This week, Prince Harry took his fight against the British tabloid media to the witness stand, and sources have told Vanity Fair that the royal family isn’t too optimistic about his chances for success. Despite that, his uncle, Charles Spencer, is supporting him publicly in the face of attacks from a columnist at the Daily Mail, who suggested that Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, didn’t attend the trial due to the references of his ex-girlfriend.
After Harry’s testimony on the stand on Wednesday, the Mail’s Amanda Platell tweeted an old picture of Harry with his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy, and a bit of classic inane tabloid speculation. “Is Harry still obsessed with former love Chelsy Davy?” she wrote. “Harry mentions her 118 times in court evidence, Meghan just five times. No wonder Meg’s didn’t show up!”
Plenty of other Twitter users pointed out that the suit is about stories that ran from 1996 to 2010, a period that includes Harry’s six-year relationship with Davy, who now has one child with her husband Sam Cutmore-Scott and runs two businesses in South Africa. Harry didn’t meet Meghan until 2016, a period not at issue in the lawsuit.
Pathetic, @amandajplatell – you have no shame, and even less credibility. Last time I heard from you, you were guilty of libelling me, as your employer at @DailyMailUK agreed. Now you’re put up (by them?) to misrepresent significant legal evidence as if it was something trivial. https://t.co/rFPLEcDtk9
— Charles Spencer (@cspencer1508) June 7, 2023
Earl Spencer, on the other hand, didn’t waste time clarifying the facts and instead went in for a kill shot. “Pathetic, @amandajplatell—you have no shame, and even less credibility,” he wrote. “Last time I heard from you, you were guilty of libelling me, as your employer at @DailyMailUK agreed. Now you’re put up (by them?) to misrepresent significant legal evidence as if it was something trivial.”
By mentioning “libel,” Spencer seems to be referencing a 2018 case in which Associated Newspapers, the parent company of the Daily Mail, was forced to pay undisclosed damages after a January 2017 “Platell’s People” column claimed that Charles had refused accommodation for Diana after her divorce from now King Charles III.
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