1984-present
Prince Harry News: Awarded $180,000 in Phone Hacking Case
A London court ruled in favor of Prince Harry on December 15 in his lawsuit against Mirror Group Newspapers, the tabloid publisher found to have committed unlawful information gathering in its coverage of the royal. The Duke of Sussex, 39, was awarded around $180,000 in damages.
According to The New York Times, Judge Timothy Fancourt found that Mirror Group unlawfully gathered information in 15 articles submitted by Harry’s lawyers as evidence. He added that Harry’s personal phone was the apparent target of hacking from 2004 through 2009.
“I have been told that slaying dragons will get you burned, but in light of today’s victory and the importance of doing what is needed for a free and honest press, it is a worthwhile price to pay,” Harry said in a statement through his lawyer.
In June, Harry became the first high-ranking British royal to give evidence in court when he testified in the case. He has two other ongoing lawsuits against the publisher of the Daily Mail and the publisher of The Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Who Is Prince Harry?
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, is the second son of King Charles III and his late ex-wife, Princess Diana. After his mother’s death in 1997, Harry occasionally acted out and found himself in the tabloids as a result. The prince embarked on a decade-long stint in the military in 2005, seeing active service time in Afghanistan, and is involved in numerous charitable causes. In May 2018, he married American actor Meghan Markle, with whom he has a son, Archie, and a daughter, Lilibet. In January 2020, the couple announced they were stepping back from their senior roles in the royal family, though Harry remains fifth in line for the throne. His best-selling memoir Spare released in January 2023.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Henry Charles Albert David
BORN: September 15, 1984
BIRTHPLACE: London, England
PARENTS: King Charles III and Princess Diana
GRANDPARENTS: Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip
SPOUSE: Meghan Markle (2018-present)
CHILDREN: Archie and Lilibet
SIBLING: Prince William
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Virgo
Parents and Young Life
Prince Harry—in full, Henry Charles Albert David—was born September 15, 1984, in London to then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana. At birth, Harry was third in line to the English throne behind his father and older brother, Prince William, as his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II was the current monarch.
His mother once described Prince Harry as “very artistic and sporty.” At an early age, he developed an interest in riding and hunting. While the family lived in Kensington Palace during the week, they often spent the weekends at Highgrove House, their family’s estate in Gloucestershire, England.
Diana strove to give both her sons “as normal a life as possible” despite their privileged position in British society and the intense media scrutiny the family faced. To this end, Prince Harry attended Mrs. Mynors’ nursery school in London’s Notting Hill neighborhood. Diana also took Prince Harry and his brother to amusement parks, fast-food restaurants, and other places frequented by other children their age.
Photographers were on hand as his parents dropped Prince Harry off for his first day of school in September 1987. According to Ingrid Seward’s William & Harry, the young prince had a difficult time adjusting to school initially. Despite his parents’ increasingly strained marriage, he became known for his happy-go-lucky disposition as a child. Prince Harry also developed an interest in all things military as he matured.
In 1989, Prince Harry enrolled at the Wetherby School, where his older brother was already a student. He then followed his brother to the Ludgrove School, a boarding school in Berkshire, England, in 1992. Around this time, he was reportedly informed of his parents’ impending separation, which was officially announced that December. The couple divorced in 1996.
After the separation, Prince Harry and Prince William spent their school holidays dividing their time between their parents. They spent time at Highgrove with their father, enjoying outdoor pursuits, as well as going on official trips and vacations abroad. With their mother, they engaged in a variety of activities, including going on tropical holidays and visiting AIDS clinics and homeless shelters.
Princess Diana’s Death
Prince Harry experienced tragedy early in life when his mother, Princess Diana, died in a car accident on August 31, 1997. Harry was 15 days shy of his 13th birthday.
For several days after the accident, Harry remained at Balmoral Castle in Scotland to mourn in seclusion with his family. He then traveled to London with Queen Elizabeth II and his brother to prepare for Princess Diana’s funeral. On September 6, 1997, Prince Harry walked past thousands of people who had gathered to say goodbye to the woman many had dubbed “the People’s Princess.” He trailed behind his mother’s coffin in the funeral procession along with his brother, father, grandfather Prince Phillip, and uncle Charles Spencer (Diana’s brother).
