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The Haunting of Prince Harry

By Rebecca Mead

Balmoral Castle, in the Scottish Highlands, was Queen Elizabeth’s preferred resort among her several castles and palaces, and in the opening pages of “ Spare ” (Random House), the much anticipated, luridly leaked, and compellingly artful autobiography of Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, its environs are intimately described. We get the red-coated footman attending the heavy front door; the mackintoshes hanging on hooks; the cream-and-gold wallpaper; and the statue of Queen Victoria, to which Harry and his older brother, William, always bowed when passing. Beyond lay the castle’s fifty bedrooms—including the one known in the brothers’ childhood as the nursery, unequally divided into two. William occupied the larger half, with a double bed and a splendid view; Harry’s portion was more modest, with a bed frame too high for a child to scale, a mattress that sagged in the middle, and crisp bedding that was “pulled tight as a snare drum, so expertly smoothed that you could easily spot the century’s worth of patched holes and tears.”

It was in this bedroom, early in the morning of August 31, 1997, that Harry, aged twelve, was awakened by his father, Charles, then the Prince of Wales, with the terrible news that had already broken across the world: the princes’ mother, Princess Diana, from whom Charles had been divorced a year earlier and estranged long before that, had died in a car crash in Paris. “He was standing at the edge of the bed, looking down,” Harry writes of the moment in which he learned of the loss that would reshape his personality and determine the course of his life. He goes on to describe his father’s appearance with an unusual simile: “His white dressing gown made him seem like a ghost in a play.”

What ghost would that be, and what play? The big one, of course, bearing the name of that other brooding princely Aitch: Hamlet. Within the first few pages of “Spare,” Shakespeare’s play is alluded to more than once. There’s a jocular reference: “To beard or not to beard” is how Harry foreshadows a contentious family debate over whether he should be clean-shaven on his wedding day. And there’s an instance far graver: an account, in the prologue, of a fraught encounter between Harry, William, and Charles in April, 2021, a few hours after the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen’s husband and the Royal Family’s patriarch, at Windsor. The meeting had been called by Harry in the vain hope that he might get his obdurate parent and sibling, first and second in line to the throne, to see why he and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, had felt it necessary to flee Britain for North America, relinquishing their royal roles, if not their ducal titles. The three men met in Frogmore Gardens, on the Windsor estate, which includes the last resting place of many illustrious ancestors, and as they walked its gravel paths they talked with increasing tension about their apparently irreconcilable differences. They “were now smack in the middle of the Royal Burial Ground,” Harry writes, “more up to our ankles in bodies than Prince Hamlet.”

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King Charles, as he became upon the death of Queen Elizabeth , in September, will not find much to like in “Spare,” which may offer the most thoroughgoing scything of treacherous royals and their scheming courtiers since the Prince of Denmark’s bloody swath through the halls of Elsinore. Queen Camilla, formerly “the Other Woman” in Charles and Diana’s unhappy marriage, is, Harry judges, “dangerous,” having “sacrificed me on her personal PR altar.” William’s wife, Kate, now the Princess of Wales, is haughty and cool, brushing off Meghan’s homeopathic remedies. William himself is domineering and insecure, with a wealth of other deficits: “his familiar scowl, which had always been his default in dealings with me; his alarming baldness, more advanced than my own; his famous resemblance to Mummy, which was fading with time.” Charles is, for the most part, more tenderly drawn. In “Spare,” the King is a figure of tragic pathos, whose frequently repeated term of endearment for Harry, “darling boy,” most often precedes an admission that there is nothing to be done—or, at least, nothing he can do—about the burden of their shared lot as members of the nation’s most important, most privileged, most scrutinized, most publicly dysfunctional family. “Please, boys—don’t make my final years a misery,” he pleads, in Harry’s account of the burial-ground showdown.

As painful as Charles must find the book’s revealing content, he might grudgingly approve of Harry’s Shakespearean flourishes in delivering it. Thirty-odd years ago, in giving the annual Shakespeare Birthday Lecture at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon, the future monarch spoke of the eternal relevance of the playwright’s insights into human nature, citing, among other references, Hamlet’s monologue with the phrase “What a piece of work is a man!” Shakespeare, Charles told his audience, offers us “blunt reminders of the flaws in our own personalities, and of the mess which we so often make of our lives.” In “Spare,” Harry describes his father’s devotion to Shakespeare, paraphrasing Charles’s message about the Bard’s works in terms that seem to refer equally to that other pillar of British identity, the monarchy: “They’re our shared heritage, we should be cherishing them, safeguarding them, and instead we’re letting them die.”

Harry counts himself among “the Shakespeareless hordes,” bored and confused as a teen-ager when his father drags him to see performances of the Royal Shakespeare Company; disinclined to read much of anything, least of all the freighted works of Britain’s national author. (“Not really big on books,” he confesses to Meghan Markle when, on their second date, she tells him she’s having an “Eat, Pray, Love” summer, and he has no idea what she’s on about.) Harry at least gives a compelling excuse for his inability to discover what his father so valued, though it’s probably not one that he gave to his schoolmasters at Eton. “I tried to change,” he recalls. “I opened Hamlet . Hmm: Lonely prince, obsessed with dead parent, watches remaining parent fall in love with dead parent’s usurper . . . ? I slammed it shut. No, thank you.”

That passage indicates another spectral figure haunting the text of “Spare”—that of Harry’s ghostwriter, J. R. Moehringer. Harry, or his publishing house—which paid a reported twenty-million-dollar advance for the book—could not have chosen better. Moehringer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter turned memoirist and novelist, as well as the ghostwriter of, most notably, Andre Agassi’s thrillingly candid memoir, “ Open .” In that book, published in 2009, a tennis ace once reviled for his denim shorts and flowing mullet revealed himself to be a troubled, tennis-hating neurotic with father issues and an unreliable hairpiece. When the title and the cover art of “Spare” were made public, late last year, the kinship between the two books—single-word title; closeup, set-jaw portrait—indicated that they were to be understood as fraternal works in the Moehringer œuvre. Moehringer has what is usually called a novelist’s eye for detail, effectively deployed in “Spare.” That patched, starched bed linen at Balmoral, emblazoned with E.R., the formal initials of the Queen , is, of course, a metaphor for the constricting, and quite possibly threadbare, fabric of the institution of monarchy itself.

Moehringer has also bestowed upon Harry the legacy that his father was unable to force on him: a felicitous familiarity with the British literary canon. The language of Shakespeare rings in his sentences. Those wanton journalists who publish falsehoods or half-truths? They treat the royals as insects: “What fun, to pluck their wings,” Harry writes, in an echo of “King Lear,” a play about the fragility of kingly authority. During his military training as a forward air controller, a role in which he guided the flights and firepower of pilots from an earthbound station, Harry describes the release of bombs as “spirits melting into air”—a phrase drawn from “The Tempest,” a play about a duke in exile across the water. Elevating flourishes like these give readers—perhaps British ones in particular—a shiver of recognition, as if the chords of “Jerusalem” were being struck on a church organ. But they also remind those readers of the necessary literary artifice at work in the enterprise of “Spare,” as Moehringer shapes Harry’s memories and obsessions, traumas and bugbears, into a coherent narrative: the peerless ghostwriter giving voice to the Shakespeareless prince.

