Andrew Morton: Princess Diana Would Feel ‘Conflicted’ Over Prince Harry

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Princess Diana would be “very conflicted” by her son Prince Harry’s decision to launch a series of attacks on his family of origin, Andrew Morton, the royal biographer best known for his bombshell Diana book, Diana: Her True Story, has told The Daily Beast.

Harry has spent much of the past two-plus years, since he and Meghan left the royal family, lobbing so-called “truth bombs” at the royal establishment, with him and his wife singling out King Charles, Prince William, and Kate Middleton for a series of deeply personal attacks.

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These have included, most notably, telling Oprah Winfrey that a member of the family asked them racist questions about what color the skin of their children would be. The offensive will attain new momentum in January, when Harry launches his memoir, entitled Spare, a riff on the old adage that aristocratic families require, ideally, an heir (William) and a spare (Harry).

Morton says no one should expect the book to be anything other than an excoriating take-down of the way he was treated in his former life as a royal.

“The clue is in the title. He’s called it Spare, so he will obviously be delving into his life in the shadow of his brother. For me, it’s a Cain and Abel story. I think Diana would be very conflicted now. On the one hand, she would admire the fact that Harry’s made a break and got out and now lives in California. She would have understood that—she herself looked at Julie Andrews’ house in California, she was thinking about living there, she found America a place of openness and opportunity—so, on that side of things, she would have given Harry a round of applause.

“Where she wouldn’t have a round of applause for him is this dislocation between the two brothers. She always said she wanted Harry to be William’s wingman, not a hitman.”

On the bright side for the royals, Morton says he expects Harry will “move on” once the book is out, not least because, “You can only go on for so long blaming your dad.”

He adds: “I think Harry has a valid argument to say his father made comments about his mother, and he made also made comments about his own parents and his view of them [in the Jonathan Dimbleby book].”

Morton covers the impact of Harry and Meghan’s seismic split from the royal family in his new book, The Queen, a compelling, erudite, 400-plus-page account of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. He describes the act of being a biographer as being “a personality detective” and describes his hunt for “clues” to the true nature of the strangely unknowable, most famous woman of the 20th and 21st centuries as a quest “to understand the human being behind the stamps and behind the pound notes.”

Morton says: “I think that an early clue for me was that when I looked at her childhood, I found she rarely played with other children. She was very solitary. She was very diffident. She let her sister start the conversations, and she prayed every night for her mother to give birth to a son so that she wouldn’t have to be queen. She had very few friends outside the immediate family.”

One of the few friends (although, admittedly, she was on the payroll) whom Morton writes about is the queen’s legendarily assertive dresser, Angela Kelly, nicknamed AK47 by the family and household. Kelly is one of the few servants who has been left, reputedly by order of the queen, in her grace and favor home following Elizabeth’s death.

Morton says: “Angela was a gatekeeper. Every senior figure needs a gatekeeper, and they have great power. Angela was a very tough docker’s daughter from Liverpool. Angela knew what was going on and could feed the queen that information. She had good gossip; and in the years that I’ve covered the family, one of the things that I have found interesting is that the royals like gossip, just like the rest of us.”

Kelly of course was one of the few people to stand up to Meghan and Harry. The story goes that Meghan wanted, at short notice, to try on a tiara before her wedding, but Kelly told the couple they’d have to make an appointment at a time that suited her, like anyone else wanting to access the queen’s priceless jewels.

Harry reputedly exploded and uttered the phrase, “What Meghan wants, Meghan gets.” In the end, an accommodation was reached, and the tiara was made available.

“Harry knew about Angela Kelly’s power and didn’t particularly like her. The row over the tiara was a power struggle,” said Morton.

Who won? “It was a score draw.”

Of the whole situation of Harry and Meghan leaving the family so acrimoniously, he says: “I think the queen was very disappointed. She spoke very affectionately in every statement she made about them. You didn’t have to be an insider to realize that she had considerable affection for Harry. He got access to the queen where other people would be waiting for weeks. She even did various little stunts for him [Morton cites here the mic-drop video with the Obamas Harry and the queen did together to promote the Invictus Games].

“From her point of view she’d been there, during the most difficult periods of his life, such as at Balmoral after Diana died, and at the proudest, such as his passing-out parade at Sandringham.

“The royals did have a plan to use Meghan and Harry going forward. They were both given senior positions in the Commonwealth. It always struck me that they were given the Willy Wonka golden ticket. They could have done anything: traveled the world, gone and lived in New Zealand for a bit, or traveled around Australia with the kids. It’s a sign of how much they wanted out that they gave that up to go live in California.”

Morton does not think Charles is that exercised about making Harry and Meghan’s children a prince and princess.

“Charles has bigger fish to fry. Whether or not Lilibet gets to be a princess is not a major item on his agenda. The No. 1 item would seem to me would be the coronation, item 2 is saving the Commonwealth and item 3 is the relevance of the royal family in a multicultural, multi-ethnic community. I’m not sure he will be losing much sleep over Lilibet’s title.”

Morton is currently experiencing the curious sensation of seeing a pivotal part of his life played out on screen. How did he feel about Andrew Steele’s portrayal of him in The Crown?

“I’ve been portrayed in various films and musicals over the years. I was actually surprised it wasn’t more dramatic, because, you know, all that stuff happened. James was knocked off his bike in Parliament Square, my office was broken into [events both depicted in The Crown].

As for fearing for his life, he says, “Well, certainly, one was very apprehensive. What’s waiting in the shadows? One was nervous about that.”

The portrayal of Charles “makes me laugh, all this shaking of the pearls about The Crown misrepresenting Charles. He comes out of it as questing, progressive, sensitive, thoughtful… I could go on. And then they’re almost doing an infomercial for the Prince’s Trust at the end of one of the episodes!”

So, why are the royals apparently so annoyed by The Crown?

“The real threat is the fact that we have a coronation coming up in May, and anyone who works for the palace is on tenterhooks; they don’t want it to go wrong. And one of the things that could go wrong would be a sea change in Charles’ image. They do not want people to be reminded what happened in the past with Charles and Camilla. You’d expect them to be on red alert, to squash anything. The irony is they have hit a home run, without even touching the ball.”

Of Charles’ reign so far Morton says, “Charles is having a honeymoon period. We’re seeing a slightly different style, such as being kissed by people in the crowd—you never saw that with the queen. But a lot will depend on the coronation, the shape and the style of the coronation. That’s going to define him—and his reign.”