After the service, Prince Harry and other family members traveled to Althorp, his mother’s family estate in Northampton, England. His mother’s body was laid to rest on an island in the middle of a lake on the grounds there.
Struggling with this tremendous loss, Prince Harry suffered from nightmares about his mother’s death for a time, according to Christopher Andersen’s Diana’s Boys. He returned to Ludgrove a short time after the funeral. During his next school break, Prince Harry traveled with his father to Botswana and South Africa. The trip lifted his spirit and gave him a chance to mingle with the members of the Spice Girls pop group during a concert there.
Two decades later, Prince Harry spoke candidly with British journalist Bryony Gordon in a 2017 podcast released by the Daily Telegraph about his struggles to come to terms with his mother’s death in his late 20s. “I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well,” he said in the interview.
“My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help?” he said, explaining his thoughts at the time. “‘It’s only going to make you sad, it’s not going to bring her back.’ So from an emotional side, I was like, ‘Right, don’t ever let your emotions be part of anything.’”
He added that he felt like he had been “very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions” and finally sought professional counseling at the urging of Prince William, who told him: “‘Look, you really need to deal with this. It is not normal to think that nothing has affected you.’”
Prince Harry also turned to boxing to help him deal with his grief. “That really saved me, because I was on the verge of punching someone, so being able to punch someone who had pads was certainly easier,” he said.
He shared his personal story in hopes that it would encourage others to “break the stigma surrounding mental health issues,” according to the Daily Telegraph article. A year earlier, Prince Harry, Prince William, and his wife, Kate Middleton, launched Heads Together, a campaign to end the stigma around mental health.
Teenage Years
Back at school after his mother’s 1997 death, Prince Harry faced some academic challenges. It was decided that he would spend an extra year at Ludgrove before applying to Eton College. All of his extra efforts paid off, as he passed the entrance exam with flying colors. He began his studies there in 1998.
That same year, Prince Harry and Prince William demonstrated their cheeky sense of humor with a surprise 50th birthday party for their father, which featured some comedy sketches poking fun at then-Prince Charles. Actors Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, and Emma Thompson were all part of the act. Around this time, the princes also met their future stepmother, Camilla Parker Bowles—the woman that their father had been involved with on and off for years.
Like many teenagers, Prince Harry liked to party. He reportedly engaged in underage drinking—sometimes at a pub and at Highgrove—and tried smoking marijuana during the summer of 2001. In January 2002, reports of the prince’s illegal activities made tabloid headlines. Prince Harry admitted his misdeeds to his father, who made the young royal visit a South London rehabilitation center to see firsthand the dangers associated with drug use.
In 2003, Prince Harry graduated from Eton. He spent some time traveling through Australia, Argentina, and Africa after finishing school. An avid polo player, Prince Harry participated in the Young England polo match test against Young Australia. He became involved in charity work while visiting Lesotho in southern Africa, working at a home for orphans of AIDS victims. To promote awareness of the problems there, he created a documentary called The Forgotten Kingdom: Prince Harry in Lesotho. The film helped raise approximately $2 million for the British Red Cross Lesotho Fund.
Around this time, Prince Harry became romantically linked with Chelsy Davy, according to news reports. The two dated on and off for years. Prince Harry again found himself immersed in controversy in January 2005 after photographs of him wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party were published in several newspapers. It was shocking to many that the prince could casually appear the uniform with a swastika armband—a symbol of hate and the atrocities of the Holocaust. In response to the criticism, Prince Harry issued a statement, saying, “I am very sorry if I caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologize.”
A few months later, Prince Harry and his brother attended their father’s wedding to Camilla. “She’s always been very close to me and William... She’s not the wicked stepmother. She’s a wonderful woman and she’s made our father very, very happy, which is the most important thing,” Prince Harry told the press at the time.
Military Career
In May 2005, Prince Harry enrolled at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. After undergoing 44 weeks of training, he joined the Household Cavalry as a second lieutenant in April 2006.