Moehringer has fashioned the Duke of Sussex’s life story into a tight three-act drama, consisting of his occasionally wayward youth; his decade of military service, which included two tours of duty in Afghanistan; and his relationship with Meghan. Throughout, there are numerous bombshells, which—thanks to the o’er hasty publication of the book’s Spanish edition—did not so much melt into air as materialize into clickbait. These included the allegation that, in 1998, Camilla leaked word to a tabloid of her first meeting with Prince William—according to Harry, the opening sally in a campaign to secure marriage to Charles and a throne by his side. (Harry does not mention that, at the time, Camilla’s personal assistant took responsibility for the leak—she’d told her husband, a media executive, who’d told a friend, who’d told someone at the Sun , who’d printed it. Bloody journalists.) They also include less consequential but more titillating arcana, such as Harry’s account of losing his virginity, in a field behind a pub, to an unnamed older woman, who treated him “not unlike a young stallion. Quick ride, after which she’d smacked my rump and sent me off to graze.” The Daily Mail , Harry’s longtime media nemesis, had a field day with that revelation, door-stepping a now forty-four-year-old businesswoman to come up with the deathless headline “Horse-loving ex-model six years older than Harry, who once breathlessly revealed the Prince left her mouth numb with passionate kissing in a muddy field, refuses to discuss whether she is the keen horsewoman who took his virginity in a field.”

The leaks have done the book’s sales no harm, and neither have Harry’s pre-publication interviews on “Good Morning America” and “60 Minutes”; in the U.K., Harry did an hour-and-a-half-long special with Tom Bradby, the journalist to whom Meghan tearfully bemoaned, in the fall of 2019, that “not many people have asked if I’m O.K.” But “Spare” is worth reading not just for its headline-generating details but also for its narrative force, its voice, and its sometimes surprising wit. Harry describes his trepidation in telling his brother that he intended to propose to Meghan: William “predicted a host of difficulties I could expect if I hooked up with an ‘American actress,’ a phrase he always managed to make sound like ‘convicted felon’ ”—an observation so splendid that a reader can only hope it was actually Harry’s.

There is much in the book that people conversant with the contours of the Prince’s life, insofar as they have hitherto been reported, will find familiar. At the same time, Harry bursts any number of inaccurate reports, including a rumored flirtation with another convicted fel— sorry, American actress, Cameron Diaz: “I was never within fifty meters of Ms. Diaz, further proof that if you like reading pure bollocks then royal biographies are just your thing.” Not a few of the incidents Harry chooses to describe in detail are centered on images or stories already in the public domain, such as being beset by paparazzi when leaving night clubs—he explains that he started being ferried away in the trunk of his driver’s car so as to avoid lashing out at his pursuers—and being required to perform uncomfortable media interviews while serving in Afghanistan in exchange for the newspapers’ keeping shtum about his deployment, for security reasons. (An Australian publication blew the embargo, and Harry was swiftly extracted from the battlefield.)

Given that what Harry dredges up from his past are so often things that have been publicly documented, one wonders whether Moehringer was obliged to indulge Harry’s extended dilation upon media-inflicted wounds , through Zoom sessions that even sympathetic readers will find exhausting to contemplate. There is a certain amount of score-settling and record-straightening, which, though obviously important to the author, can be wearying to a reader, who may feel that if she has to read another word about those accursed bridesmaids’ dresses—of who said what to whom, and who caused whom to cry—she just might burst into tears herself. More significantly, though, there are broadsides against unforgivable intrusions committed by the press, including phone hacking. (Harry is still engaged in lawsuits against a number of British newspapers that allegedly intercepted his voice mails more than a dozen years ago.)

And then there are pages and pages devoted to Harry’s personal trials, which even the most dogged reporter on Fleet Street would not dare dream of uncovering. Chief among these is Harry’s struggle to overcome penile frostnip after a charitable Arctic excursion with a group of veterans, which ends up in a clandestine visit to a Harley Street doctor; he writes, “North Pole, I told him. I went to the North Pole and now my South Pole is on the fritz.” “On the fritz” is an Americanism that we can hope Harry picked up while guiding American pilots—he calls them Yanks—back to base in Afghanistan, rather than the exchange being the ingenious invention of his ghostwriter. Moehringer, on the whole, does a good job of conveying the laddish argot of a millennial British prince, who addresses his friends as “mate” and—repeatedly—calls his penis his “todger.”

Above all, “Spare” is worth reading for its potential historical import, which is likely to resonate, if not to the crack of doom, then well into the reign of King Charles III, and even into that of his successor. As was the case in 1992 with the publication of “ Diana: Her True Story ,” by Andrew Morton—to whom, it was revealed after her death, the Princess of Wales gave her full coöperation, herself the ghost behind the writer—“Spare” is an unprecedented exposure of the Royal Family from the most deeply embedded of informants. The Prince in exile does not hesitate to detail the pettiness, the vanity, and the inglorious urge toward self-preservation of those who are now the monarchy’s highest-ranking representatives.

It’s not clear that even now, having authored a book, Harry entirely understands what a book is; when challenged by Tom Bradby about his decision to reveal private conversations after having railed so forcefully about the invasive tactics of the press, Harry replied, “The level of planting and leaking from other members of the family means that in my mind they have written countless books—certainly, millions of words have been dedicated to trying to trash my wife and myself to the point of where I had to leave my country.” Pity the poor ghostwriter who has to hear his craft compared to the spewing verbiage of the media churn—by its commissioning subject, no less. (Man, what a piece of work.) Remarkably, Prince Harry has suggested that he sees the book as an invitation to reconciliation, addressed to his father and brother—a way of speaking to them publicly when all his efforts to address them privately have failed to persuade. “Spare” is, you might say, Prince Harry’s “Mousetrap”—a literary device intended to catch the conscience of the King, and the King after him.

If so, the ruse seems about as likely to end well for Harry as Hamlet’s play-within-a-play efforts did for him. Moehringer, at least, knows this, even if Harry may hope that his own royal plot will swerve unexpectedly from implacable tragedy to restitutive melodrama. In a soaring coda, Moehringer has the Prince once again reflecting on the royal dead, describing the family he belongs to as nothing less than a death cult. “We christened and crowned, graduated and married, passed out and passed over our beloveds’ bones. Windsor Castle itself was a tomb, the walls filled with ancestors,” Harry writes. It’s a powerful motif: the Prince—shattered in childhood by his mother’s death, his every step determined by the inescapable legacy of the countless royal dead—as an unwilling Hamlet pushed, rather than leaping, into the grave.

