger son of King Charles III, and his wife, the former actress Meghan Markle, stepped down as working royals in 2020 and moved to the U.S., citing what they described as the unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media.

Harry has said he wants to make reforming the British media his life’s work. He fumes at the U.K. media throughout his memoir “Spare,” published in January. He blamed an overly aggressive press for the 1997 death of his mother, Princess Diana, and also accused the media of hounding Meghan.

The couple has turned to British courts to combat what they see as media mistreatment. In December 2021, Meghan won an invasion-of-privacy case against Associated Newspapers over the Mail on Sunday’s publication of a letter she wrote to her estranged father.

Harry is also suing the publisher of another tabloid, the Mirror, in a separate hacking suit.

The royal family’s official website has updated the line of succession to include the titles of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s children Archie Harrison, 3, and Lilibet “Lili” Diana, 21 months.

While the children were previously listed as Master Archie Mountbatten-Windsor and Miss Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor, their names now appear as Prince Archie of Sussex and Princess Lilibet of Sussex. 

Lilibet and Archie were actually given their titles when their grandfather, King Charles III, became monarch in September.

“The children’s titles have been a birthright since their grandfather became Monarch,” a spokesperson for Harry and Markle told E! News March 9. “This matter has been settled for some time in alignment with Buckingham Palace.”

However, fans recently spotted the formal update after a rep for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex confirmed that the couple’s daughter had been christened during a ceremony in California. 

“I can confirm that Princess Lilibet Diana was christened on Friday, March 3,” the rep told E! News, “by the Archbishop of Los Angeles, the Rev John Taylor.”

A source familiar with the matter told E! News the small, intimate ceremony took place at Harry and Markle’s home in Montecito—where they’ve lived for the past two years after stepping back as working members of the royal family—and that King Charles III, Queen Consort Camilla, Prince William and Kate Middleton were invited to the christening but did not attend. E! News reached out to the Palace for comment but did not hear back.

It’s unclear at the moment if Prince Harry and Markle will attend the king’s coronation in May. Although a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex confirmed to the Associated Press on March 5 that Harry had received “email correspondence” from the monarch’s office about the event, noting, “An immediate decision on whether the Duke and Duchess will attend will not be disclosed by us at this time.”

Harry had previously discussed the matter during a January interview with ITV.

“There’s a lot that can happen between now and then,” he said. “But, you know, the door is always open. The ball is in their court. There’s a lot to be discussed and I really hope that they’re willing to sit down and talk about it.” 

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s daughter Lilibet Diana was recently christened during a small ceremony at the family’s house in Montecito, Calif.

“I can confirm that Princess Lilibet Diana was christened on Friday, March 3,” a rep for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex confirmed to E! News, “by the Archbishop of Los Angeles, the Rev John Taylor.”

A source familiar with the matter also told E! News that Prince William, Kate Middleton, King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla were invited to the intimate ceremony but did not make the journey to Southern California.

E! News has reached out to the Palace regarding the extended invitation but has not yet heard back. The offer would come as Harry and Meghan—who stepped back as senior royals in 2020—make the decision on whether to attend Charles’ coronation in May.

According to People, guests in attendance at the Lilibet’s christening did include her old brother Archie Harrison, grandmother Doria Ragland, the 21-month-old’s godfather, Tyler Perry, as well as an “unnamed godmother.”

As Netflix viewers may recall, Perry previously addressed his godfather status on an episode of the docuseries Harry & Meghan.

Reflecting on the call he received from the couple, the filmmaker said, “They were pretty serious on the phone. I go, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ They said, ‘Well, we’d like for you to be Lili’s godfather.’ I go, ‘Whoa.’ I take a minute to take that in. And I thought, ‘I’d be honored. I’d be absolutely honored.'”

“I got off the phone, took it all in, and then called them back,” he continued. “I go, ‘Uh, hold on a second. Does this mean we got to go over there and do all of that in the church with them and figure all that out? I don’t want to do that. Maybe we can do a little private ceremony here and let that be that and if you have to do it there, then that’s okay.'”

And a private ceremony it was. 

“I can confirm The Duke has recently received email correspondence from His Majesty’s office regarding the coronation,” a statement obtained by TODAY.com March 5 said. 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have yet to confirm if they will attend the ceremony. 

“An immediate decision on whether The Duke and Duchess will attend will not be disclosed by us at this time,” the spokesperson shared in the statement.

In January, Prince Harry spoke to journalist Tom Bradby in an interview with British network ITV about possibly attending his father’s coronation ceremony. 

“There’s a lot that can happen between now and then,” the Duke of Sussex said. “But, you know, the door is always open.”

He continued, “The ball is in their court. There’s a lot to be discussed, and I really hope that they are willing to sit down and talk about it.”

Although Prince Harry said he still believes in the British monarchy as an institution, when asked if he would be involved going forward, he replied, “”I don’t know.” 

King Charles III will officially take the crown on May 6 at Westminster Abbey in London, where coronations have traditionally been held for the past 900 years, according to Buckingham Palace. 

The British monarch has been ruling as king since his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died in September at the age of 96.

Camilla, the queen consort, will also be crowned along with King Charles. The Archbishop of Canterbury will conduct the televised ceremony. 

Confirmation of correspondence about King Charles III’s coronation comes days after Prince Harry, 38, and his wife, Meghan, 41, were asked to move out of their home in Windsor. 

In an email obtained by TODAY.com March 1, a spokesperson for the pair’s Archewell Foundation said, “We can confirm The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been requested to vacate their residence at Frogmore Cottage.”

In 2019, the two first moved into Frogmore Cottage, located next to the Frogmore House, where their wedding reception was held. They moved to the two-story residence before welcoming son Archie, now 3, London’s ITV reported at the time. 

About a year later, Prince Harry and Meghan announced they were officially taking a “step back” from their senior royal duties. They temporarily relocated to Canada. 

They clarified in following statements that they had planned to keep their Windsor home “with the permission of Her Majesty The Queen.”

A spokesperson told TODAY.com that the couple purchased a home in the Santa Barbara area in July 2020. They currently live there with Archie and their 1-year-old daughter Lilibet. 

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Frogmore Cottage, on the grounds of Windsor Castle west of London, had been intended as the couple’s main residence before they gave up royal duties and moved to Southern California. The Sun newspaper reported that Charles started the eviction process on Jan. 11, the day after the publication of Harry’s explosive memoir “Spare.”

“We can confirm The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been requested to vacate their residence at Frogmore Cottage,” a spokesperson for the couple said in statement.

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Disclosures Harry made in “Spare” deepened the rift between him and his family. The book included his account of private conversations with his father, and his brother, Prince William.

After their royal wedding in 2018, the couple moved out of Kensington Palace and into Frogmore ahead of the birth of their first son Archie. At the time, Buckingham Palace said Frogmore was a gift from Her Majesty the Queen. The statement described Windsor as “a very special place for their royal highnesses,” noting it overlooks their wedding reception venue, Frogmore House.