Later that year, Prince Harry and Prince William announced their plans for a special concert to be held in 2007 to mark the 10th anniversary of their mother’s passing. On what would have been Princess Diana’s 46th birthday, more than 60,000 people gathered at Wembley Stadium for the Concert for Diana. The 2007 event raised money for the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and other charities such as Sentebale, which Prince Harry established to help children and others affected by the AIDS crisis in Lesotho.
Also in 2007, Prince Harry began training for possible war zone deployment. His status as a royal posed certain security challenges to the army, and there was much debate regarding whether he should be allowed to serve in a combat situation. In February 2008, Prince Harry began his tour of duty in Afghanistan. He served for two months.
In early 2009, Prince Harry once again faced criticism for his insensitivity. Videos of him from 2006 surfaced, depicting him using a derogatory term for a fellow Pakistani soldier as well as another offensive remark. Prince Harry apologized for his comments, and the army ordered him to undergo sensitivity training.
From 2009 to 2012, Prince Harry trained to become an Apache helicopter pilot in the Army Air Corps. He then put these newfound skills to work in his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, which began in September 2012. After participating in several combat missions, the prince ended his official military duties in 2015, though he continued volunteering to assist wounded servicemen.
Vegas Photo Scandal
In August 2012, Prince Harry was back in the tabloids after nude photos of the royal had been leaked to the public. The images of the prince were taken during a private party in a hotel room in Las Vegas, where he and his friends reportedly were playing a game of strip billiards.
The photos of the partying prince ran in Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, but most other papers in England declined to run them. Although the story dominated the headlines for a short time, the scandal seemed to have no lasting impact on his public image. One of his first public appearances after the scandal was at the WellChild Awards in London, where he received a warm welcome. Prince Harry serves a patron to WellChild, a charity dedicated to supporting sick children and their families. He even joked in his speech that he was “never shy in coming forward,” according to BBC News.
Wife Meghan Markle
Prince Harry began dating actor Meghan Markle, star of the television show Suits, in 2016. They met while Harry was attending the Invictus Games in Toronto, where Suits is filmed. That November, Kensington Palace issued a statement confirming their relationship. The statement also requested privacy and respect for the couple after Markle had been subjected to racist and sexist attacks on social media, as well as harassment by paparazzi.
On November 27, 2017, news broke that Prince Harry and Markle had secretly gotten engaged earlier in the month. An official announcement said the two would marry the following spring and move to Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace in London.
News of the engagement was greeted with enthusiasm by other members of the royal family. Then-Prince Charles as well as Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, all declared they were “delighted” at the announcement, while Prince William and Kate Middleton, then the Duchess of Cambridge, said they were “very excited for Harry and Meghan,” adding, “It has been wonderful getting to know Meghan and to see how happy she and Harry are together.”
In March 2018, the Daily Mail reported that Prince Harry would not sign a prenuptial agreement. According to a source, “There was never any question in Harry’s mind that he would sign a prenup. He’s determined that his marriage will be a lasting one, so there’s no need for him to sign anything.” Additionally, prenups weren’t considered to be legally binding in the United Kingdom, though judges were known to take them into consideration during divorce trials.
Royal Wedding
Prince Harry and Markle were married on May 19, 2018, in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. Prince William served as Harry’s best man, a role Harry had filled at his big brother’s 2011 wedding.
No formal invitations were issued to political leaders for the big day, thereby breaking with a longstanding tradition at British royal weddings. Before the wedding, a New York Times source at Kensington Palace said that 600 friends and family members would be invited, based on capacity at St. George’s Chapel. The couple also invited 1,200 members of the public to witness the ceremony at Windsor Castle. Notably absent from the ceremony was Markle’s father, who has a strained relationship with his daughter.
After the wedding, Queen Elizabeth II officially conferred her grandson with the title Duke of Sussex, as well as the additional titles Earl of Dumbarton and Baron Kilkeel. Markle became the Duchess of Sussex.
Kids
In October 2018, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced that they were expecting their first child the following spring. On May 6, 2019, their son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, arrived at 5:26 a.m. He is sixth in line to the British throne.
