Prince Harry issued a series of blistering attacks on Queen Consort Camilla last night, as he stunned the world while making a number of explosive claims on US television.
While Harry took aim at his father and brother Prince William, his biggest grievances appeared to be with his step mother Camilla in a series of digs that stunned viewers.
In his interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, the Duke of Sussex claimed his interests were sacrificed at Camilla’s PR alter as he described his stepmother as “the villain”.
He claimed that Camilla Parker-Bowles needed to “rehabilitate her image” after Princess Diana famously described her as being the “third person” in her and Charles’ marriage, referring back to a 1995 interview in which his mother, Princess Diana, famously referred to Camilla as such.
Harry said this admission turned the now-Queen Consort into a “villain”.
“She was the villain. She was the third person in their marriage. She needed to rehabilitate her image,” Harry said in Sunday’s interview.
The Duke of Sussex claimed Camilla's need to rehabilitate her image made her dangerous due to the way she was forming relationships with the press.
Harry accused her of “trading information” with the press in an attempt to get more positive stories written about herself, and went on to suggest that her “connections” with the media would end up with “people or bodies left in the street”.
He told the journalist: "There was open willingness on both sides to trade of information. And with a family built on hierarchy, and with her, on the way to being Queen consort, there was gonna be people or bodies left in the street because of that."
He then admitted he feels as though he was one of the bodies, believing that both Camilla and his father had, at times, used him to better their own coverage.
"If you are led to believe, as a member of the family, that being on the front page, having positive headlines, positive stories written about you, is going to improve your reputation or increase the chances of you being accepted as monarch by the British public, then that's what you're gonna do," he added.
Princess Diana’s infamous interview with BBC ’s Martin Bashir in 1995 saw the first time she had publicly addressed claims that Charles and Camilla had an affair during her marriage to the then-Prince of Wales.
At the time, she sensationally told Bashir: “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Harry also discussed how he didn't feel it was necessary for his dad to marry Camilla and went as far as revealing he and his brother Prince William had begged him not to tie the knot.
He admitted he thought his dad doing so would "cause more harm than good" and simply being in a relationship with her should have been enough.
He confessed he did want to see the now-King and Queen consort happy, but he thought that being public with their relationship would suffice.
“We didn’t think it was necessary,” he explained. “We thought that it was going to cause more harm than good, and that if he was now with his person that surely that’s enough. Why go that far when you don’t necessarily need to?
“We wanted him to be happy and we saw how happy he was with her, so at the time it was OK.”
Harry’s blistering attacks on his stepmother are not set to stop with the TV interview as his book “Spare” is set to be released this week in which he is understood to have continued the line of barbs flung at her.
Harry has already painted what Anderson Cooper described as an “unflattering portrayal” of her in his explosive memoir, which was mistakenly released in Spain last week.
In one section of the book, Harry is reported to have accused Camilla of leaking information to the media as part of a “campaign” to take the Crown.
In one passage, he reportedly wrote: “Shortly after our private meetings with her, she began to develop her long-term strategy, a campaign directed at marriage and with time, the Crown (with the blessing of our father, we supposed).
“News stories started appearing in all the newspapers about her conversations with Willy, stories which recounted lots of small details, none of which came from my brother, of course.”
Harry's interview with Anderson was shown hours after the first British broadcast of the Duke of Sussex's UK chat with ITV News presenter Tom Bradby.
Harry: The Interview premiered on ITV on Sunday evening, with Harry, 38, going into unprecedented depth and detail on life in and out of the royal family.
The dad-of-two opened up about how he had seen his late mother Princess Diana in his dreams and also took aim at his brother and sister-in-law, while recalling how he faced a "horrible reaction" from his family when the Queen died last year.
King Charles' youngest son has been on something of a promotional tour over recent weeks, ahead of his debut memoir Spare hitting shop shelves on Tuesday.