Recalling the meeting with his father and brother in the Frogmore burial ground with which the book began, Harry invokes the most famous soliloquy from the play of Shakespeare’s that he says he once slammed shut: “Why were we here, lurking along the edge of that ‘undiscover’d country, from whose bourn no traveller returns?’ ” Then comes a final, lovely, true, and utterly poetry-puncturing observation: “Though maybe that’s a more apt description of America.” In moving to the paradisaical climes of California, Harry has been spared a life he had no use for, which had no real use for him. The unlettered Prince has gained in life what Hamlet achieved only in death: his own story shaped on his own terms, thanks to the intervention of a skillful Horatio. You might almost call it Harry’s crowning achievement. ♦

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Harry: A Biography of a Prince Audio CD – Unabridged, May 3, 2018

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• Print length 1 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Blackstone Audiobooks
• Publication date May 3, 2018
• Dimensions 5.8 x 0.9 x 5.7 inches
• ISBN-10 1982501510
• ISBN-13 978-1982501518
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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Blackstone Audiobooks; Unabridged edition (May 3, 2018)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Audio CD ‏ : ‎ 1 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1982501510
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1982501518
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.8 x 0.9 x 5.7 inches
• #5,278 in Royalty Biographies
• #35,522 in Books on CD

About the author

Angela levin.

Angela Levin writes regularly for national newspapers in the UK. She specialises in in-depth interviews and has been commended several times in the British Press Awards. She is also the author of six non-fiction books, including a biography of the late Princess of Wales’s father and stepmother. She broadcasts regularly on radio and Sky News. Diana's Baby: Kate, William and the Repair of a Broken Family is her newest book, published by emBooks, a division of Melanie Phillips Electric Media.

Angela started her journalistic career as a researcher on the Observer magazine and went on to write a weekly interview column. She moved to You, the Mail on Sunday magazine, where she continued with her weekly interview slot, talking to a wide range of celebrities and others in the news. Her subjects included Paloma Picasso, Gordon Brown MP, Trevor

Eve, Diana Ross, JK Rowling, Kylie Minogue, Kenneth Clarke MP, PD James and Muhammad Ali. She left to join the Daily Mail as a senior interviewer, where she also wrote an agony-aunt column and commentaries on issues of morality and current affairs.

Angela moved from the Daily Mail in 2005 to concentrate on writing books. Her previous titles include Loving Peter – My Life with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore; Max Clifford: Read All About It; Raine and Johnnie: The Spencers and the Scandal of Althorp; Secret Places: a guide to sites in the UK; A Chance to Live; how the Marchioness of Tavistock fought for her husband’s life and recovery following a severe stroke; Margaret Thatcher: a biography for children.

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Table of Contents

About the book, about the author.

Angela Levin, the author of nine books, writes for The Daily Mail and Newsweek. Her profile of HRH The Duchess of Cornwall was a cover story for Newsweek worldwide in 2015. This was followed by a substantial profile and cover story on Prince Harry for Newsweek. The feature on Price Harry appeared in June 2017 and appeared in headlines worldwide. She will appear on major media for Harry: A Biography of a Prince. Please visit her website www.angelalevin.co.uk.

Product Details

• Publisher: Pegasus Books (May 3, 2018)
• Length: 304 pages
• ISBN13: 9781681779102

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• What Is Cinema?

The Story Behind Prince Harry’s Democratic Roots

By Hadley Hall Meares

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It was a poignant comment. On his way home from his second tour in Afghanistan in 2013, Prince Harry responded to a reporter’s question. “Normal for me? I don’t know what is normal anymore. I never really have.”

It hasn’t been for lack of trying. Since childhood, Prince Harry has claimed to be searching for a normal, more equitable life. Uncomfortable with the royal hierarchy, Harry and Meghan Markle have made a new life in the United States. Here they have traded the rarefied world of the constitutional monarchy for Hollywood, a place populated by those whose talent or drive have propelled them to the heights.

Harry’s democratic roots seem to have been instilled in him by his mother, Princess Diana. Herself a child of privilege, she was determined to make sure Prince Harry and Prince William understood life outside of the palace walls.

“Princess Di insisted that she herself would be responsible for the upbringing of William and Harry,” says Nigel Cawthorne, author of Call Me Diana: The Princess of Wales on Herself . “Royal children, like Charles , were previously handed over to a nanny who had her own four footmen. Even the queen was only allowed to see her children if the nanny agreed.”

Diana was particularly insistent that the boys would receive their education at a normal school with non-royal classmates. “Diana won her argument with Charles about sending their sons to school with other children from the start, rather than having them tutored in the palace, as Charles was before he was shipped off to a boarding school—an experience he despised yet he seemed to think would be appropriate to repeat it with his own boys,” says royal historian Leslie Carroll, author of American Princess: The Love Story of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry .

She also made sure the boys were exposed to everyday actions that seem comical to commoners. “Diana gave them pocket change so they would understand how ‘normal’ people lived, because Charles never gave the boys money and didn’t understand why they needed it,” Carroll says. “Diana may have had many faults, but a lack of empathy wasn’t one of them. She wanted her sons to grow up knowing what the real world was like,” says Christopher Andersen, author of the Brothers and Wives: Inside the Private Lives of William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan . “That meant trips to McDonald’s, amusement parks, go-kart tracks, and the movies—where, in sharp contrast to their royal cousins, she made the princes wait in line with everybody else.”

In Harry: A Biography of a Prince , royal journalist Angela Levin recounts one morning when Diana brought the boys to Selfridges to see Santa. Even though they arrived at 9 a.m., there was already a line, and the boys waited with everyone else. Harry left the store with a giant teddy bear.

Much like his mother, from a young age the gregarious Harry, who former bodyguard Ken Wharfe reportedly compared to a friendly Labrador who liked everyone, sought out friendships with those outside the royal bubble. “In hindsight, Harry, more so than William…seems to have internalized the democratic nature, and the excitement, of being able to mingle with everyone else,” Carroll says.

He seemed to particularly like seeking out friendships with employees at the various royal residences. “Even as a small child, he was eager to rake leaves with the palace groundskeepers or help out in the kitchen,” Andersen says. “Harry was always the hands-down favorite of the royal worker bees—the bodyguards, butlers, footmen, maids, cooks, and nannies who keep the whole thing running.”

Diana also made sure that William and Harry felt comfortable connecting with people who faced enormous hardships—taking them to missions, rescues, and hospitals. “Diana drummed compassion into her boys,” Andersen explains. “[She]  trained  them to be more than those cardboard cutout figures waving from the Buckingham Palace balcony.”

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Prince Harry has credited his mother with his ability to connect with people from all walks of life. “My mother took a huge part in showing me an ordinary life, including taking me and my brother to see homeless people. Thank goodness I’m not completely cut off from reality,” Prince Harry told Levin.

After his mother’s death in 1997, a lost Harry found in military life a way to disappear into a team. In 2005, he entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as Officer Cadet Wales. While he was never academically gifted, he excelled as a soldier, and relished the opportunity to be one of the guys. Levin writes in Harry: A Biography of a Prince :

He called his fellow cadets “really good guys” who treated him “normally” and “always give me support if some rubbish comes up in the papers.” It made him feel “really lucky”; one of the best things about Sandhurst, he said, was knowing “you’ve got a platoon of guys, that everyone’s going through the same thing and the best thing about that is being able to fit in as just a normal person.”