Frogmore was undergoing renovations when the newlyweds moved into the home. In September 2020, a spokesman announced the couple had repaid 2.4 million pounds ($3.2 million) in British taxpayers’ money that was used for the updates when they were working members of the royal family.

After they left Britain, Harry and Meghan had said Frogmore Cottage would remain their base when they visited the U.K. In statements are the time, the couple said keeping their house at Windsor was “with permission of Her Majesty the Queen.”

In an interview with the “Telegraph“, published days after the Jan. 10 release of his tell-all memoir “Spare“, the Duke of Sussex said he worries about the other “spares” in the family. His brother Prince William, heir to the British throne, and wife Kate Middleton are parents to Prince George, 9—who is second-in-line, Princess Charlotte, 7, and Prince Louis, 4.

“Though William and I have talked about it once or twice, and he has made it very clear to me that his kids are not my responsibility, I still feel a responsibility knowing that out of those three children, at least one will end up like me, the spare,” Prince Harry told the “Telegraph” in the Jan. 13 interview. “And that hurts, that worries me.”

The title of his memoir comes from the nickname bestowed upon him by the U.K. tabloid press and his family. In the book, Prince Harry says he was “the shadow, the support, the Plan B.”

He continues, “I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. I was summoned to provide backup, distraction, diversion and, if necessary, a spare part. Kidney, perhaps. Blood transfusion. Speck of bone marrow. This was all made explicitly clear to be from the start of life’s journey and regularly reinforced thereafter.”

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Prince Harry continues to say that on the day his mother Princess Diana gave birth to him, his dad King Charles III told her, “Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an Heir and a Spare—my work is done.”

Prince Harry says that this was “a joke. Presumably,” adding, “I took no offense.”

Reps for the royal family have declined to comment on the duke’s book or comments he has made about them in the press. Spare details Prince Harry’s childhood as the once third-in-line to the British throne, his and wife Meghan Markle‘s 2020 exit as working members of the monarchy and his conflicts with William, their dad and his second wife, Camilla, Queen Consort. 

In his memoir, Prince Harry accuses his father and stepmother’s press offices of “planting” stories about him and Markle—as well as William and Kate—with the media and also refusing to set the record straight on false reports about them.

Kristina Kyriacou, who worked as Charles’ communications secretary for years before he became king told “Good Morning America” Jan. 10 that “never once did any member of the royal family brief a member of the media with a story or run into the communications team or call us by the phone and say, ‘I’d like you to brief this into the media.” She added, “The notion is quite simply ridiculous.”

Still, Harry says we still will likely never know the half of it.

In a recent sit-down interview with The Telegraph, the Duke of Sussex said that his initial manuscript for the book, which debuted on Jan. 10, was double the size of the published version.

“The first draft was different,” he explained. “It was 800 pages, and now it’s down to 400 pages. It could have been two books, put it that way. And the hard bit was taking things out.”

Harry said the book was the end result of 50 Zoom calls between him and his ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer, who previously worked with Andre Agassi on his acclaimed memoir “Open.”

Throughout the process, Harry said he struggled with what details were appropriate to keep in which were better left out, given the fact that within his family, writing a book was “an absolute no” to begin with. (His mother, Diana, contributed to her own bombshell biography by sneaking tapes out of Kensington Palace).

Harry said most of the particulars kept off the final pages of “Spare” were those involving interactions with his brother Prince William and his father, King Charles III.

“There are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don’t want the world to know,” he added. “Because I don’t think they would ever forgive me.”

Harry’s highly anticipated memoir is 416 pages long and details the moments of the royal family that had long been safeguarded by protocol and tradition. 

The memoir sets forth the prince’s early years and the devastating impact of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales’s death. It also tackles the fragmented relationships between him and his brother, father, and their respective spouses.

Despite the book’s approach of airing out family laundry, Harry says his memoir is part of a “long-term, strategic thinking” attempt to put back the pieces of what is now a broken family unit.

“This is not about trying to collapse the monarchy — this is about trying to save them from themselves,” he said. “I know that I will get crucified by numerous people saying that.”

“Spare” sold 1.43 million copies in the U.S., Canada and Britain on its day of publication, per its publisher Penguin Random House, becoming the fastest selling nonfiction book in history. 

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Penguin Random House announced Wednesday that first day sales for the Harry’s tell-all memoir topped 1.4 million copies, a record pace for non-fiction from a company that also publishes Barack and Michelle Obama, whose “Becoming” needed a week to reach 1.4 million when it was released in 2018.

Sales for “Spare” include hardcover, audiobook and e-book editions.

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“‘Spare’ is the story of someone we may have thought we already knew, but now we can truly come to understand Prince Harry through his own words,” Gina Centrello, President and Publisher of the Random House Group, said in a statement.

“Looking at these extraordinary first day sales, readers clearly agree, ‘Spare’ is a book that demands to be read, and it is a book we are proud to publish.”

One of the most highly anticipated memoirs in recent times, “Spare” is Harry’s highly personal and intimate account of his life in the royal family and his relationship with the American actor Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex.

Michelle Obama’s memoir has since sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, its sales holding up over time in part because of highly favorable reviews. The verdict is mixed so far for “Spare.”

New York Times critic Alexandra Jacob called the book, and its author, “all over the map — emotionally as well as physically,” at times “frank and funny” and at other times consumed by Harry’s anger at the British press. In The Washington Post, Louis Bayard found “Spare” to be “good-natured, rancorous, humorous, self-righteous, self-deprecating, long-winded. And every so often, bewildering.”

Bereaved boy, troubled teen, wartime soldier, unhappy royal — many facets of Prince Harry are revealed in his explosive memoir, often in eyebrow-raising detail. Running throughout is Harry’s desire to be a different kind of prince — the kind who talks about his feelings, eats fast food and otherwise doesn’t hide beyond a prim facade.

Like an American.

From accounts of cocaine use and losing his virginity to raw family rifts, “Spare” exposes deeply personal details about Harry and the wider royal family. Even Americans may flinch when he confides that a trip to the North Pole left him with frostbitten genitals that proved most irritating during his brother’s wedding to Kate.

BROTHERHOOD

The book opens with a famous quote from Faulkner, bard of the American South: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Harry’s story is dominated by his rivalry with elder brother Prince William and the death of the boys’ mother, Princess Diana, in 1997. Harry, who was 12 at the time, has never forgiven the media for Diana’s death in a car crash while being pursued by photographers.

The loss of his mother haunts the book, which Harry dedicates to Meghan, children Archie and Lili “and, of course, my mother.”

The opening chapter recounts how his father Prince Charles — now King Charles III — broke the news of his mother’s accident, but didn’t give his son a hug.

Harry reveals that years later he asked his driver to take him through the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, site of the fatal crash, hoping in vain that it would help end a “decade of unrelenting pain. He also says he once consulted a woman who claimed to have “powers” and to be able to pass on messages from Diana.

Harry adds that he and William both “pleaded” with their father not to marry his long-term paramour Camilla Parker-Bowles, worried she would become a “wicked stepmother.”

Harry also is tormented by his status as royal “spare” behind William, who is heir to the British throne. Harry recounts a longstanding sibling rivalry that worsened after Harry began a relationship with Meghan, the American actor whom he married in 2018.

