Fight not flight - Prince Harry is ready for the witness stand, writes BBC's Royal Correspondent Sean Coughlan
Harry's language, not the usual dry stuff of legal documents, illustrates his readiness to go the distance. He doesn't just oppose the other side in this case, he labels their behaviour "utterly vile", "disgusting, immoral and a complete abuse of power" and says they had a "devastating impact" on his mental health.Image caption,There is a political undertone that might have got lost in the royal soap opera.
But given the timing, only a few days before the Coronation, it was seen as rolling marbles under the parade, disrupting the royal narrative when it was trying to look most unified. There's also rejection of any implication that Prince William has a cosy relationship with the press, when he had helped unearth the risk of hacking as far back as 2005.
This court hearing also threw a very different light, from Harry's viewpoint, on how the Palace dealt with the tabloid press, in this case News Group Newspapers, and the power relationship between them. "My understanding was that we would wait for the civil cases to be resolved and, thankfully, we seem to be in the final phases of that process," the newspaper group's chief executive Robert Thomson wrote to the Queen's director of communications Sally Osman in March 2018.
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