After graduating from Sandhurst, Prince Harry was commissioned as an army officer in 2006. “The happiest times in my life were the 10 years in the army. Without question,” Prince Harry shared in the Apple TV+ docuseries The Me You Can’t See . “Because I got to wear the same uniform as everybody else. I had to do all the same training as everybody else. I started from the bottom up like everybody else.”

“To Harry, the modern British military was a democratic institution in the first place, where promotion was based on merit, and he was bunking with men from all social strata, all focused on the same mission,” Carroll says. “And it was vital to him to be just Harry Wales, one of the lads, comrades in arms, all in it together, in the same gritty circumstances eating the same shitty food. His Army ID number was WA 4673A and to the other pilots he was simply known as call sign ‘Widow Six Seven.’”

Throughout his military career, which included two tours of Afghanistan, Harry treasured the friendships he made with other soldiers. “This is what it is all about, what it’s all about is being here with the guys rather than being in a room with a bunch of officers,” he said. “I think this is about as normal as I’m ever going to get.”

Harry seemed to crave the approval of people from more typical backgrounds and was eager to prove he wasn’t just a snobby royal. “More than any of the other princes…Harry went out of his way to bond with his fellow soldiers, taking on the dirtiest and most dangerous assignments, kicking around a soccer ball with them in the middle of the desert, pulling practical jokes,” Andersen says. “He always wanted to be treated like just one of the guys, and he got his wish.” 

However, Harry’s royal status inevitably got in the way. During his first tour of Afghanistan in 2008, he was pulled out of the country when the media revealed his location. “I felt very resentful. Being in the army was the best escape I’ve ever had,” he remembered. “I felt as though I was really achieving something. I have a deep understanding of all sorts of people from different backgrounds and felt I was part of a team…I also wasn’t a prince. I was just Harry.”

After leaving the army in 2015, Harry increasingly became one of the Firm’s most effective communicators, much like his mother had been before. It was something he prided himself on and seemed insistent on proving. “Thank goodness I’m not completely cut off from reality, but not everyone can understand that I can be a prince and still understand them,” he once said.

“It’s awfully hard not to look at Harry and see something of yourself in him—a disarming measure of self-doubt beneath the cloak of affability,” Andersen says. “Harry may look like a relaxed, casual character, but I think he works hard at it.”

From the start of their courtship, Harry and Meghan both spoke of yearning to live a more ordinary life and relished the simple pleasure of sharing meals together or going on dates undetected. According to Robert Lacey, author of Battle of Brothers: William and Harry—The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult , Queen Elizabeth sympathized with this impulse. He writes:

She had heard and read much of Harry and Meghan’s wish to live an “ordinary” existence…she could recall such a period in her own life—her “Malta Moments” between 1949 and 1951, when Philip was serving as a naval officer on the Mediterranean island and she would fly out to stay with him. In Malta, Elizabeth had tasted “normal” life as a young naval officer’s wife, not a king’s daughter…and [did] own shopping with real money out of her handbag.

Despite the queen’s empathy, it became increasingly clear that the Sussexes would never be able to escape the royal fishbowl in England. They increasingly looked to America—much as Princess Diana had after her divorce. “Diana always felt at a home in the U.S., where her openness, compassion, and charisma made her even more popular than she was in Britain,” Andersen says.

According to Carroll, it was an affinity shared by her youngest son. “Even when Harry was a boy, America came to symbolize a concept of freedom to be oneself—whether actually true or not—that he didn’t have as a member of the British royal family,” she says. “Britain’s social hierarchy has always been class-based, rather than a meritocracy, and Harry has expressed discomfort with the concept that solely because of his birthright he’s a notch, or several, ‘more than’ those he interacts with, goes to school with, or works alongside.”

Andersen agrees. “Harry always seemed an ideal fit for life in America, and his marriage to Meghan sealed the deal,” he says. “Harry has always seemed slightly embarrassed by his position at the top of Britain's class system and would like nothing better than to fit in like a regular bloke—something his father, Prince Charles, was congenitally incapable of doing.”

Since his family’s move to Montecito, California, Harry has spoken of enjoying simple things like riding a bike with his son and walking on the beach unnoticed. Of course, it is impossible not to point to the inherent contradictions in his new lifestyle. “I’m not sure that living on an [seven-acre] estate in California can be considered a normal life,” Cawthorne says. “It is hard to deny that by signing a deal with Netflix and appearing with Oprah he is trading on the fame endowed on him by birth. The latter is the essence of royalty; he has adapted it to modern times.”

But Carroll believes that in moving to America, Harry has the freedom to make it or break it on his own terms, despite the privilege of his position.

“Harry had wanted to earn a wage and mix with ordinary people before he became a full-time working royal,” she says. “Who expects him to become a hermit after leaving the U.K. for California? When was that ever part of the equation? In America he can continue to focus on, and bring awareness to, the same philanthropic and charitable interests that he did in the U.K. In fact, now that he is no longer a working senior royal, he is also no longer financially constrained.”

In other words, in America, Meghan and Harry get to define their version of ordinary contentment of success just like everyone else.

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Meghan Markle

Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, married Prince Harry in 2018 at St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.

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1981-present

Who Is Meghan Markle?

Rachel Meghan Markle was born on August 4, 1981, in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Doria, a clinical therapist and yoga instructor, and Thomas, a television lighting and photography director.

When she was 11, Markle wrote a letter to various notables, including then-First Lady Hillary Clinton , about a TV advertisement featuring the idea of women being bogged down by greasy cookware. The youngster deemed the ad sexist when male classmates started yelling, upon seeing the commercial, that the kitchen is where women belonged. (The language of the ad was subsequently changed.) Markle went on to study theater and international relations at Northwestern University School of Communication, graduating in 2003.

In 2002, Markle landed her first TV role with a guest spot on General Hospital , and she went on to appear in a number of other series that included Cuts , The War at Home , CSI: NY and 90210 . As a biracial actress, Markle would eventually talk about the challenges of navigating Hollywood’s check-a-box casting landscape while also finding her voice as an actress.

Starring Role in 'Suits'

In 2011, Markle had her big break, landing the role of paralegal Rachel Zane on the USA network series Suits , co-starring Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams and Gina Torres. The legal drama centers on the shifting intrigues of a Manhattan corporate law firm, with the savvy Zane attending Columbia Law School to pursue her own dreams of becoming an attorney. The show became a top performer among USA Network’s scripted programs and began taping its seventh season in 2017, though the network announced that Markle would be leaving the program following the news of her engagement to Prince Harry.

Markle has done big-screen work as well, appearing in such films as Get Him to the Greek (2010), Horrible Bosses (2011) and Anti-Social (2015), as well as the TV movies When Sparks Fl y (2014) and Dater’s Handbook (2016).

