Queen Elizabeth II is backing Prince Harry in his war against the tabloids from beyond the grave, he has said in a new interview, after revealing he discussed the issue with his grandmother before her death.
Harry discussed his unlawful information-gathering lawsuits against Britain's biggest tabloid publishers in a new interview that aired on July 25 as part of an ITV documentary titled Tabloids on Trial.
In it, Harry described his recent win against Daily Mirror publisher Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) as a "monumental victory" and said that the press' continued hostility towards himself and his wife prevents him from taking Meghan back to Britain.
In an interview with broadcaster Rebecca Barry, Harry was asked about his relationship with the late Queen Elizabeth II and her reaction to his multiple lawsuits filed against the U.K. press since 2019.
"We had many conversations before she passed," the prince said of his grandmother who died in September 2022.
"This is very much something that she supported. She knew how much this meant to me and she's very much up there going, 'See this through to the end,' without question."
This is not the first time that Harry has claimed to have had the monarch's blessing to pursue legal action against the media.
In 2023, during his unlawful information-gathering lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers (NGN), it was revealed by the prince's lawyers that the queen had been kept informed of his intention to take legal action over allegations that he'd been the victim of phone hacking and other illegal activity to obtain private information and that his grandmother had given her blessing for him to seek a resolution.
Harry filed his lawsuits against MGN and NGN in 2019 while he was on a royal tour of South Africa with Meghan Markle. In his 2023 memoir, Spare, he wrote that when he returned to London, he was summoned to a meeting at Buckingham Palace attended by the monarch, her senior advisors, and the then-Prince Charles.
Harry wrote that Charles complained his son's actions were "massively damaging to the reputation of the [royal] family," because it "makes our relationship with the media complicated."
At the time of Spare's publication, King Charles and Buckingham Palace did not respond to the claims made within it.
Since his split from the monarchy with Meghan Markle in 2020, which he has said was in part influenced by the tabloid press' hostility towards himself and his wife, Harry has spoken on a number of occasions about the close bond he shared with Queen Elizabeth.
After a brief visit to see the monarch in April 2022 before her 96th birthday, the prince praised her sense of humor.
"She's always got a great sense of humor with me, and I'm just making sure that she's, you know, protected, and got the right people around her," he said, before going on to add that: "We have a really special relationship, we talk about things she can't talk about with anyone else."
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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