PROMISES, PROMISES

Harry and Meghan Say They’re Victims of ‘Institutional Gaslighting’

Another trailer promises sensational revelations from Netflix in this week’s instalment of “Harry & Meghan.” Let’s hope it beats last week’s snoozefest.

Prince Harry has accused unnamed actors of being “happy to lie to protect” his brother, Prince William, while refusing to “tell the truth to protect us.”

In an explosive new trailer for their Netflix series, episodes 4, 5 and 6 of which are due to be released Thursday, Harry also appears to accuse the palace of “institutional gaslighting.”

However skeptics who question whether Harry and Meghan Markle truly have anything new to reveal may be encouraged by an apparent inconsistency described in The Mirror. The trailer on Twitter appears to suggest it was the royal family whom Harry accuses of falsehoods, showing an image of the palace as he says, “They were happy to lie to protect my brother [but] they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.” But the version of the trailer on the Netflix site is subtitled, “The British media are happy to lie to protect my brother.”

It might not be unreasonable, therefore, to conclude that rather than bombshell claims against the palace with evidence to back it up, we are in for another round of media studies with Harry, seeing him cataloguing his grievances with the press.

Some may recall that the couple have previously accused the media of lying, and the palace of refusing to correct what they say were media lies about them, in the legendary bridesmaid’s dress fitting incident. This saga began when papers claimed that Meghan had made Kate Middleton cry during a fitting for her daughter Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress. Meghan subsequently told Oprah Winfrey that it was actually Kate who made her cry and that Kate had apologized for her actions, but that the palace refused to correct the story.

It will be interesting to see if this absurdly petty story, which has been much labored by Meghan in particular, will form part of Harry’s claim that: “They were happy to lie to protect my brother [but] they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”

It will be a disappointment to those hoping for fresh insight into the royal family if we simply get to hear this gripe again.

Meghan’s overall sense of grievance is of course also well known, and again, while the trailer looks incendiary, it will be interesting to see what receipts they produce to back up her claim when she says: “I wasn’t being thrown to the wolves, I was being fed to the wolves.”

Previous trailers made similar promises for the first episodes, which resolutely failed to deliver a killer blow. The public may not be impressed with more recounting of dress fittings and nasty comments online.

Another suggestion that is likely to draw swift pushback is the suggestion that their safety was compromised, with Meghan saying: “Our security was being pulled, everyone in the world knew where we were.”

Security arrangements—as is well known—are not dictated by the palace but by the police. It seems hard to believe the police would have allowed two of their most high-profile charges to exist in a state of compromised security.

Even more bizarre is a comment by Christopher Bouzy, a social media analyst who founded the firm Bot Sentinel, who says: “They were actively recruiting people to disseminate disinformation.”

It is not clear who he is referring to with that “they,” but it is reasonable to assume that he is suggesting he has palace operatives in mind.

The couple are said to have handed over about 15 hours of footage for the film. There is home video footage of their son, Archie, playing in the garden and with their chickens in the trailer.

In one selfie clip, Harry, on a plane, says: “We’re on the freedom flight.”

He later says: “I always felt as though this was a fight worth fighting for.”

Whether it will be worth watching remains to be seen.

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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