Romance With Prince Harry and Wedding

Previously best known for her role on the TV series Suits , Markle made international headlines when it was revealed in 2016 that she was seriously dating Prince Harry of Great Britain. The two met while Harry was attending the Invictus Games in Toronto, where Suits is filmed. Much speculation ensued about the direction of their romance, with Markle becoming the most Googled actress of 2016 as a result of the relationship. Yet some of the scrutiny was toxic, with Kensington Palace issuing a statement calling for the couple’s privacy to be respected and pointing out the indecency of racist and sexist online trolling directed at the actress.

On November 27, 2017, Markle and Prince Harry revealed that they had secretly gotten engaged earlier in the month. Among the congratulatory messages, Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge , said, "It has been wonderful getting to know Meghan and to see how happy she and Harry are together."

A few weeks later, Kensington Palace announced that the royal wedding would take place May 19, 2018, in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. The news came shortly after Google's announcement that Markle had topped the year-end rankings for most searched actress for the second year in a row, finishing only behind fired TV personality Matt Lauer for 2017's most Googled person. On December 21, fans found another reason to hit their search engines with the release of the couple's official portrait photographs.

In January 2018, it was confirmed that Markle was adhering to royal tradition by shutting down her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Through Kensington Palace, Markle said she was "grateful to everyone who has followed her social media accounts over the years."

On February 10, more details about the royal wedding emerged: After the marriage ceremony, scheduled to begin at 12 p.m. U.K. time, the newlyweds would ride in a carriage along the High Street through Windsor Town, before returning to Windsor Castle along the Long Walk. Later, following an afternoon break, they would attend a private evening reception hosted by Prince Charles .

Markle made headlines by breaking royal protocol — albeit in adorable fashion — during a visit to Birmingham on International Women's Day in March 2018. Introduced to a 10-year-old student, who told the soon-to-be princess that she wanted to become an actress, Markle gave the girl a hug, violating the handshake-only rule in place for the royal family.

News soon leaked that the couple would not sign a prenuptial agreement before the big day, despite their hefty individual assets. Insiders pointed to the lack of prenup enforcement in U.K. courts, as well as Prince Harry's steadfast belief that the marriage would be a lasting one.

In late March, it was reported that the duchess-to-be and her family would receive a specially designed coat of arms from Kensington Palace before the wedding. Markle's father, a U.S. citizen residing in Mexico, reportedly needed to prove one of his ancestors was a subject of the Crown in order to receive his gift. Markle's coat of arms was expected to be completed in time to feature on the souvenir program for the royal wedding, with elements from that design and Prince Harry's to be incorporated into the coats of their future children.

On May 19, 2018, the couple married at St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. The bride wore a dress designed by Clare Waight Keller for Givenchy. Shortly before the wedding, Queen Elizabeth conferred Markle with the title of Meghan, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Sussex.

Markle later revealed that three days prior to the public wedding, she and Harry actually had a small ceremony with just them and the archbishop of Canterbury.

Pre-Wedding Family Drama

On the eve of Markle and Harry's nuptials, a few members of Markle's family became the subject of tabloid drama that unfolded on an almost daily basis.

Markle's half-brother, Thomas Markle Jr., wrote a handwritten letter, warning Prince Harry, not to marry Markle, describing her as a "jaded, shallow, conceited woman that will make a joke of you and the royal family heritage." Clearly offended he wasn't invited to the wedding, he added: "... To top it all off, she doesn’t invite her own family and instead invites complete strangers to the wedding. Who does that?" The letter was published in In Touch on May 2nd.

Shortly after, Markle's father, Thomas Sr., who was expected to walk his daughter down the aisle, was caught allegedly staging photos of himself that showed him preparing for the big day. When the news broke, Markle's father was so embarrassed, he told reporters he was rescinding his invitation.

If that weren't enough, Markle's half-sister, Samantha, publicly interjected in their father's defense, claiming she was behind the staged photos because she had hoped it would put him in a good light. (Samantha, who was not invited to the wedding, is reportedly writing a book about her relationship with Markle and has granted interviews on various TV shows, despite reports that claim she and Markle were never close.)

Soon after, Thomas Sr. told the media he had recently suffered a heart attack and regretfully would not be going to the wedding. "I hate the idea of missing one of the greatest moments in history and walking my daughter down the aisle," he told TMZ .

After communicating with Markle, Thomas Sr. quickly changed his mind but ultimately had to return to the decision of not attending the wedding because he needed to undergo heart surgery.

Markle, through a statement from Kensington Palace, formally acknowledged her father would not be present. “Sadly, my father will not be attending our wedding. I have always cared for my father and hope he can be given the space he needs to focus on his health,” she stated.

Despite all the drama, Markle's mother, Doria Ragland, was reportedly in good spirits and already in London, socializing with the Royal Family and helping her daughter get ready for her big day.

READ MORE: Meghan Markle's Complicated Relationship With Her Father

On October 15, 2018, Markle and Prince Harry announced that they were expecting their first child in spring 2019. "Their Royal Highnesses have appreciated all of the support they have received from people around the world since their wedding in May and are delighted to be able to share this happy news with the public," Kensington Palace said in a statement.

The baby boy, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor , arrived at 5:26 a.m. on May 6, 2019. Seventh in line to the British throne, he was christened two months later in a private ceremony at Windsor Castle.

In November 2020, Markle revealed that she suffered a miscarriage in July of that year.

On Valentine's Day 2021, Markle and Prince Harry announced they're expecting their second child, a daughter. Lilibet "Lili" Diana Mountbatten-Windsor was born on June 4, 2021, at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California.

Life as the Duchess of Sussex

Following the wedding, the couple attended a birthday party for Prince Charles before heading off for their honeymoon. It was then on to more formal activities, with Markle making her Buckingham Palace balcony debut at Trooping the Colour, a ceremony to honor the Queen's birthday, on June 10.

Two days later, Kensington Palace announced plans for Markle and Harry's first royal tour: "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will undertake an official visit to Australia, Fiji, the Kingdom of Tonga, and New Zealand in the Autumn," read the announcement. "Their Royal Highnesses have been invited to visit the Realms of Australia and New Zealand by the countries’ respective governments. The Duke and Duchess will visit the Commonwealth countries of Fiji and Tonga at the request of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office."

In June 2019, Markle appeared at her first public event since giving birth by sharing a carriage with Prince Harry, the duchess of Cambridge and the duchess of Cornwall at Trooping the Color.

In late September 2019, Markle, Harry and son Archie headed to Africa for the baby's first royal tour. In October, ahead of the airing of the ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey , the duchess made headlines for a clip in which she revealed her struggles with being a new wife and mother amid intense media scrutiny.

Stepping Back From Royal Duties

On January 8, 2020, after spending the holiday season in Canada, Markle and Harry delivered the stunning announcement that they planned to "step back" from their senior roles in the royal family and work to become "financially independent."