He says that during an argument in 2019, William called Meghan “difficult” and “rude” (the kind of insults an upper class Englishman might reserve for Americans), then grabbed him by the collar and knocked him down. Harry suffered cuts and bruises from landing on a dog bowl.

Harry says Charles implored the brothers to make up, saying after the funeral of Prince Philip in 2021: “Please, boys — don’t make my final years a misery.

Neither Buckingham Palace, which represents King Charles III, nor William’s Kensington Palace office has commented on any of the allegations.

ADMIRATION FOR GRANDPARENTS

Harry writes with admiration and some affection about Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip. He remembers Phillip’s “many passions —carriage driving, barbecuing, shooting, food beer,” and above all how he “embraced life,” as did his mother. “Maybe that was why he’d been such a fan” of Princess Diana, Harry recalls.

Meanwhile, he acknowledges being intimidated at times by his grandmother, if only because she was the Queen. She is no more helpful than anyone else in containing the media leaks, but she is often seen as sympathetic to his wishes, never more so than when she approved of his marriage of Meghan.

Harry also sees her as an engaging, even humorous person beyond her otherwise proper bearing. Reflecting on her death last year he remembers whispering jokes into her ear or convincing her to participate in a widely seen promotional video of the Invictus Games, in which she one-ups the Obamas in a sparring contest.

“She was a natural comedienne,” he writes, calling her “wicked sense of humor” a prized confidence between the two. “In every photo of us, whenever we’re exchanging a glance, making solid eye contact, it’s clear. We had secrets.”

WILD TEENAGE YEARS

The memoir suggests the media’s party-boy image of Harry during his teen and young adult years was well-deserved.

Harry describes how he lost his virginity at 17 — in a field behind a pub to an older woman who loved horses and treated the teenage prince like a “young stallion.” It was, he says, an “inglorious episode.”

He also says he took cocaine several times starting at the same age, in order to “feel different.” He also acknowledges using cannabis and magic mushrooms — which made him hallucinate that a toilet was talking to him.

ARMY REVELATIONS

Harry offers extensive memories of his decade in the British Army, serving twice in Afghanistan. He says that on his second tour, as an Apache helicopter co-pilot and gunner in 2012-2013, he killed 25 Taliban militants. Harry says he felt neither satisfaction nor shame about his actions, and in the heat of battle regarded enemy combatants as pieces being removed from a chessboard, “Bads taken away before they could kill Goods.”

Veterans criticized the comments and said they could increase the security risk for Harry. Retired Col. Richard Kemp said it was “an error of judgment,” and regarding enemy fighters as chess pieces is “not the way the British Army trains people.”

“I think that sort of comment that doesn’t reflect reality is misleading and potentially valuable to those people who wish the British forces and British government harm,” he told the BBC.

The Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, and Harry’s words have drawn protests in the country. Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi called the Western invasion of Afghanistan “odious” and said Harry’s comments “are a microcosm of the trauma experienced by Afghans at the hands of occupation forces who murdered innocents without any accountability.”

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A REGULAR GUY

Yes, he’s a Prince, but he isn’t above stopping by for burgers and fries at an In-N-Out, or getting clothes from a chain outlet. He’s also a compulsive watcher of “Friends” and relates most to the wisecracking Chandler Bing, played by Matthew Perry. And because he’s a prince, he got to meet another “Friends” star, Courteney Cox, and indulge in chocolate psychedelic mushrooms at her Los Angeles home.

THE REAL VILLAIN

Harry shares painful words about his father and brother, but his real anger is directed at the British media, and at those within the royal circle who cooperated and otherwise stood aside. While Charles remains apparently indifferent to the press, the rest of the family is obsessed with media coverage, Harry writes, himself as much as any of them. He expresses despair over what he calls endlessly false stories about him, the racist caricatures of his wife and of the press’ unnerving knowledge of his whereabouts and private correspondence. “One has to have a relationship with the press,” he is told by the royal staff.

PERSONAL JOURNEY

Harry credits Meghan with changing the way he sees the world and himself. He says he was “awash in isolation and privilege” and had no understanding of unconscious bias before he met her.

The young prince notoriously wore a Nazi uniform to a costume party in 2005, and claims in the book that William and his now-wife Kate encouraged the choice of outfit and “howled” with laughter when they saw it. He was recorded using a racist term about a fellow soldier of Pakistani descent in 2006, but says he did not know the word was a slur and that the soldier was not offended.

Meghan and Harry cited the U.K. media’s treatment of the biracial American actor as one of the main reasons for their decision to quit royal duties and move to the U.S. in 2020.

The book gives no sign that royal family relations will be repaired soon. Harry told ITV in an interview to promote the book that he wants reconciliation, but that there must be “accountability” first.

In the final pages, Harry describes how he and William walked side by side during the funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth II in September, but spoke barely a word to one another.

“The following afternoon, Meg and I left for America,” he says.

Buckingham Palace hasn’t officially commented on the book. But British newspapers and websites brimmed with quotes from unnamed “royal insiders,” rebutting Harry’s accusations. One said his public attacks on the royal family took a “toll” on the health of Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September.

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Veteran journalist Jonathan Dimbleby, a biographer and friend of King Charles III, said Harry’s revelations were the type “that you’d expect … from a sort of B-list celebrity,” and that the king would be pained and frustrated by them.

“His concern … is to act as head of state for a nation which we all know is in pretty troubled condition,” Dimbleby told the BBC. “I think he will think this gets in the way.“

Harry’s book, “Spare,” is the latest in a string of very public pronouncements by the prince and his wife Meghan since they quit royal life and moved to California in 2020, citing what they saw as the media’s racist treatment of Meghan, who is biracial, and a lack of support from the palace. It follows an interview with Oprah Winfrey and a six-part Netflix documentary released last month.

Harry is not the first British royal to air family secrets — both his parents used the media as their marriage fell apart. Charles cooperated on Dimbleby’s 1994 book and accompanying television documentary, which revealed that the then heir to the throne had had an affair during his marriage to Princess Diana.

Diana gave her side of the story in a BBC interview the following year, famously saying “there were three of us in this marriage” in reference to Charles’ relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.

But “Spare” goes into far more detail about private conversations and personal grievances than any previous royal revelation.

In the ghostwritten memoir, Harry discusses his grief at the death of his mother in 1997 and his long-simmering resentment at the role of royal “spare,” overshadowed by the “heir” — older brother Prince William. He recounts arguments and a physical altercation with William, reveals how he lost his virginity (in a field) and describes using cocaine and cannabis.

He also says he killed 25 Taliban fighters while serving as an Apache helicopter pilot in Afghanistan — a claim criticized by both the Taliban and British military veterans.

“Spare” is due to be published around the world on Tuesday. The Associated Press obtained an early Spanish-language copy.

Harry has said he expects counterattacks from the palace. He has long complained of “leaks” and “plants” of stories to the media by members of the royal household.

In an interview due to be broadcast on ITV on Sunday — one of several he has recorded to promote the book — Harry says people who accuse him of invading his family’s privacy “don’t understand or don’t want to believe that my family have been briefing the press.”

