Prince Harry’s final battle with U.K. press could lead to reconciliation for estranged royal

LONDON — It’s a familiar sight over the past decade: Prince Harry on the steps of a British courthouse for the latest round of his battle with a tabloid newspaper.

But if, as expected, he appears before the High Court in London again on Monday, it could be the last time he attacks the British press, whom he accuses of intimidation and harassment and who he blames for the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. And some royal observers say the end of his legal campaign could pave the way for reconciliation with his father, King Charles III.

“We know that Harry’s various legal issues and lawsuits were the primary cause of the breakdown of Charles and Harry’s relationship,” NBC News royal contributor Daisy McAndrew said in an interview Monday. “I think a lot of people inside the royal family and outside hope that once these court battles are over, Harry can focus on reconciling with his family,” she added.

This time around, Harry will be joined by Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, actors Sadie Frost and Elizabeth Hurley and former lawmaker Simon Hughes in his lawsuit against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.

Baroness Doreen Lawrence, whose son Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack in 1993, will also join the claimants. Her inclusion was seen by some as significant because the Daily Mail had long campaigned to bring her son’s killers to justice, naming five people as her murderers on its front page. When two of the men, Gary Dobson and David Norris, were eventually convicted, the newspaper was praised for its reporting.

The group’s lawyers accused ANL of “serious invasions of privacy” and alleged that the media group commissioned private investigators to illegally target its clients, wiretapped and hacked their phones, and obtained private medical and financial records through deception, primarily between 1993 and 2011.

Associated Newspapers Limited has vigorously denied the allegations. Asked for comment ahead of Thursday’s trial, the company referred NBC News to a previous statement issued in 2024 that called the claims “absurd and baseless.” He added that his defense arguments indicated that “the case brought by the prince and others is ‘an affront to hard-working journalists, whose reputation and integrity, as well as those of Associated itself, are wrongly defamed.'”

Unlike Lawrence, Harry is no stranger to this type of litigation, having successfully sued Mirror Group Newspapers in 2023 and last year receiving “significant damages” and an apology after settling a claim against News Group Newspapers, the publisher of The Sun.

The two companies paid tens of millions of dollars to several plaintiffs, including celebrities, politicians and ordinary people, after it emerged that some of their journalists and private investigators employed by their newspapers were hacking phones and intercepting voicemails in the early 2000s.

However, so far Associated Newspapers Limited has not been prosecuted for phone hacking, which, if proven, “will reshape the history of modern British journalism”, according to media lawyer Mark Stephens.

“Harry and his team see this as the latest major test for the untouchable corner of the British press,” Stephens, who works at the London law firm Howard Kennedy LLP, said in a telephone interview last week. “This is about whether a major British publisher has been operating in the shadows or whether it is truly clean,” he added, referring to the fact that allegations of this nature had never been made against the Daily Mail or the Mail on Sunday before.

The plaintiffs, he added, will rely on a “mosaic of inferences” that, in their totality, must demonstrate that it is “more likely than not” that phone hacking and illegal information collection occurred.

A settlement is unlikely to be reached before the trial begins, he added. “I think if things were to be resolved, it would have already been done,” he added. “No newspaper would want to be subject to scrutiny over this matter and would not have settled if they believed they did not have a valid case.”

Whatever the outcome, NBC News royal contributor Emily Nash said that once he ends his legal battles, Harry may be able to repair his relationship with his family, which became strained after he left frontline royal duties in 2020, with his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, before moving to California.

“Members of the royal family traditionally use the maxim ‘Never complain, never explain,’ but they take legal action if they feel they have been wronged,” she said in a video call on Monday. “What they tend to do, though, is do it in a much more discreet way,” she added. “They will settle out of court rather than have their personal information disclosed in the public domain.”

Another source of contention has been Harry’s legal battle to have his police protection reinstated during his visit to the UK. The decision to strip him of any publicly funded protection was taken by the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known by the acronym RAVEC, which approves the security of members of the royal family and VIPs, such as the prime minister.

After losing a legal challenge to the decision in May, Harry told the BBC he was unsure of bringing his family back to the UK because he could not guarantee their protection.

His father did not want to talk to him “because of these security issues,” he explained. “I would love to reconcile with my family. There is no point in continuing to fight,” he added. “I don’t know how much time my father has left.”

Harry, who is expected to give evidence on Thursday, met Charles for the first time in 19 months in September, and if he comes to London for the affair they are unlikely to reconcile because Charles will be in Scotland for his traditional post-Christmas stay, which usually lasts most of January.

Either way, it’s unclear what exactly it will take for the two to work things out, according to NBC News royal contributor McAndrew.

Harry’s brother, Prince William, and Charles “will want some sort of guarantee that Harry will stop talking, ironically, to the press, writing books or making documentaries and putting out his side of the story in a way that will impact and sometimes harm the rest of the royal family,” she said.