"It is with your encouragement, particularly over the last few years, that we feel prepared to make this adjustment. We now plan to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America, continuing to honor our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages," they wrote in a joint statement on Instagram. "This geographic balance will enable us to raise our son with an appreciation for the royal tradition into which he was born, while also providing our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity."

A few days later, Buckingham Palace released a statement that addressed several details of the new arrangement, including confirmation that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would no longer receive public funds for royal duties or use the honorific His/Her Royal Highness styling. The Queen released an accompanying statement to express her support of the young couple, noting that she was "particularly proud of how Meghan has so quickly become one of the family."

Having set up shop in their new home base of Los Angeles, Markle and Harry closed their @SussexRoyal Instagram account and formally signed off as senior royals on March 31, 2020.

In February 2021, Markle and Harry confirmed that they would not be returning to their royal roles. They will retain their titles, but no longer use them. "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have confirmed to Her Majesty The Queen that they will not be returning as working members of The Royal Family," a statement from Buckingham Palace said. "Following conversations with The Duke, The Queen has written confirming that in stepping away from the work of The Royal Family it is not possible to continue with the responsibilities and duties that come with a life of public service."

Tabloid Lawsuit

Following their trip to Africa in early fall 2019, the royals announced their intention to sue Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Mail on Sunday , for editing and publishing a private letter sent by Markle to her father. According to the lawsuit, the act was "intrusive and unlawful" and part of an overall effort to tarnish her reputation.

The April 2020 pretrial hearing produced a setback to their case, as the overseeing judge agreed to strike Markle's claims that the publisher "acted dishonestly and in bad faith," "deliberately dug up or stirred up conflict between Meghan and her father" and had an "obvious agenda of publishing intrusive or offensive stories about [her] intended to portray her in a false and damaging light."

Oprah Interview

In March 2021, Markle and Harry sat down for a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey . In the two-hour special, Markle addressed harsh tabloid rumors, confided that she had suicidal thoughts, discussed issues of race – revealing that a member of the royal family was concerned about the skin tone of Markle and Harry's mixed-race children – and spoke about what finally led to the couple to step down as working members of the royal family.

"My hope for people in the takeaway from this is to know there is another side, to know that life is worth living," Markle said.

Personal Life and Ex-Husband

Markle dated producer Trevor Engelson for several years before the couple married in 2011. They divorced two years later.

Markle has a number of passions that include yoga (following in the footsteps of her mother), calligraphy and cuisine. She is also an essayist and has written for Elle UK , and ran her own lifestyle blog The Tig from 2014 to 2017. In 2021, she published her own children's book titled The Bench , which was inspired by a poem she wrote to Prince Harry for his first Father's Day. Markle's philanthropic efforts include being appointed a U.N. Women’s Advocate and working with the World Vision Clean Water Campaign, among other activities.

QUICK FACTS

• Birth date: August 4, 1981

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

• I learned the art of saying ‘no.’ Everyone tells you to strike when the iron’s hot, which is hard not to get sucked into. There comes a time when we need to say, ‘I have to take some time for me.’ I came to a point where I didn’t feel like I had a moment to breathe, so I had to learn gradually to give myself some quietude.
• While my mixed heritage may have created a grey area surrounding my self-identification, keeping me with a foot on both sides of the fence, I have come to embrace that. To say who I am, to share where I’m from, to voice my pride in being a strong, confident mixed-race woman.
• Women need a seat at the table, they need an invitation to be seated there, and in some cases, where this is not available, they need to create their own table. We need a global understanding that we cannot implement change effectively without women's political participation.
• With fame comes opportunity, but it also includes responsibility – to advocate and share, to focus less on glass slippers and more on pushing through glass ceilings. And, if I'm lucky enough, to inspire.
• My mom is a yoga instructor, 100 percent black with dreadlocks. And when people find out ‘that girl’ on 'Suits' is her daughter, there is often this disconnect and sometimes disbelief. It took me a long time to find myself.
• 'What are you?’ A question I get asked every week of my life, often every day. ‘Well,’ I say, as I begin the verbal dance I know all too well. 'I’m an actress, a writer, the Editor-in-Chief of my lifestyle brand The Tig, a pretty good cook and a firm believer in handwritten notes.'
• There are days where I’m stressed out and think: I have to hit my [yoga] mat. I need to work through my stuff and quiet my mind. The health benefits and all that other stuff comes afterward.
• In ['Suits'] ... every script seemed to begin with Rachel enters wearing a towel and I said 'No, I'm not doing it anymore, I'm not doing it.' So I rang the creator and I was like, 'It's just gratuitous, we get it, we've already seen it once.' So I think at a certain point you feel empowered enough to just say no.
• It’s either ironic or apropos that in this world of not fitting in, and of harboring my emotions so tightly under my ethnically nondescript (and not so thick) skin, that I would decide to become an actress. There couldn’t possibly be a more label-driven industry than acting, seeing as every audition comes with a character breakdown. ... But perhaps it is through this craft that I found my voice.

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

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Prince Harry

• Born September 15 , 1984 · City of Westminster, London, England, UK
• Birth name Henry Charles Albert David Mountbatten-Windsor
• The Party Prince
• Height 6′ 1¼″ (1.86 m)
• Prince Harry was born on September 15, 1984 in City of Westminster, London, England, UK. He is a producer and actor, known for Stroop: Journey into the Rhino Horn War (2018) , Princess Catherine: Queen in Waiting and Becoming the Princess Royal . He has been married to Meghan Markle since May 19, 2018. They have two children.
• Spouse Meghan Markle (May 19, 2018 - present) (2 children)
• Children Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor
• Parents King Charles III Princess Diana Queen Camilla
• Relatives Queen Elizabeth II (Grandparent) Prince Philip (Grandparent) Prince William of Wales (Sibling) Earl John Spencer (Grandparent) Frances Shand Kydd (Grandparent) Charles Spencer (Aunt or Uncle) Sarah McCorquodale (Aunt or Uncle) Jane Fellowes (Aunt or Uncle) King George VI (Great Grandparent) Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (Great Grandparent) Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (Great Grandparent) Princess Alice of Battenberg (Great Grandparent) Princess Beatrice (Cousin) Princess Eugenie (Cousin) Peter Phillips (Cousin) Zara Tindall (Cousin) Lady Louise Windsor (Cousin) James Earl of Wessex (Cousin) Prince George of Wales (Niece or Nephew) Princess Anne (Aunt or Uncle) Prince Andrew (Aunt or Uncle) Prince Edward (Aunt or Uncle) Princess Charlotte of Wales (Niece or Nephew) Prince Louis of Wales (Niece or Nephew) Isla Elizabeth Philips (Cousin) Lucas Philip Tindall (Cousin) Savannah Phillips (Cousin) Lena Elizabeth Tindall (Cousin) Sienna Elizabeth Mozzi (Cousin) August Philip Brooksbank (Cousin) Mia Tindall (Cousin)
• Had secretly deployed to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan from December 2007 to February 2008, which was confirmed by the British Ministry of Defence at the end of his active duty.
• Started losing his hair when he was 26.
• On his 18th birthday, the Queen gave him his own unique Coat of Arms.
• Was promoted to Captain in 2012. He now technically outranks his older brother.
• His military name was "Harry Wales" (according to his name tag) and also "Lieutenant Harry Wales".
• Kate (Middleton) is the sister I've always wanted.
• [on his role as a helicopter gunner in Afghanistan] Our job out here is to make sure the guys are safe on the ground, And, if that means shooting someone who is shooting at them, then we will do it.
• I've served my country.
• Conversations with my mother, father, my grandparents, as I've grown up have obviously driven me towards wanting to try and make a difference as much as possible.
• Anyone who says they don't enjoy the Army is mad - you can spend a week hating it and the next week it could be the best thing in the world and the best job you could ever, ever wish for. It has got so much to offer.