“I don’t know how staying silent is ever going to make things better,” he said.

In his upcoming memoir “Spare,” the Duke of Sussex recalled the moment his father King Charles III broke the news of Princess Diana’s death to him.

According to a copy of the Spanish language version of the book, titled “En La Sombra,” obtained by NBC News, Charles sat Harry, who was 12 years old at the time, down on the bed. Calling him “my dear son,” Harry writes, Charles then informed him that Diana had been in a car accident and that she had sustained injuries that seemed unlikely to improve.

“What I do remember with stunning clarity is that I did not cry,” Harry wrote, per the copy obtained by NBC News. “Not a tear. My father did not hug me.”

NBC News has reached out to Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace and they have declined to comment. A rep for Prince Harry also declined to comment to NBC News on the record.

Diana, who’d been chased by the paparazzi, died Aug. 31, 1997 following a car crash in Paris. She was 36 years old.

In his and Meghan Markle’s recent Netflix docuseries, “Harry & Meghan,” Harry said what it was like for him and his brother Prince William to mourn their mother’s death while in the public eye.

“When my mum died we had two hats to wear,” he said during the episode. “One was two grieving sons wanting to cry, grieve and process that grief because of losing our mum. And two, was the royal hat show no emotion, get out there, meet the people, shake their hands. The U.K. literally swept me and William up as their children with an expectation to see myself and William out and about was really hard for the two of us.”

While Harry noted in the docuseries that he doesn’t “have many early memories” of his mom, he said he mostly remembers how they were hounded by the paparazzi and how she “did such a good job in trying to protect us.” Not wanting “history to repeat itself,” Harry said he feels the need to protect Meghan and their children Archie Harrison, 3, and Lilibet “Lili” Diana, 19 months.

Now, Harry, who along with Meghan stepped back as working members of the royal family in 2020, is sharing what he says life has been like for him, including where he stands with his father and brother. In an upcoming interview with “Good Morning America,” the 38-year-old revealed how he thinks Diana would feel about his current relationship with William.

“I think she would be sad,” Harry said in a recent teaser for his conversation with “GMA.” “I think she would be looking at it long-term to know that there are certain things we need to go through to be able to heal the relationship. I have felt the presence of my mum more so in the last two years than I have in the past 30.”

The newspaper said it obtained an advance copy of the book, “Spare,” due to be published next week.

Reuters and other media outlets were also able to obtain copies after it went on sale days early in Spain. NBC News has not yet obtained a copy of the book.

It said Harry recounts a 2019 argument at his Kensington Palace home, in which he says William called Harry’s wife, the former actress Meghan Markle, “difficult,” “rude” and “abrasive.” Harry claims William grabbed his brother by the collar and ripped his necklace before knocking him down, the newspaper said.

“I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me,” the book is quoted as saying. “I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.”

William later apologized, the extract says.

Neither Buckingham Palace, which represents King Charles III, nor William’s Kensington Palace office has commented on the claims.

The book, scheduled to be released Tuesday, is the latest in a string of public revelations and accusations by Harry and Meghan that have shaken Britain’s royal family,

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Harry, 38, and the American actress married at Windsor Castle in May 2019. Less than a year later, the couple quit royal duties and moved to California, citing what they saw as the media’s racist treatment of Meghan and a lack of support from the palace.

Since then they have presented their side of the story in an interview with Oprah Winfrey and a six-part Netflix documentary released last month, which recounted the couple’s bruising relationship with the U.K. media and estrangement from the royal family.

In the series, Harry claimed William screamed at him during a family meeting and accused palace officials of lying to protect his elder brother, who is now heir to the throne. Meghan talked about wanting to end her life as she struggled to cope with toxic press coverage.

In extracts of interviews recorded to promote his book and due to be broadcast Sunday, Harry said the royal household had cast him and Meghan as “villains” and “shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile.”

Palace officials have declined to comment on any of the allegations.

Ahead of the release of his memoir “Spare” — releasing on Jan. 10 — the Duke of Sussex is scheduled to appear in two new interviews where he candidly discussed his strained relationship with his family as well as his decision to speak out against the false tabloid stories published about him and wife Meghan Markle.

“Every single time I tried to do it privately, there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife,” Harry told Anderson Cooper for “60 Minutes,” airing on Jan. 8. “You know, the family motto is ‘never complain, never explain’ it’s just a motto and it doesn’t really hold.”

Harry then went on to note the different ways the royal family is often protected in the media against false narratives — which echoed an earlier claim revealed in the Netflix docuseries “Harry & Meghan.”

“Through leaks, they will speak or have a conversation with the correspondent and that correspondent will literally be spoon-fed information and write the story,” he continued, “and at the bottom of it they will say they reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment, but the whole story is Buckingham Palace commenting.”

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The Archewell founder added, “So when we’re being told for the last six years we can’t put a statement out to protect you, but you do it for other members of the family, there becomes a point when silence is betrayal.”

Ahead of his highly anticipated memoir, Prince Harry further gave an update on where he stands with his brother Prince William and father King Charles III in an upcoming interview with ITV. 

“It never needed to be this way,” Harry told ITV’s Tom Bradby in a preview for the Jan. 8 interview. “I want a family, not an institution.”

“They feel as though it is better to keep us somehow as the villains,” Harry added, though it is unclear who he is referring to. “They’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile.”

The teaser concludes with Harry saying, “I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back.”

The interview with Britain’s ITV channel is due to be released this Sunday. In clips released Monday, Harry was shown saying that “they feel as though it is better to keep us somehow as the villains” and that “they have shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile” — though it was not clear who he was referring to.

Harry, also known as the Duke of Sussex, and his wife Meghan have aired their grievances against the British monarchy since the couple stepped down as senior royals in 2020 and moved to California, where they now live with their two young children.

Harry, 38, has previously spoken about his estrangement from his father, King Charles III, and elder brother Prince William since his departure from the U.K.

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Last month Netflix released “Harry & Meghan,” a six-part series that detailed the couple’s experiences leading to their decision to make a new start in the U.S.

In that documentary, Harry was scathing about how the royal press team worked, and spoke about how his relationship with William and the rest of the royal household broke down. Meghan described wanting to end her life as she struggled to cope with toxic U.K. press coverage.

Harry’s autobiography, titled “Spare” — recalling the saying “the heir and the spare” — is being released on Jan. 10.

When you see photos of Prince Louis, you probably focus on the 4-year-old’s sweet smile and cute cheeks.

But there’s something else that people have noticed about the young royal: He’s almost always wearing shorts!

Rain or shine, when the little prince steps out in public, he sports a pair of adorable shorts, often paired with knee socks, a preppy belt and a tucked-in polo.

It’s a trend also seen with Louis’ older brother, Prince George, too. So what’s the story behind the shorts?

In 2016, when George was a youngster, Harper’s Bazaar UK did some investigating, and they found that dressing young boys in shorts is a long-standing tradition among British royalty and aristocracy.