“It’s been the most amazing experience I could ever possibly imagine,” Harry said. “How any woman does what they do is beyond comprehension. But we’re both absolutely thrilled and so grateful to all the love and support from everybody out there. It’s been amazing, so we just wanted to share this with everybody.”
On Valentine’s Day 2021, Prince Harry and Markle announced they were expecting their second child, a daughter. Lilibet “Lili” Diana Mountbatten-Windsor was born on June 4, 2021, at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California. She is seventh in line to the British throne.
Harry and Meghan have largely kept their children from the spotlight. Although the couple are no longer working members of the royal family, they confirmed in March 2023 that their children are using their royal titles as Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
2019 Africa Trip
In late September 2019, Harry, Markle, and baby Archie undertook an eventful 10-day trip to Africa. At one point, Harry retraced his mother’s steps through a minefield in Angola, which took place just months before her death. On the final day of the tour, the royal couple announced they were suing the Mail on Sunday for publishing a private letter Markle wrote to her father.
With a film crew in tow to produce the documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, the prince revealed to his interviewer that he thought of his mother whenever facing the flashing cameras of the press. He also acknowledged the whispers that he and William weren’t as close as they’d once been but downplayed the notion of a major rift between them: “We’re certainly on different paths at the moment, but I will always be there for him and as I know he’ll always be there for me... We don’t see each other as much as we used to because we’re so busy, but I love him dearly.”
Stepping Back From Royal Duties
On January 8, 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex dropped the bombshell news that they planned to “step back” from their senior roles in the royal family and work to become “financially independent.”
“It is with your encouragement, particularly over the last few years, that we feel prepared to make this adjustment. We now plan to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America, continuing to honor our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages,” they wrote in a joint statement on Instagram. “This geographic balance will enable us to raise our son with an appreciation for the royal tradition into which he was born, while also providing our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity.”
A few days later, Buckingham Palace released a statement that addressed several details of the new arrangement, including confirmation that Prince Harry and Markle would no longer receive public funds for royal duties or use the honorific stylings His/Her Royal Highness. They would be permitted to continue their work with private patronages and to use Frogmore Cottage as their United Kingdom home, though they would have to reimburse the Sovereign Grant for recent renovations.
After partaking in one final engagement in early March, at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey, Harry and Markle completed their move to Los Angeles ahead of their March 31, 2020, send-off as senior royals.
In February 2021, Harry and Meghan confirmed that they wouldn’t be returning to their royal roles. They will retain their titles but no longer use them. “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have confirmed to Her Majesty The Queen that they will not be returning as working members of The Royal Family,” a statement from Buckingham Palace said. “Following conversations with The Duke, The Queen has written confirming that in stepping away from the work of The Royal Family it is not possible to continue with the responsibilities and duties that come with a life of public service.”
In March 2021, Harry and Meghan sat down with Oprah Winfrey for a two-hour tell-all special. In the interview, Harry addressed why the couple stepped down as working members of the royal family; growing up royal; the status of his relationship with his grandmother, father, and brother; and how he thinks his mother would react to everything. “I think she would feel very angry with how this has panned out and very sad,” he said.
Most notably, Markle said in the interview she had experienced suicidal thoughts during her time as a working royal, with Harry claiming the royal family provided no support for her mental health.
Despite leaving his royal duties behind, Prince Harry remains fifth in line to the English throne, behind Prince William and William’s three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis.
Spare Book
In January 2023, Harry released a book titled Spare, a reference to the adage “heir and the spare” that often describes a prospective monarch (Prince William, in this case) and a respective sibling.
Spare by Prince Harry
In the memoir, Harry detailed his strained relationships with various members of the royal family, including his brother. According to an excerpt, Harry claims that he and William got into a physical altercation in 2019 during an argument about his relationship with Meghan Markle. “He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out,” Harry wrote.
Harry also detailed his struggle with anxiety and panic attacks, comparing them to a form of post-traumatic stress resulting from the death of his mother, Diana, and his military service. He wrote that he killed 25 Taliban fighters during his time in Afghanistan.
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Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.
