Harry & Meghan on Netflix: A Sense of Hurt and Betrayal Among the Royal Family After Premiere

“It’s a family at the end of the day, and for Harry and Meghan to once again be airing their grievances in public, it’s hurtful. I just don’t see how the Sussexes can come back from this,” said one family friend, adding that the absence of titles for the couple’s children, Archie and Lilibet, who are technically a prince and princess now that Charles is king, is no coincidence. Added the source: “A lot rests on what Harry and Meghan say next. There is actually more concern over Harry’s book and what he alleges in that, as that is likely to be far more intimate and personal about his life and growing up royal than the TV show.”

While Meghan’s relationship with her family was covered in great detail in the first three episodes of the show, there was very little about Harry’s relationship with his own family. Other than Harry’s suggestion that his father and brother married women who fit “the mold,” Charles was largely absent from the first half of the show, with the couple instead focusing on Diana, who was prominently featured. 

According to one former courtier, “The fact that Harry has made Diana so central to his narrative will I’m sure be upsetting for William. William is Diana’s son too, and for Harry to compare Meghan to Diana is quite insensitive.”

Paul Burrell, Diana’s former butler, added, “I knew Diana very well, and she and Meghan were very different women, although it’s interesting that Harry met Meghan when she was 36, the age Diana died. Diana would not approve of what Harry is doing to the monarchy, and she would be devastated by the rift between the brothers.”

It is a rift that looks set to deepen rather than heal, with Harry claiming that there is a “huge level of unconscious bias” within the royal family. There was no mention of Charles’s years of work promoting race tolerance and interfaith relations in Britain, and while the couple did not directly accuse the royal family of racism, as they did during their Oprah interview, the undertones were there, with Harry saying he had  “sleepwalked” through most of his adult life when it came to race and that he would always regret the occasion when he wore a Nazi costume to a fancy dress party. Pointedly, he made no mention of the time he used a highly offensive word to describe a Pakistani fellow soldier when he was training at Sandringham.