In my opinion, Prince Harry has had knowledge of his family’s many betrayals for the past five years. In 2019, as multiple royal courts attacked him and Meghan, he had a good idea about what was happening as everything was going down. Then, at the Sandringham Summit, he came away bruised and disheartened by how he was treated. Harry has known a lot of what went down at an intellectual level, but emotionally, he’s spent years trying to give his brother and father many chances and he’s tried to communicate with them in various ways. There’s a cognitive dissonance there, and I suspect that Harry has felt that if he could just speak to William and Charles alone, without the courtiers, without the media, without the machinery of the monarchy, that somehow he could talk some sense into his brother and father. Harry’s security case seems to be the end of the cognitive dissonance, and now he’s going public. He spoke to People Magazine about what he’s learned from this years-long fight:
Prince Harry is reeling from the aftermath of a legal battle that has forced him to confront the painful reality he’s never fully escaped since leaving the U.K. in 2020 — a reality that lies at the heart of his ongoing rift with the royal family. Feeling “exhausted and overwhelmed,” Harry told PEOPLE as he left court on April 9 that his “worst fears have been confirmed by the whole legal disclosure in this case — and that’s really sad.”
The Duke of Sussex, 40, spent two days at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, deeply focused, taking notes and closely following the proceedings of his appeal regarding the removal of automatic state-backed security for him and his wife, Meghan Markle, in 2020.
When Harry and Meghan proposed to the late Queen Elizabeth that they live abroad while still supporting the monarchy, they believed they had found the ideal solution to a difficult chapter — one that would bring them happiness, leave the royal family at peace and allow their public work to continue. “We were trying to create this happy house,” Harry tells PEOPLE.
When Harry departed the Sandringham Summit in January 2020, he did so with the understanding that his security would remain in place. Court documents revealed that, in letters from the Queen herself, she expressed support for Harry and Meghan’s need for “effective security.” Yet, just one month later, the government committee responsible for state-funded security, RAVEC, informed them that this would no longer be the case.
In the years since, Harry has immersed himself in the process, including learning about RAVEC, the body responsible for the decision-making. One of his core beliefs, PEOPLE understands, is that the removal of security for him and his family when they stepped back from the working royal family was a deliberate tactic of control — a way to force them back into the fold. Rather than bringing the Sussexes back, the removal of security instead revealed to Harry the lengths to which they were willing to go, and it became the final straw. The prince admits that this realization “was difficult to swallow.”
During the two days of hearings, Harry’s legal team argued that RAVEC had “diverted” from its standard procedure, leaving Harry “singled out for different, unjustified, and inferior treatment.” They also contended that this decision excluded him from the same protections extended to others in the “Other VIP Category,” including pop stars and former prime ministers. Crucially, RAVEC includes members of the Royal Household, including close aides to his father, King Charles. Harry believes his father could intervene to ensure that such protection is extended to him. (Buckingham Palace does not comment on security matters, but a palace source previously told PEOPLE that the suggestion Harry’s security is under Charles’s control is “wholly incorrect.”)
Much of the hearing on April 9 at the Royal Courts of Justice in the heart of London was held in secret. Some of the revelations unearthed during the proceedings have deeply unsettled Harry, confirming many of his “fears” about the situation — a realization he described as profoundly disheartening.
Harry has found a way to move on and forgive much of what’s happened since 2016 — but there’s one thing he simply cannot forgive: the events surrounding the legal battle regarding his and his family’s safety. “People would be shocked by what’s being held back,” Harry says.
The Duke of Sussex has fought several legal battles, most recently securing an apology and admission from the publisher of The Sun newspaper for illegal activities carried out on their behalf, resulting in an eight-figure settlement in January 2025. But this particular fight is one that strikes at the heart of his family life and his future. “This one has always mattered the most,” Harry told PEOPLE as he left court.
The three appeal court judges have reserved their judgment, with the result not expected for several weeks. Regardless of the outcome, Harry has made it clear that he will not stop fighting. His commitment to his causes remains unwavering, and on Thursday, April 10, he flew to Ukraine to visit a clinic supporting wounded military personnel and civilians.
Above all, Harry says he is “driven by exposing injustice,” a relentless pursuit that fuels everything he does. He has long said he can’t simply let things lie — he needs to “get under the bonnet and fix it.” His determination is personal: If anything were to happen to his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, or their two young children, Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3, he could never rest.
In 2023, Byline Times did some solid reporting around all of this, how the withdrawal of the Sussexes’ security is connected to Dan Wootton and Prince William’s then-aide Christian Jones, which is also connected to Harry’s refusal to play the game with the British tabloids. It’s all connected. Byline’s sources said flat-out that withdrawing the Sussexes’ security was a gambit by Charles most of all, that his ultimate goal was to put the Sussexes in so much danger that they would come running back to the UK, humbled, broke and terrified. I would go so far as to say that ultimately, Charles hoped to drive Harry and Meghan to divorce. Please, they never wanted Meghan to “come back” in any way.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Backgrid.