“It’s a very English thing to dress a young boy in shorts,” British etiquette expert William Hanson told Bazaar. “Trousers are for older boys and men, whereas shorts on young boys is one of those silent class markers that we have in England. Although times are (slowly) changing, a pair of trousers on a young boy is considered quite middle class–quite suburban. And no self-respecting aristo or royal would want to be considered suburban.”

Most boys graduate to full-length trousers at about 8 years old, Hanson explained. He said the shorts-only tradition may stem from the antiquated custom of “breeching,” which dates back centuries in the U.K.

Traditionally, he said, young British boys were dressed in gowns for the first few years of their lives, until being “breeched” and graduating to short trousers.

Louis and George follow in the footsteps of their father, Prince William, in the shorts department. The Prince of Wales sported a very similar look in his younger years:

“The British upper set are always keen to hold on to tradition, and this one also silently marks them out from ‘the rest,” Hanson told Bazaar

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Harry, 38, also said there was a “wedge” created between himself and his older brother and heir to the throne, Prince William, around the time Harry and Meghan decided to step away from royal duties and move away from the U.K. to start a new life.

He cited the example of a joint statement palace officials issued on behalf of him and William to “squash” a story about William bullying the couple out of the family. He said it was issued without his consent.

“I couldn’t believe it. No one had asked me permission to put my name to a statement like that,” Harry told the Netflix series. “They were happy to lie to protect my brother and yet for three years, they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”

Elsewhere in the series, Meghan and Harry both reiterated their complaints that British royal officials did not help them by rejecting inaccurate, negative reports about them.

“What clicked in my head was, ‘It’s never going to stop,’” Meghan said. “Every rumor, every negative thing, every lie and everything I knew wasn’t true, and that the palace knew wasn’t true and internally they knew wasn’t true, was being allowed to fester.”

Harry added: “There was no other option at this point. I said that we need to get out of here.”

Meghan’s lawyer, Jenny Afia, claimed in the series that she has seen evidence of “negative briefing from the palace” against the couple “to suit other people’s agendas.” She did not elaborate what evidence she saw.

Palace officials have not commented on the series.

The first three installments of “Harry & Meghan,” released last week, focused on the British media’s coverage of the couple and the way it was influenced by racism.

The new episodes come at a crucial moment for the monarchy as King Charles III tries to show that the institution remains alive and vibrant after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, whose personal popularity damped criticism of the crown during her 70-year reign. Charles is making the case that the House of Windsor can help unite an increasingly diverse nation by personally meeting with representatives of the ethnic groups and faiths that make up modern Britain — trying to show that whatever the allegations against him, the reality is different.

Harry’s 2018 marriage to the former Meghan Markle, a biracial American actress, was once seen as a public relations coup for the royal family, boosting the monarchy’s effort to move into the 21st century by making it more representative of a multicultural nation. But the fairy tale, punctuated with a horse-drawn carriage ride and lavish wedding at Windsor Castle, soon unraveled amid relentless media attention, including allegations that Meghan was self-centered and bullied her staff.

“I wasn’t being thrown to the wolves, I was being fed to the wolves,” Meghan said.

The series is Harry and Meghan’s latest effort to tell their own story after the couple stepped back from royal life in early 2020 and moved to the wealthy Southern California enclave of Montecito. Their life on an estate overlooking the Pacific Ocean has been partly funded by lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify.

Race became a central issue for the monarchy following Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021. Meghan alleged that before their first child was born, a member of the royal family commented on how dark the baby’s skin might be.

Prince William defended the royal family after the interview, telling reporters, “We’re very much not a racist family.”

Buckingham Palace faced renewed allegations of racism earlier this month when a Black advocate for survivors of domestic abuse said a senior member of the royal household interrogated her about her origins during a reception at the palace. Coverage of the issue filled British media, overshadowing William and his wife Kate’s much-anticipated visit to Boston, which the palace had hoped would highlight their environmental credentials.

The Netflix series is problematic for the palace because Harry and Meghan are appealing to the same younger, more culturally diverse demographic that William and Kate are trying to win over, said Pauline Maclaran, author of “Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture.”

“I think, it has to be worrying for the royal family in terms of their future, because they really need to get this young generation on their side, to an extent, if they’re going to survive,’’ she said. “They will have to make a very big effort to make themselves appear more diverse, and I think we do see that happening a little bit, but not enough.”

That is the title card that appears when you first press play on “Harry & Meghan,” Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s revealing new Netflix docuseries. With the couple’s Archewell Productions serving as one of the production companies involved in the project, the first three episodes of the highly anticipated show premiered globally on Dec. 8 and jumped right in with self-taped video diaries by its two titular subjects. 

The footage was captured in March 2020, just as the couple was performing their last public engagement as active members of the royal family, and Prince Harry immediately addresses his shocking decision to give up his title. 

“My job is to keep my family safe,” the royal, currently fifth in line to the British throne, explains, while sitting in a private suite at London’s Heathrow Airport. “But the nature of being born into this position amid everything that comes with it and the level of hate that is being stirred up in the last three years, especially against my wife and my son, I’m generally concerned for the safety of my family.”

Markle, meanwhile, is first seen in Vancouver, Canada, sitting with her hair wrapped in a bath towel.

“H is in London and I am here, I don’t even know where to begin. I just really want to get to the other side of all of this,” Markle says, just before beginning to cry. “Um, I don’t know what to say anymore. Unfortunately, in not standing for something, they are destroying us.”

The “they” in question seems to be both the royal family and the British media, each of whom Prince Harry calls out in the series’ opening scene. 

“This is about duty and service and I feel as though being part of this family is my duty to uncover this exploitation and bribery that happens within our media,” Prince Harry says. “This isn’t just about our story. This has always been so much bigger than us. No one knows the full truth. We know the full truth. The institution knows the full truth and the media knows the full truth because they’ve been in on it.”

Now, in full control of their own narrative for the first time, Prince Harry and Markle are finally spilling the entire pot of English breakfast tea. (“Members of the Royal Family declined to comment on the content within this series,” a title card reads at the beginning of the series.)

“I’m not going to say that it’s comfortable,” Markle says of making the documentary. “But when you feel like people haven’t gotten any sense of who you are for so long, it’s really nice to just be able to have the opportunity to let people have a bit more of a glimpse into what’s happened and also who we are.”

So grab a cuppa and settle in because here is every bombshell from “Harry & Meghan’s” first three episodes:

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How They Really Met

In 2016, Meghan Markle was on hiatus from her star-making gig on USA’s “Suits,” fresh out of a relationship and ready to embark on what pal Lucy Fraser called her “single girl summer.” Basically she had it all already figured out.

“I had a career, I had my life, I had my path and then came H,” Markle explains. “I mean, talk about a plot twist.”

And it was all because of the doggy ears filter on Snapchat, which is how Prince Harry saw Markle for the first time on their mutual friend’s Instagram account. “That was the first thing and I was like, ‘Who is that?'” Prince Harry recalls. 

A private e-mail the friend sent to Markle about Prince Harry is then shown, which says that “Prince Haz” is “dying to meet you.” Markle’s response? “Who is Prince Haz????” 

