Duke of Sussex tells Good Morning America that, if nothing changes, future partners might be ‘treated the same as Meghan’
Prince Harry has expressed concern for the “young kids” within the Royal family, saying he hoped his efforts to reform the monarchy would help them.
The Duke of Sussex told US breakfast show Good Morning America that, if nothing changed, their future partners might be treated the same as Meghan.
The comment suggests his aim is to change the royal model for future “spares” such as Princess Charlotte, seven, and four-year-old Prince Louis.
Asked about the Royal family’s perceived “co-dependency” with the tabloid media, he said: “I worry about other young kids within that family if this continues.
“Because who’s to say that someone else doesn’t fill my shoes and that their partner, whether it’s a husband or a wife or boyfriend or a girlfriend, doesn’t get treated exactly the same as Meghan did?”
The Duke has faced criticism for making a slew of intimate revelations in his memoir, Spare. But he insisted the book, which is officially published on Tuesday, could not make things any worse because they had already hit rock bottom.
He claimed Prince William was “jealous” of his role as the “spare” because he had more freedom. But he did not rule out a future role working for the monarchy, admitting that he and his wife want to support the Commonwealth and that was “of course on the table”.
The pre-recorded interview was the third to be broadcast within 24 hours as the Duke embarked on a media blitz to promote his book.
On Sunday night, he spoke to Tom Bradby on ITV and Anderson Cooper on CBS, accusing the Prince and Princess of Wales of “stereotyping” Meghan as a bi-racial divorcee and insisting he had never accused the Royal family of racism during his Oprah Winfrey interview.
He also suggested that the Queen Consort was a “villain” who had leaked stories as the royals “got in bed with the devil”, and claimed his family was “complicit” in helping to drive Meghan away from the UK.
Harry: The Interview on ITV had an average audience of 4.1 million TV viewers over 90 minutes, but was beaten by the BBC’s Happy Valley, which was on at the same time and had an average of 5.3 million viewers, according to overnight figures.
The Duke told Good Morning America that he hoped he would one day be “joined at the hip” with Prince William again, claiming that their alignment would “terrify” the press.
He also repeated his view that the family would not find peace “until the truth is out there”.
He added: “There’s a lot that I can forgive, but there needs to be conversations in order for reconciliation and part of that has to be accountability.
“I just hope that there’s a way that we can have a conversation that is trusted within that conversation that isn’t then spilled to the British press. That’s where I am.”
The Duke blamed the press for driving a wedge between Meghan and the Princess of Wales, suggesting that the coverage influenced how they behaved more than their personal experiences.
On making amends, he added: “What people don’t know is the efforts that I’ve gone to [in order] to resolve this privately, both with my brother and with my father.”
The Duke said he thought William was jealous of his position as the spare, telling US anchor Michael Strahan: “But I have more freedom than he does, right? So his life is planned out for him. I have more flexibility to be able to choose the life that I wanted.”
He said he “genuinely” believed the monarchy should continue but that there was only a place for it in the 21st century if it modernised, claiming the royals had missed a “huge” opportunity to modernise the monarchy through what Meghan represented as a bi-racial woman.
“It’s what she said to me right from the beginning, representation,” he said. “And I, as a privileged white man, didn’t really understand what she was talking about.”
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