In the latest episodes of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Netflix documentary, Harry says his brother, Prince William, left him terrified after “screaming and shouting” at him during an emergency meeting to discuss Harry’s future as a working senior member of the Royal Family.
The final three episodes of Harry & Meghan, released Thursday morning, take aim at the Royal Family, with the couple accusing other senior members of the family of leaking stories to the press which, in turn, escalated acrimony both within the family as well as with the public.
The final instalments also detail the deterioration of Harry and William’s relationship in recent years.
In the penultimate episode, Harry discusses a 2020 crisis meeting at Sandringham estate where he claims William screamed at him in front of their grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.
“It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and have my father say things that simply weren’t true, and my grandmother sit there and sort of take it all in,” Harry says in the fifth episode.
The meeting, which involved Harry, William, Prince Charles and the queen, was a high-stakes discussion to determine how the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would continue to operate within the Royal Family.
Harry says he and his wife had proposed to be “half-in and half-out” of the family, working to support the queen, but also having their own jobs and supporting themselves financially.
However, he said, it wasn’t a proposal that was up for debate.
“People around (Queen Elizabeth) are telling her, ‘Wait, these two doing XYZ is going to be seen as an attack on the institution,’ then she’s going to go on the advice of the institution.”
While the first volume of Harry & Meghan took aim at the British press — specifically the tabloid newspapers — Volume 2 places blame on the royal institution for their complicity in the media’s defamatory and racist treatment of Markle.
“They had to believe it was more about us and maybe the issues that we had as opposed to their partner, the media, and their relationship, that was causing so much pain for us,” Harry says of why he thinks his family acted the way they did.
Shortly after the Sandringham meeting, says Harry, media reports emerged suggesting William was bullying the Sussexes out of their duties. Harry was then told by a palace press office that a joint statement was to be released by both brothers denying the reports.
But Harry says he didn’t sign off on the statement.
“I couldn’t believe it. No one had asked me to put my name to a statement like that,” he said. “I called (Meghan) and she burst into flood of tears, because within four hours they were happy to lie to protect my brother and yet for three years they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”
Markle and Harry both said this was the moment they knew their tenure as working royals was over.
Markle said she “did everything I could to make them proud and to really be a part of the family,” but ultimately she “wasn’t just being thrown to the wolves, I was being fed to the wolves.”
So far, for the record, neither the palace nor any senior members of the family have officially commented on the contents of the documentary. The royals are notoriously tight-lipped, and it’s generally accepted protocol that they rarely publicly respond to matters of the press or politics.