Markle then explains she asked to see his Instagram feed before agreeing to meet him. 

“So that’s the thing. When people say, ‘Did you Google him?’ No, but that’s your homework,” she explains. “You’re, like, let me see what they’re about in their feed, not what someone else says about them, but what they are putting out about themselves. So I went through and it was just like beautiful photography and all these environmental shots and this time he was spending in Africa.”

Shortly after, they began texting and “were constantly in touch,” according to Markle, before they finally made a plan to meet for a drink at 76 Dean Street while she was in London for Wimbledon. 

Prince Harry’s Biggest Relationship Fear

After witnessing how Princess Diana was treated by the media during her marriage to King Charles III and then in the aftermath of their official separation in 1992, Prince Harry says he began to understand the “pain and suffering” that women who marry into the royal family endure.

“I remember thinking, ‘How could I ever find someone who is willing and capable to be able to withstand all of the baggage that comes with being with me?'” he says. “Every relationship that I had, within a matter of weeks or months, was splattered all over the newspapers and that person’s family harassed and their lives turned upside down.”

And after he met Markle, he admits he was “terrified of her being driven away by the media, the same media that had driven so many other people away from me.”

Despite that “fear,” Prince Harry found himself falling in love with Markle the more he got to know her, he says: “I just opened my heart to see what’s going to happen.”

His Private Struggle After Diana’s Death

In the first episode, Prince Harry opens up about grappling with his royal duties in the aftermath of Diana’s fatal car crash in 1997 and the pressure that was put on him and Prince William. 

“When my mom died, we had two hats to wear,” he explains. “One was two grieving sons, wanting to cry, grieve, and process that grief because of losing our mom. And two was the royal hat, show no emotion, get out there, meet the people, shake their hands.”

Prince Harry continued, “The UK literally swept me and William up as their children,” and, along with that, came, “an expectation to see myself and William out and about was really hard for the two of us.”

And when Prince Harry began attending Eton College at the age of 13, the same paparazzi attention that had been focused on his mother “started happening to us,” he said, going on to reference the negative tabloid stories about his partying and dating. 

“There’s a difference between having to accept, okay, we have this position in the family and therefore there’s going to be a level of interest and being swarmed by paparazzi, chasing you in cars through red lights,” Prince Harry says. “And then chasing you down the road on foot, which probably happened about 40 times when I was younger. It was too much. Everything that was happening in the UK was so intense. I was trying to balance the experience of being a young boy who was trying to deal with the loss of his mom without much support or help or guidance. It didn’t seem right, it didn’t seem fair.”

Their First Trip as a Couple

Given Prince Harry’s strong connection to Africa, which he first visited at the age of 18, he knew it was “absolutely critical to share it” with Markle. So, in August 2016, he invited her on a trip to Botswana with him.

“I was astonished that she said yes,” Prince Harry admits. “This woman that I’ve only met twice, we are going to be living in a tent together for 10 days? Wow.”

While Markle says, “It was very awkward at first — I just remembered he handed me a chicken sandwich,” the new couple quickly became comfortable around one another.

“You put a lot of faith and a lot of trust in me,” Prince Harry says to Markle. “It just felt so right and felt so normal.”

Markle adds, “Thankfully, we really liked each other.”

Prince Harry’s Childhood Memories

When asked to recall if there was a moment he knew his family was different, Prince Harry says there isn’t one specific event he can point to and that it was more of a “gradual” awareness.

“My childhood…was filled with laughter, filled with happiness and filled with adventure,” Prince Harry says, before revealing, “I don’t have many early memories of my mom. It was almost like, internally, I blocked them out.” But, he says, “I always remember her laugh, her cheeky laugh.”

Given the level of attention that his family, and especially Diana, received at the time, “The majority of my memories are of being swarmed by the paparazzi,” Prince Harry recalls. “Within the family, within the system, the advice that’s always given is ‘Don’t react. Don’t feed into it.'”

Reflecting on the impact the public pressure had on his mother and “witnessing those tears,” Prince Harry says, “I guess those are the moments when I thought, ‘Hang on a little, what am I? Who am I? What am I part of?'”

Addressing Diana’s Infamous BBC Interview

While reflecting on a ski trip he was taken on as a child, where he was asked to pose for traveling media—”I remember feeling really uncomfortable from the get-go” — Harry commended Diana for advocating for his and William’s privacy when the photographers refused to stop following them. 

“My mom did such a good job in trying to protect us,” he says. “She took it upon herself to basically confront these people.” He then goes on to acknowledge the 1995 sit-down with journalist Martin Bashir that some 23 million people watched with rapt attention on the BBC’s “Panorama.”

“I think she had a lived experience of how she was struggling, living that life,” Harry explains. “She felt compelled to talk about it, especially in that Panorama interview. I think we all now know she was deceived into giving the interview. But at the same time, she spoke the truth of her experience. My mom was harassed throughout her life with my dad. But after they separated, the harassment went to new levels.”

Markle’s Similarities to Diana

In the second episode, Prince Harry compares the paparazzi attention he and Markle receive to what Diana endured. 

“Back in my mom’s days, it was physical harassment. They had cameras in your face, following you, chasing you,” Harry explains. “Paparazzi still harass people. The harassment really exists more online now. Once the photographs are out and the story is then put next to it, then comes the social media harassment.”

And, for Harry, it was quite “hard” for him “to see another woman in my life who I love go through this feeding frenzy. It is basically the hunter versus the prey.”

Fortunately, that is not the only comparison Harry can make between his wife and his late mother.

“So much of what Meghan is and how she is, is so similar to my mom,” he says in the first episode. “She has the same compassion, she has the same empathy, she has the same confidence, she has this warmth about her.”

And while Harry can “accept” that some people will “fundamentally disagree” with his decision to leave the royal family, he explains, “I knew that I had to do everything I could to protect my family, especially after what happened to my mom. I didn’t want history to repeat itself.”

How the Royal Family Initially Responded to Markle

When Harry first introduced his new girlfriend to his family, he says they were “incredibly impressed” by Markle. 

“Some of them didn’t quite know what to do with themselves,” Harry admits with a laugh. “They were surprised that a ginger could land such a beautiful woman and such an intelligent woman.”

However, it was her profession that initially gave some members of the family reservations about their relationship.

“The fact that I was dating an American actress was probably what clouded their judgment more than anything else in the beginning,” Harry shares. “‘Oh, she’s an American actress, this won’t last.'”

Markle adds, “The actress thing was the biggest problem, funny enough. There was a big idea of what that looks like from the UK standpoint, Hollywood, and it was just very easy for them to typecast that.”

How Prince Harry Went Against the Family to Protect Markle

After their relationship went public, both Harry and Markle admit to being surprised by what they called “racial undertones” and then “outright racism” from certain media outlets. “At that time, I wasn’t thinking about how race played a part in any of this,” Markle says. “I genuinely didn’t think about it.”

Upset over the treatment Markle was receiving, Harry says he was told to not say anything by the palace. 