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Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Photo Taken Days Before Queen Elizabeth's Death Receives Honor — with Tie to Kate

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's friend and frequent photographer Misan Harriman shared the news on his Instagram

Stephanie Petit is a Royals Editor, Writer and Reporter at PEOPLE.

An image of Meghan Markle  and  Prince Harry from their life after stepping back as working members of the royal family is now part of the National Portrait Gallery's photograph collection.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's friend and frequent photographer Misan Harriman announced via Instagram on May 23 that one of his images of Meghan and Prince Harry was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, the world's largest portrait collection. The black and white picture showed Meghan and Harry from the side, holding hands before they took the stage at the One Young World Summit in Manchester, England.

The snap from Sept. 5, 2022 , was taken just three days before  Queen Elizabeth 's death. Meghan and Harry, who relocated to California in 2020 after stepping back as senior royals, were in Europe for a series of planned charity events and appearances when his grandmother died on Sept. 8, 2022, at age 96, concluding a historic 70-year reign. The pair stayed in England for the funerary events that followed.

"I am humbled and proud to announce that my portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is now part of the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery," Harriman captioned two posts on Instagram sharing the news. "Dare to dream folks!"

A spokesperson from the National Portrait Gallery tells PEOPLE that there are currently no immediate plans to display the image of Prince Harry and Meghan, adding that it will go through their cataloging process before it's available on their website.

Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage?  Sign up for our free Royals newsletter  to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more!

The news of Meghan and Prince Harry's photo entering the National Portrait Gallery also has a close tie to the royal family. Kate Middleton  became the royal patron of the National Portrait Gallery shortly after her 2011 wedding to Prince William . The Princess of Wales, who studied art history at the University of St. Andrews, has previously called herself an "enthusiastic amateur photographer."

Paul Grover - WPA Pool/Getty Images

Harriman has gotten behind the camera for many of Meghan and Harry's milestone moments with their family in recent years, including their 2021 pregnancy announcement of their second child and daughter  Princess Lilibet 's first birthday photo .

Earlier this month, the photographer joined the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their three-day trip to Nigeria , where he was born.

Harriman, who was nominated for an Oscar for his short film  The After , told PEOPLE in February that Meghan "is really as a sister to me ."

"I've been very lucky to photograph many special moments with her and her husband and her family,” he said.

"My images of them do all the talking," he explained. "Portraiture for me, whether it is royalty or whether I'm in the tip of the spear in any of the civil rights movements that I care deeply about, is looking for truth. That's fundamentally what my lens is there, to capture the human condition in full fidelity."

He continued: “Whether it's beautiful children and the great love and fortitude of this couple, or whether it is when the world decided to refuse to look away from what happened to  George Floyd , whether it's climate action, the gay and trans community is hugely important for me — my lens is always at their disposal, always will be."

Meghan  hosted a special screening and moderated a talkback  with Harriman and The After 's star David Oyelowo on Nov. 15 at a private residence in Montecito, California, where she and Prince Harry live with their two children, 4-year-old son  Prince Archie  and 2-year-old daughter Princess Lilibet. In a December  Instagram post  about the event, Harriman wrote that it was "extra special" to have Meghan and "so many of my film idols watch this film."

Emma McIntyre/Getty

Meghan also made a  surprise video appearance  to introduce Harriman before his  TED Talk , "The Power of an Image — and the Mind Behind It," in April 2023.

“To have her recognize this work,” he told PEOPLE, “is just something I'm really proud of. And I'm deeply thankful as well… little old me trying to get into this world that she knows so well.”

Related Articles

Photo of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle taken after leaving royal roles acquired by National Portrait Gallery

The duke and duchess of sussex have a close bond with misan harriman.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will be celebrating their close friend Misan Harriman as the photographer revealed a portrait he took of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex w ould become a permanent part of the National Portrait Gallery .

Taking to Instagram on Thursday, the 46-year-old confirmed that a black-and-white photograph of the royal couple had been added to their permanent collection. The stunning photograph captured Harry and Meghan holding hands as they looked dead ahead.

" I am humbled and proud to announce that my portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is now part of the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery ," Misan shared. "Dare to dream folks!"

Fans were quick to congratulate the star, as one penned: "I am so proud of you. You didn't listen to naysayers, you followed your heart, set goals and continue to achieve. I have huge respect for how you stand for equality, equity and you do it with integrity. You’re a wonderful role model to us all and I love seeing you succeed."

A second added: "Mate what an incredible reward to your hard work and perseverance. Thank you for showing us how hard work and dedication and love for the craft can pay off in such fantastic way. Well deserved. Big love."

Misan is a close friend of the Duke and Duchess and the royal couple allowed him to take photographs of their daughter, Princess Lilibet , when the young girl marked her first birthday .

The photographer has also captured snaps of Harry and Meghan as they appeared at the One Young World Summit in Manchester just days before Queen Elizabeth II's death. He also took the photos of Meghan's second pregnancy announcement .

It's not known how long Meghan and Misan have known each other but speaking to British Vogue the artist revealed they had met "long ago at a charity event".

He added: "Meg reminded me that had I not introduced her to a mutual friend then she wouldn't have met Harry. I'm grateful for whatever small part I played."

MORE:  Prince Harry and Meghan Markle join friends at restaurant in Montecito following Nigeria trip

READ:  Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's 'passionate' relationship explained

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Prince Harry Cannot Include Rupert Murdoch in Lawsuit, Court Rules

A judge ruled that the prince and other plaintiffs could not expand their claims of unlawful actions by News Group Newspapers in the U.K. to include allegations regarding Rupert Murdoch.

By Mark Landler

Reporting from London

Prince Harry was dealt a setback in his long-running legal campaign against Britain’s tabloids on Tuesday after a high court rejected a bid to draw Rupert Murdoch into allegations about how Mr. Murdoch’s London papers dug up personal details about him and later concealed or destroyed evidence of it.

Justice Timothy Fancourt ruled that lawyers for Harry and about 40 other plaintiffs could not amend their complaint against News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, to include Mr. Murdoch, the 93-year-old media mogul who controls the company, as well as other senior News Group executives.

