{"id":533241,"date":"2026-01-21T23:25:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T23:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/533241\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T23:25:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T23:25:23","slug":"made-meghan-markles-life-misery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/533241\/","title":{"rendered":"Made Meghan Markle’s Life ‘Misery’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPrince Harry<\/a> grew emotional as he took the stand at London\u2019s High Court on Wednesday in his privacy case against the publisher of U.K. tabloid Daily Mail<\/a>, claiming that it\u2019s been a \u201ctraumatic experience\u201d that has made his wife Meghan Markle\u2019s \u201clife an absolute misery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Duke of Sussex, who stepped away from royal duties in 2020 alongside Markle, was originally expected to give evidence in court on Thursday. However, his testimony was moved up after Antony White, the defense lawyer for Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers Limited, delivered his opening statement quicker than expected. Harry is one of several big names \u2014 including Elton John and his husband David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost \u2014 taking on the publisher, alleging that the company engaged in illegal activities like phone-hacking and hiring private investigators to place listening devices inside cars. Associated Newspapers has denied the allegations, calling them \u201cpreposterous\u201d and saying they were brought to court too late.<\/p>\n

\n\tHarry\u2019s claims specifically reference 14 articles published by Associated Newspapers titles between 2001 and 2013. As reported by BBC News<\/a>, when questioned by White why he didn\u2019t complain about his treatment in the press \u2014 specifically the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday \u2014 earlier, Harry responded that he \u201cwasn\u2019t allowed to complain\u201d when he was a working member of the royal family, which he calls \u201cthe institution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his witness statement, which Harry did not deliver in person but was published as his questioning began, the prince wrote that his \u201cuneasy relationship\u201d with the press began after the 1997 death of his mother, Princess Diana, when he was 12 years old.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs a member of the Institution the policy was to \u2018never complain, never explain.\u2019 There was no alternative; I was conditioned to accept it,\u201d Harry wrote, according to BBC News. \u201cFor the most part, I accepted the interest in my performing my public functions. However, in late 2016, when my relationship with Meghan, my now wife, became public, I started to become 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 concerning Meghan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added in the witness statement that many articles made him \u201cparanoid beyond belief\u201d and alleged that the publications sought to \u201cdrive me to drugs and drinking to sell more of their papers.\u201d He also said that he was \u201cextremely upset\u201d by a 2006 article detailing his and Prince William\u2019s reactions to the publication of a photo of Princess Diana after her fatal car crash. \u201cIf Associated was willing to publish this type of material, then it really makes me wonder how far they are prepared to go,\u201d Harry wrote, adding that the information in the article made him think journalists \u201cwere plainly listening in to our calls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHarry was questioned about specific Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday journalists while on the stand, alleging in his witness statement that some instances \u201cfelt like full-blown stalking\u201d and \u201cconstant surveillance.\u201d He claimed that Mail on Sunday foreign correspondent Barbara Jones would \u201cturn up in the most bizarre places\u201d and said it was \u201cvery suspicious\u201d that she would know where he was, particularly when he was in Africa.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to BBC News, the judge interrupted Harry twice to remind him not to argue the case himself when responding to questioning.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter White\u2019s questioning, the claimants\u2019 lawyer, David Sherborne, allowed Harry to speak more about how Associated Newspapers\u2019 alleged actions have impacted his life. According to BBC News, Harry called it a \u201ctraumatic experience\u201d to recount the contents of the articles. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHaving my life, like others, commercialized in this way since I was a teenager, delving into every single aspect of my private life, listening into calls, blagging flights, so that they could find out where I\u2019m going \u2026 To sit here and go through this all over again and have them give their own defense and claim that I don\u2019t have any right to any privacy is disgusting,\u201d Harry said (via BBC News). <\/p>\n

\n\tHe then grew visibly emotional, saying that his life has only \u201cgot worse, not better\u201d in the process of suing Associated Newspapers and that they have \u201cmade my wife\u2019s life an absolute misery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis marks Harry\u2019s third time suing a major newspaper group, having previously taken legal action against The Sun owner News Group Newspapers, which settled before trial, as well as The Mirror Group, a case in which he was awareded \u00a3140,600 in damages. Harry\u2019s testimony during his 2023 trial against The Mirror Group made history, as he became the first royal in 130 years to testify in court.<\/p>\n

\n\tSherborne alleged in his opening statement that \u201cthere was clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering at both the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.\u201d White countered that the group is \u201cclutching at straws\u201d and that information in some of the stories had been published previously, with some of it coming from friends of the claimants who became sources for journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prince Harry grew emotional as he took the stand at London\u2019s High Court on Wednesday in his privacy…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":533242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[54786,50,9342,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-533241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-daily-mail","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-prince-harry","11":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115935676378953870","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}