“But what people need to understand is, as far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well,” Harry explains. “So it was almost like a rite of passage. Some of the members of the family were like, ‘But my wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why should you get special treatment? Why should she be protected?’ And I said, ‘The difference here is the race element.'”

Harry ultimately went against the palace’s protocol, issuing a statement in November 2016 that condemned the “abuse and harassment” Markle was being subjected to by the media. 

Despite Harry’s efforts, the media’s treatment of Markle didn’t change. But at the time of their engagement in 2017, Markle said she still believed what she was being told by the royal family. 

“‘It will pass, it will get better. It’s just what they do right at the very beginning,'” Markle shares. “This promise of, ‘Once you’re married, don’t worry, it will get better. Once they get used to you, it will get better, of course it will get better.’ But truth be told, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how good I was, no matter what I did, they were still going to find a way to destroy me.”

The First Time Markle Met Prince William and Kate Middleton

While discussing her naïveté when it came to royal customs, Markle opens up about the first time she met her future brother-in-law and his wife, Kate Middleton, when they came over for dinner.

“I remember I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot,” Markle recalls. “I was a hugger, I’ve always been a hugger. I didn’t realize that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.”

And the formality between Markle and the couple continued throughout the encounter, she shared. 

“I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside,” she explains. “That there is a forward-facing way of being and then you close the door and go, ‘Oh great, okay, we can relax now.’ But that formality carries over on both sides and that was surprising to me.”

One of Prince Harry’s “Biggest Mistakes”

In episode three, Harry addresses the 2005 incident where he wore a Nazi uniform to a costume party, calling it “one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”

“I felt so ashamed afterwards,” he continues. “All I wanted to do was make it right.”

After the scandal, Harry met with the chief rabbi in London — which he said “had a profound impact” on him — and he also traveled to Berlin to speak with a Holocaust survivor. 

“I could have just ignored it and just got on and probably made the same mistakes over and over in my life,” Harry explains. “But I learned from that.”

In the same episode, Harry discusses the 2017 controversy when Princess Michael of Kent, who is married to Queen Elizabeth’s first cousin, wore a “racist” brooch when meeting Markle. 

“In this family sometimes you’re part of the problem rather than part of the solution, and there is a huge level of unconscious bias,” Harry says. “The thing with unconscious bias is it’s actually no one’s fault. But once it’s been pointed out or identified within yourself, you then need to make it right. It’s education, it’s awareness. And it’s a constant work in progress for everybody, including me.”

The Heartbreaking Reason Markle’s Niece Wasn’t at the Wedding

While Markle doesn’t have a relationship with her outspoken half-sister Samantha Markle, she has a close bond with Samantha’s daughter Ashleigh Hale, who appears in the docuseries. Raised by her paternal grandparents, Ashleigh and Markle forged a friendship after Samantha reconnected with her daughter in 2007 and Thomas Markle gave Markle Ashleigh’s email address.

“There’s a sister element, there’s something maternal,” Ashleigh says of Markle. “She’s a best friend, she’s kind of all the things.” And after Samantha began speaking out against Markle in the press, Ashleigh “stopped talking” to her mother. Which is what made the decision to not invite Ashleigh to her 2018 wedding “painful” for Markle.

Explaining that they shared a “small” communications team with William and Kate, Markle says that the “guidance” at the time was to not to have her niece at their nuptials because, as she recalled they put it, “‘How do we explain that this half-sister isn’t invited to the wedding, but that the half-sister’s daughter is?'”

Markle and Prince Harry called Ashleigh to explain the situation, an emotional conversation that Ashleigh reflected on.

“I think I said I was hurt on some level, but I understood where it was coming from,” she says. “To know that it was because of my biological mother that this relationship was so important to me was impacted in that way. To feel like because of her it was taken away. It’s been hard.”

No School For Royal Rules

While addressing the protocols that are in place for royals, Markle references “The Princess Diaries,” explaining there is “no class” to teach someone joining the family how to act in public à la Anne Hathway‘s lessons in the 2001 movie. 

“It doesn’t happen,” Markle says. “So I needed to learn a lot, including the national anthem.” To do so, she turned to Google and practiced on her own. Yet she still felt the media only focused on her missteps, saying, “It was baptism by fire.”

“Harry & Meghan” is now streaming on Netflix.

Promoted with two dramatically edited trailers that hint at racism and a “war against Meghan,” the series “Harry & Meghan” is the couple’s latest effort to tell the world why they walked away from royal life and moved to Southern California almost three years ago. It is expected to expand on criticism of the royal family and British media delivered in a series of interviews over the past 18 months.

Netflix released the first three hour-long episodes on Thursday, with three more due Dec. 15. The documentary includes video diaries recorded by Meghan and Harry — apparently on their phones — in March 2020, amid the couple’s acrimonious split from the royal family and move to the United States.

Harry says in the footage that it’s “my duty to uncover the exploitation and bribery” that happens in British media.

“No one knows the full truth,” Harry adds. “We know the full truth.”

In the documentary, Harry recalls the intense media interest in his late mother, Princess Diana, that clouded his childhood, and says: “To see another woman in my life who I loved go through this feeding frenzy – that’s hard.”

Harry and Meghan recount how they initially tried to follow palace advice to maintain silence about media coverage, even when they saw the treatment of the biracial Meghan as racist.

Harry said that other members of the royal family thought “everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well,” and questioned why Meghan should be protected.

“I said ‘the difference here is the race element,’” Harry said.

A title at the beginning of the series says the royal family declined to comment.

The series comes at a crucial moment for the monarchy as King Charles III tries to show that the institution still has a role to play after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, whose personal popularity dampened criticism of the crown during her 70-year reign. Charles is making the case that the House of Windsor can help unite an increasingly diverse nation by using the early days of his reign to meet with many of the ethnic groups and faiths that make up modern Britain.

Harry’s 2018 marriage to the former Meghan Markle, a biracial American and onetime actress, was once seen as boosting the royal family’s effort to move into the 21st century, making it more representative of a multicultural nation. But the fairy tale, which began with a star-studded ceremony at Windsor Castle, soon soured amid stories that Meghan was self-centered and bullied her staff.

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Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, stepped back from royal duties and moved to California, alleging racist attacks by Britain’s tabloid media. Harry’s criticism of the media was tinged with anger over the way the press treated his mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car accident in 1997 while being followed by photographers. The couple’s new life in America has been funded by lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify.

Race became a central issue for the monarchy following Harry and Meghan’s interview with American talk show host Oprah Winfrey in March 2021. Meghan alleged that before their first child was born, a member of the royal family commented on how dark the baby’s skin might be.

Prince William, the heir to the throne and Harry’s older brother, defended the royal family after the interview, telling reporters, “We’re very much not a racist family.”

But Buckingham Palace faced renewed allegations of racism only last week when a Black advocate for survivors of domestic abuse said a senior member of the royal household interrogated her about her origins during a reception at the palace. Coverage of the issue filled British media, overshadowing William and his wife Kate’s much-anticipated visit to Boston, which the palace had hoped would highlight their environmental credentials.

Media attention was also diverted by Netflix’s decision to release the first trailer for “Harry & Meghan” in the middle of the trip.

