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Harry, Meghan and the Half-Truth Prince: an unashamedly one-sided story

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex in their Netflix documentary, which is very much a one-sided story
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex in their Netflix documentary, which is very much a one-sided story

The royal formerly known as Prince Harry had billed it as “the full truth” only the couple knew.

But “Vol 1” of the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes’ much-hyped Netflix series is probably best described as Harry, Meghan and the Half-Truth Prince - an act of glossy wizardry designed to depict the couple as the Gryffindor to the royals’ Slytherin.

Yet by the end of the first three episodes, it soon becomes apparent that the only Mug(gle) to have fallen under any spell is Harry himself - a husband so besotted by his wife that he has been completely blinded to the magic of his once majestic life.

The former military man and his American actress wife had gone on Oprah armed with a Uzi, sub-machine-gunning their royal relatives with claims of racism and institutionalised indifference that nearly drove them both to suicide.

This was a more subtle form of televisual warfare. Like a love story featuring an arrow filled with explosives, it used slick propaganda, thinly-veiled jibes and a Sussex squad of loyal troops to do battle against bigoted Britain and its racist press.

Yet as soon becomes apparent with this unashamedly one-sided story, there is nothing fair in love and war when it’s waged against an opposition who can’t fight back.

At the very beginning, a sort of The Crown-esque non-disclaimer disclaimer appears, stating:  "Members of the Royal Family declined to comment on the content within this series".

Yet according to the palace, they received an email "purporting to be from a third-party production company" and then "contacted Netflix to attempt to verify the authenticity of the email but received no response".

So what we are left with - not unlike The Crown - is a completely partisan and overly dramatic interpretation of real life events. It cannot even be classed as a reality television show, since it is a projection of perfection rather than anything remotely warts-and-all.

As a walk down memory lane, it makes for very compelling viewing - not least when it emerges that the couple started filming video diaries the second the ink dried on the Sandringham summit.

Footage from the couple's video diaries is shown in the series
Footage from the couple's video diaries is shown in the series

We are treated to never before seen photographs and footage of the couple and their children that amount to the sort of privacy invasion 1980s paparazzi could only dream of.

But it’s okay, because it’s on their terms. “Consent is a key piece of this,” insists Harry, neglecting to mention the role played by the rumoured £100 million they’re being paid by the online streaming giant.

The documentary gives viewers a unique glimpse into the Sussexes' lives
The documentary gives viewers a unique glimpse into the Sussexes' lives

The bottom dollar perhaps explains why Netflix has felt the need to string out a story that could easily be told in an hour into six, interminable episodes.

As has ever been the case with Meg-a-whinge and Prince Harassed, they’ve got a story and they’re not afraid to tell it. Over and over again.

On Oprah, Harry spoke of being the victim of a media conspiracy. Two years in California appears to have broadened his horizons. Now it seems the conspiracy not only involves the media, but also the palace to which he once belonged. Or “exploitation and bribery between our family and the media”, as he puts it.

Royal correspondents, he explains to Mandana Dayani - the “friend”-cum-recently-resigned president of their Archewell Foundation - are “an extended PR arm of the Royal family”, before contradicting himself by saying the British press believes "this family is ours to exploit. Their trauma is our story".

Confused? Well, the couple certainly are, as they appear to conflate Twitter trolls with the mainstream media, and refuse to draw a distinction between the photographers who covered their official engagements and those who chased Diana, Princess of Wales down le Pont de l'Alma.

Generalisations are cast around like confetti at their 2018 Windsor Castle wedding. Contributor Afua Hirsch, a renowned anti-monarchist, speaks casually of “just another senior royal, who is a little bit racist”. Friend Lucy Frazer talks of journalists “trawling through rubbish bins” who “go through accounts'' and “do anything to make money”.

In the world according to Harry and Meghan, Leveson doesn’t appear to have happened - as they insist they were facing the same fate as Diana, illustrated by archive footage showing the princess telling a rogue snapper to put his camera away during a family skiing holiday.

Yes, it’s shocking that William and Harry were paraded like that as children - but 30 years have passed since then and royal privacy has never been more respected in the UK.

That’s presumably why, when the documentary shows the couple being “chased”, it is in the US, not Britain - just as the trailers needed to use the trials of Katie Price and Michael Cohen to make their point.

Describing himself as “a young boy who was trying to deal with the loss of his mother without any support or guidance”, Harry neglects to mention the role his father played - let alone the big brother who counselled him through the hardest time in their teenage lives.

Instead, William is depicted as someone who may have married with his head rather than his heart - while Kate’s “formality on the outside continued on the inside”, according to her sister-in-law.

Twice Harry refers to being brought up by “a second family” in both Africa and the Army, which he snipes “gave me the lived experience that other members of my family wouldn’t have had … working and living with normal people”.

The implication is as clear as it is crafty - the royals are out-of-touch colonialists, being kept alive by a servile media. We’re the saviours of the free world.

Similarly scathing is Harry’s suggestion that his family expected Meghan to put up with it because they all had, adding: “The fact that I was dating an American actress is probably what clouded their judgment in the beginning.”

Yet surely they could be forgiven for having some suspicions, when a visit to Meghan’s primary school reveals that she had ambitions of being “rich and famous” as far back as 1994, aged only 11.

Moreover, is it any wonder eyebrows were raised when Harry regarded it as “ridiculous” that Meghan needed to dress herself for a royal engagement? What Meghan wants Meghan gets, and in this case it appears to be an army of people wrestling her into a bright red ballgown.

Insisting she would “never wear colour” when she was in the Royal family - even though she did, regularly - the former Suits star suggests “I was just turtling”. Well, that’s one way to describe appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair headlined “Meghan Markle, Wild About Harry”, in 2017.

Naturally, the self-styled “hugger” who can do no wrong is depicted in an entirely positive light - from her mother Doria marvelling at her “straight A” intelligence, to a clearly besotted Harry saying how she is “so similar to my mum”. A friend adds: “Her nature is to never make things more difficult for anyone,” a statement that would probably be challenged by the staff who nicknamed her “Duchess Difficult” and accused her of bullying.

As Meghan herself puts it with characteristic humility: “My entire identity was wrapped up in being the smart one.” Of the royals, she adds “everything is just smaller”, unwittingly encapsulating in one sentence the conflict at the heart of the “medieval” monarchy and her big ambitions.

Compared with being called racists, this documentary isn’t half as damaging as the palace feared, albeit only three episodes in. But crikey, it must hurt to see Harry not only denounce his family but now the country he once fought for as a bunch of Brexit-voting white supremacists. As Hirsch trashed the Commonwealth as “the Empire 2.0”, one could almost hear Her late Majesty turning in her grave.

For William, the inclusion of the Panorama interview that he insisted should never again see the light of day will cut most deep.

If it wasn’t bad enough that Harry references the 1995 interview that found Martin Bashir to be in “serious breach of BBC guidelines”, he even appears to justify it by saying: “We all now know she was deceived into giving that experience but she was speaking her lived experience.”

With this Netflix documentary, we are all living half of the experience. As for the other half, one imagines that recollections may vary.