Prince Harry and Meghan Markle look set to "heap more distress" on the royal family with their Netflix documentary and the trailer of the show has been released at a "perfect" time, an expert has said.
The first official promo video for Harry & Meghan, the Sussexes’ behind-the-scenes Netflix docuseries dropped yesterday - on the second day of the Prince and Princess of Wales' high-profile visit to Boston.
During the one-minute clip, Meghan appears to be wiping away tears with both hands as they stream down her face, while Harry sits and tilts his head right back, seemingly in distress.
Harry says: "No one sees what’s happening behind closed doors… I had to do everything I could to protect my family", while Meghan adds: "When the stakes were this high, doesn’t it make more sense to hear our story from us?"
Images of William and Kate with Harry and Meghan at the Commonwealth Day service in 2019 – the year before the Sussexes final public royal engagement at the same event – feature among the photographs, which also include many personal and private snaps that were previously unseen.
The trailer also comes as the fallout from Ngozi Fulani's racism accusation against Prince William's godmother Lady Susan Hussey – said to have taken place at Buckingham Palace – continued.
Lady Susan, who quit her royal role of more than 60 years after the claims, has offered to meet Ngozi to apologise in person, friends said yesterday.
And according to royal biographer an editor of Majesty Magazine Ingrid Seward, the Netflix show captures Harry and Meghan's life in a series of "carefully posed episodes" and looks certain to cause major concern at Buckingham Palace.
She told the Mirror: "What Harry and Meghan want is freedom not privacy. What else did we expect?
"In the teaser for the Netflix six-part series we see the Sussexes at their most vulnerable and beautiful.
"Meghan is shown looking glorious – dressed down in something diaphanous or wrapped around Harry as she was in their engagement pictures.
"How can anyone look that wonderful when they are posing in a kitchen as if they didn’t have a care in the world? Harry still in his royal marine dress uniform having been to the concert of remembrance at the Albert Hall.
"It seems as if they have a photographer living with them and their life is a series of carefully posed episodes.
"This dramatic black and white pictorial beauty is at odds to the darker message Harry is at pains to portray. He is going to tell us about how he was the lucky one.
"He escaped the drudgeries of being royal and being told what to do and what to say. It was all so dreadful and painful being a prince and having such a privileged lifestyle.
"The timing is perfect. Just as his brother the Prince of Wales is due to launch his Earthshot Prize in Boston, which is his pride and joy, Harry beats him to it by releasing something provocative that everyone wants to have a peek at.
"Diana knew the value of imagery to beat the competition. Even if Harry did not know before he does now. Like his mum before him he is the one that got away. The good boy gone bad or the bad boy gone good. It doesn’t matter.
"It is fascinating even to their fiercest detractors. What are they doing what are they going to do what are they going to say?
"King Charles has not had an easy few days. For the sake of the monarchy, he has had to agree to the public humiliation of one his oldest friends, Lady Susan Hussey for her careless, racist remarks and now the son who he loves very much looks set to heap more distress on the institution of which he is custodian."
Meanwhile, the Sussexes have also being accused of hijacking William and Kate’s US climate fight tour in the United States.
And one source told the Daily Mail: "I don't see how anyone could view it as anything other than a declaration of war."
While another added: "None of this is a surprise", and that the timing of the trailer's release had not gone unnoticed by palace staff.
It comes as William and Kate rose above the apparent bid to overshadow their visit to Boston, which was a huge success yesterday as crowds lined streets to greet them.
The couple enjoyed a rapturous welcome in the US ahead of tonight’s Earthshot Prize to celebrate environmental projects.