The streaming giant has promised an “unprecedented and in-depth documentary series” over six episodes in which Harry and Meghan “share the other side of their high-profile love story.’’ The first three episodes will be released Thursday, with the second batch to be posted Dec. 15.

The program will be watched carefully in the U.K., where even the teasers were criticized for offering misleading images to back up the emotive narration alleging misogyny, unfair media treatment and racism.

In one section of the footage, clips of paparazzi are spliced together with old footage of Princess Diana being followed by the media as Harry says in a voiceover: “The pain and suffering of women marrying into this institution, this feeding frenzy. … I was terrified, I didn’t want history to repeat itself.”

However, one of the clips used to illustrate his words appears to show reporters and photographers waiting for TV star Katie Price arriving outside Crawley Magistrates Court, Sky News reported.

The second trailer also includes an indictment of the way palace officials use the press, which Harry described as a “dirty game.”

“There’s a hierarchy of the family,” Harry says, over an image of the royal family standing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. “You know, there’s leaking, but there’s also planting of stories.”

That is followed by a picture of a photographer perched on another balcony as Harry and Meghan walk with their young son Archie down below. While the scene suggests the photographer was covertly snapping pictures of a private moment, the photo actually shows an accredited press photographer who was covering the couple’s meeting with Desmond Tutu in 2019.

Whatever the series reveals, palace officials hope to deflect the storm by portraying William and Kate as forward-looking young royals who are tackling difficult issues such as climate change and early childhood education, in contrast to Harry and Meghan, who are described by critics as merely celebrities selling their story to the media.

The BBC and the Daily Telegraph, one of Britain’s most influential newspapers, picked up on this theme in their coverage of William and Kate’s three-day trip to Boston, where they handed out environmental prizes, met with anti-violence campaigners and went to a basketball game.

“While Prince Harry and Meghan continued to paint themselves as victims, heads in hands, tearing their hair out at the unfairness of it all, the Prince and Princess were simply getting on with the job,” the Telegraph wrote.

They were being honored by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights nonprofit for their humanitarian work, receiving an award linked to their ongoing work on causes like mental health and racial equity issues.

“They’ve stood up they’ve talked about racial justice and they talked about mental illness in a way that was incredibly brave,” said RFK Human Rights President Kerry Kennedy.

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The charity also announced during the gala that they will be teaming up with Meghan and Harry’s Archwell Foundation to offer an award in gender equity in student film. The winner will have their work shown at the Tribeca Festival.

However, the couple has garnered more attention lately for their soon-to-be released Netflix docuseries in which they talk about their experience with — and departure from — the royal family. The documentary is already under fire for portraying the couple as hounded by the press, using examples that were pre-planned photo ops and red carpet events.

At the UK outpost “Tea & Sympathy” in the West Village, some questioned why a couple that claims to hate attention would be part of a multi-part documentary about themselves, along with other high-profile appearances.

“I don’t know, maybe I’m a little ignorant, but if I thought if you wanted to avoid attention maybe don’t do a prime time special with Oprah. What do I know?” said Sean Kavanagh.

But others are excited to see what the couple’s take on the whole situation is.

“I love him. I think he’s my favorite actually. I think he’s a wonderful human being. And I think everyone should shut up and leave them alone,” said Nicky Perry.

Notably, on Tuesday night’s red carpet was Alec Baldwin, another famous figure who knows a thing or two about controversy. But he had nothing but praise and admiration for the couple.

“I think it’s great that they have agreed to support this cause which we have supported for years,” Baldwin said.

The streaming service revealed Monday that Volume I of “Harry & Meghan” will drop on Dec. 8 and Volume II will be released a week later on Dec. 15.

Neflix also released a new trailer to tease the first part of the six-episode series, which begins with Harry reflecting on their whirlwind love story, going from the highs of a courtship and the royal wedding to the lows of their battle with the British press.

“What on Earth happened?” Harry says, adding that, “Everything changed.”

The couple is once again tackling the topic of their rift with the royal family head on and in their own words. In the footage, they share about the darker side to their high-profile love story and what they believe happens to the women who marry into the royal family, with Harry saying he “doesn’t want history repeating itself,” a reference to his mother, the late Princess Diana.

“There’s a hierarchy of the family,” Harry says in the trailer. “You know, there’s leaking, but there’s also planting of stories.”

“It’s a dirty game,” he says.

Netflix is billing the series as “an unprecedented and in-depth” look at “one of the most-discussed couples in history.” It is directed by Liz Garbus, the Emmy winning producer of the Netflix documentary, “What Happened, Miss Simone?”

In a previously released trailer, Harry and Meghan, who quit their royal duties in 2020 and moved to California, shared intimate photos and videos never before seen publicly.

“No one sees what’s happening behind closed doors,” the Duke of Sussex says as a photo of Meghan crying while holding a cellphone is shown. There’s the sound of glass breaking and an image of William and Kate appears.

“When the stakes are this high, doesn’t it make more sense to hear the story from us,” Meghan says as the trailer ends.

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In 2020, Prince Harry and his wife signed a multiyear deal to produce nature series, documentaries and children’s programming for the streaming service.

The couple share 3-year-old son Archie and 1-year-old daughter Lilibet. 

Harry also has a memoir dropping on Jan. 10, 2023. The book will be called “Spare” and is being billed by Penguin Random House, as an account told with “raw, unflinching honesty” and filled with ”insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.”

Royals watchers and the public at large have speculated endlessly since the book was first announced in July 2021, billed as “intimate and heartfelt.”

The Duke of Sussex has shown a willingness to discuss his private life and made headlines in March 2021 when the couple were interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. The two spoke candidly of Meghan’s deep unhappiness with her new life in England, the alleged racism within the royal family and Harry’s fear that his wife’s life might be endangered had they remained in his native country.

On Dec. 1, Netflix dropped the first teaser for “Harry & Meghan,” calling the six-episode series an “unprecedented and in-depth” look into the “other side” of Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s love story. And as Meghan herself says in the teaser trailer — which shows intimate moments of the couple together along with an unseen photo of the pregnant royal and her baby bump — “When the stakes are this high, doesn’t it make more sense to hear our story from us?”

While an official premiere date has yet to be announced — a press release for the series states it is “coming soon” —Netflix promised the series explore will explore “the clandestine days of their early courtship and the challenges that led to them feeling forced to step back from their full-time roles in the institution.”

Harry, 38, and Meghan, 41, stepped down as senior royals in Jan. 2020 and have since moved to Southern California, where they reside with their kids Archie Harrison and Lilibet Diana. 

“No one sees what’s happening behind closed doors,” Harry says in the teaser. “I had to do everything I could to protect my family.”

In addition to interviews with Meghan and Harry, the series will also feature commentary from their friends family.

As Netflix noted in its press release Dec. 1, many loved ones featured in the series “have never spoken publicly before about what they witnessed.”

Additionally, viewers will hear from “historians who discuss the state of the British Commonwealth today and the royal family’s relationship with the press, the series does more than illuminate one couple’s love story, it paints a picture of our world and how we treat each other.”

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