Prince Harry speaks emotionally in court about reports that King Charles is not his father, but an affair of Princess Diana. Everyone would have known that James Hewitt's paternity could be ruled out.
London – Prince Harry (38) does not mince words as a witness in court. After criticism of the government, his reckoning with the British tabloid press on the witness stand also raises the issue of years of public doubt about the lawful paternity of King Charles III (74). For years, rumours persisted that the Duke of Sussex could also be the son of James Hewitt (64), who had an affair with Princess Diana (36, † 1997).
At a young age, Prince Harry was hit hard by rumours of a father other than King Charles
The rumor had caused him great grief over the years, the second son of the monarch openly admitted. "Back when I was 18 years old and had lost my mother [Princess Diana] just six years earlier, stories like this felt very hurtful and very real to me," Harry said, referring to a Dec. 15, 2002, article by The People titled "Plan to steal Harry's DNA." mean and cruel," the prince added. "I've always questioned the motivations behind the stories. Did the newspapers want to raise doubts in the public so that I would be ousted from the royal family?"
The Duke of Sussex gave his testimony in cross-examination of his indictment of the Mirror Group Newspaper Limited for allegedly using unethical methods such as phone hacking to obtain information about him over the years. In a written statement obtained by the New York Times on Tuesday, he criticized the group's publications for apparently artificially perpetuating the paternity rumor in several articles.
Prince Harry's indictment
At the High Court in London, a trial predicted to last at least seven weeks has been underway since May 10. Prince Harry is suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), which owns the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People. He is also involved in other cases: one against News Group Newspapers (NGN), which is part of a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and publishes The Sun and The Sun on Sunday, and two against Associate Newspapers Limited (ANL), which owns the Daily Mail.
Harry accused the author of the article, namely Dean Rousewell, of repeatedly using "unlawful techniques to obtain information". In the article in question, the journalist would have written of a "conspiracy" in which Harry's hair was to be stolen in order to test paternity. On the witness stand, the father of two stated that Rousewell had continued to spin the story, although he already knew that paternity of Hewitt was not possible due to the chronological sequence of his relationship with Diana.
Prince Harry goes to court as a man with a mission: As an 18-year-old, he looked at the reporting that James Hewitt was his father, not King Charles (photomontage). © Yui_Mok/dpa & Arno Balzarini/dpa & Alberto Pezzali/dpa
"When this article and other similar articles were written, I didn't really know that my mother had only met Major Hewitt after I was born," Harry wrote in the documents. "I didn't learn about the schedule until around 2014, although I now know that it was common knowledge among the defendants' journalists," he noted. He called "particularly worrying" the fact that Rousewell relied on "senior royal source" in the article on how this alleged paternity plot should have been carried out. Mirror Group Newspaper Limited denied any wrongdoing, according to Pagesix. Not an easy phase for Harry, who knows that wife Meghan likes to go out alone. Sources used: pagesix.com, thesun.co.uk, mirror.co.uk