“There is a desire on the part of those running the litigation on the claimants’ side to shoot at ‘trophy’ targets, whether those are political issues or high-profile individuals,” Justice Fancourt declared in the 284-page ruling . “This cannot become an end in itself. It only matters to the court so far as it is material and proportionate to the resolution of the individual causes of action.”

“The trial,” he added, “is not an inquiry.”

The judge also rejected Harry’s attempt to broaden the time frame of the alleged unlawful actions to before 1996 and after 2011, saying his lawyers had filed that amendment too late. That rules out allegations of actions targeted at his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, or his wife, Meghan.

The case, which is scheduled to go to trial in January, will mark one of the final chapters of the sprawling litigation that flowed out of the phone-hacking scandal — an episode that upended Britain’s newspaper industry, triggered the closing of a major tabloid, News of the World, and led to changes in journalistic practices.

Harry has been at the vanguard of that effort, filing lawsuits against three London publishers for what he says was a decades-long campaign of unlawful intrusion. The litigation has produced some notable victories, including a judgment last December against the publisher of the Daily Mirror that it had hacked his cellphone and used other unlawful methods to gather information on him.

But Harry has also had setbacks. In July 2023, Justice Fancourt threw out his claim against News Group that it had hacked his phone between 1996 and 2011, on the grounds that his lawyers had waited too long to file it. The judge allowed Harry’s claims of other unlawful acts, including the hiring of private investigators, to go ahead. On Tuesday, the judge noted that Harry had not yet removed claims of hacking from his complaint and would have to do so before the trial began.

News Group said in a statement that the court had “thoroughly vindicated NGN’s position.” The company’s lawyer, Anthony Hudson, had argued that the plaintiffs were trying to sweep in Mr. Murdoch and other well-known figures to make the case “a vehicle for wider campaigning against the tabloid press.”

Testifying before Parliament in 2011, Mr. Murdoch said he should not be held personally responsible for the hacking, given that he ran a global company with 53,000 employees. But he shut down News of the World, the tabloid most closely linked to hacking, and issued a contrite apology. In recent years, Mr. Murdoch has been more preoccupied by lawsuits stemming from Fox News’s coverage of the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election in the United States.

In explaining why he wouldn’t accept Harry’s amendments, the judge noted that the trial was already set to air allegations of a coverup by “trusted lieutenants” of Mr. Murdoch, including his son James; Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News U.K.; and Will Lewis , a former News executive who is now the publisher of the Washington Post.

The judge did allow lawyers for the plaintiffs to add Mr. Lewis’s name to a list of executives who they allege were part of a plan to conceal evidence of hacking by removing files from a computer belonging to Ms. Brooks. The files were transferred to a USB drive that either was lost or has not been opened because it was encrypted, according to the amended complaint.

News Group noted that Ms. Brooks was questioned about deleting emails during her criminal trial in 2014, and was cleared of the charges. Mr. Lewis, who helped manage the response to the hacking scandal, was never charged. He went on to be chief executive of Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, before being named publisher of The Post last November.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Lewis declined to comment. In 2020, he told the BBC that allegations of wrongdoing were “completely untrue.”

For Harry, who now lives in Montecito, Calif., and only occasionally visits Britain, the lawsuits have often seemed as much about casting a harsh spotlight on the tabloid press and its major players, as about winning the cases.

Last June, he testified against Mirror Group Newspapers, becoming the first senior member of the British royal family to take the stand in court since 1891, when Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, testified in a case about wrongdoing during a game of baccarat at which he was present.

In emotional testimony, Harry said the stream of negative stories about him and family members had led him to distrust even his closest friends. Many stories had focused on Harry’s relationship with a former girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, who he said had found a tracking device on her car.

In February, two months after his victory over Mirror Group, he reached a settlement worth at least 400,000 pounds ($508,000) on the remainder of his privacy claims. The prince singled out the former editor of the Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan, whom he said, “knew perfectly well what was going on.” Mr. Morgan, who is now a broadcaster, has denied being involved in hacking.

Harry also claimed that his brother, Prince William, had been paid a “huge sum of money” by News Group to settle claims that it hacked his cellphone. The settlement, he said, was part of a “secret agreement,” in which the family would defer legal claims against the company and thus avoid the spectacle of having to testify about embarrassing details from their intercepted voice mail messages.

Neither News Group nor Kensington Palace, where William has his office, have confirmed such an arrangement.

Justice Fancourt said he understood the motives of lawyers in wanting to pull Mr. Murdoch and other big names into the case. He likened it to investigative journalists finding missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and suggested that the lawyers were playing as much to the press as to the court.

“This is in a sense understandable, as the psychology of investigative journalists or those who love jigsaw puzzles,” he wrote. “But the question for the court is a different one: what is needed for a fair trial of the individual claims to take place?”

Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades. More about Mark Landler

Prince Harry 'wanted out' of royal life before Meghan but one relative got him to stay

W ith his California home, Hollywood pals and multi-million dollar deal with Netflix , Prince Harry now seems worlds away from his previous royal life.

It was more than four years ago that Harry and wife Meghan sent shockwaves through the monarchy when they dramatically announced they were stepping back from their royal roles. The sensational announcement appeared to come out of the blue - but early last year, Harry's long-held frustration at royal life was laid bare in his controversial memoir Spare. But he publicly hinted all might not have been well with his royal role three years before Megxit and well before his book was published.

In an interview seven years ago in 2017, the Duke of Sussex admitted he had once "wanted out" of the Firm and just desired an "ordinary life". In a chat, later reported in the Mail On Sunday , Harry, then 32, told of his struggles but said he ultimately decided to stick it out thanks to one relative.

He reportedly said: "I spent many years kicking my heels and I didn't want to grow up,' he admitted. "I felt I wanted out but then decided to stay in and work out a role for myself," he added, revealing he was motivated by his loyalty to his late grandmother the Queen.

In the same interview, just a year after he met Meghan, Harry also told of his future wishes for him and his children. He insisted: "I am determined to have a relatively normal life and if I am lucky enough to have children they can have one too."

Last week, reports suggested that Harry, who has a rocky bond with his father, turned down an offer from the King to stay in a royal residence on his recent visit to the UK earlier this month. It is said the offer was knocked back because it did not come with any security provision and he would be in a "visible location with public entrance and exit points and no police protection".

During the case, the High Court was told that Harry believes his children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet cannot "feel at home" in the UK if it is "not possible to keep them safe". Since moving to the US, Archie and Lilibet have only been to the UK once, with Charles only having one face-to-face meeting with his youngest granddaughter.

And according to royal biographer Ingrid Seward, the security issue looks to be the barrier when it comes to a royal reunion. She told the Mirror : "Harry and Meghan's security fears could well be a stumbling block to any kind of reunion with the Royal Family . But no doubt they have been invited to Balmoral this summer.

"As the late Queen discovered, Scotland offers the only quality time a monarch has to devote to family. It would be very sad if Charles was denied the pleasure of seeing his grandchildren just because of Harry's unfounded security woes."