Watch: Prince Harry addresses divorce rumours
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The Duke of Sussex has laughed off rumours that his marriage is on the rocks as he addressed the endless speculation about his private life.
The Duke joked during The New York Times’s annual DealBook summit that it was “hard to keep up with” the allegations made on social media.
“Apparently we’ve bought or moved house 10, 12 times,” he said.
“We’ve apparently divorced maybe 10, 12 times as well. So it’s just like, what?”
The Duke and Duchess’s marriage has long been the subject of spurious speculation, much of which has increased in recent months as they have increasingly pursued separate work agendas.
While the Duke was at the summit on Wednesday, the Duchess attended the Paley Honors gala in Los Angeles.
The Duke said he “genuinely” felt sorry for the social media trolls engaged in such activities.
He told Andrew Ross Sorkin, the New York Times columnist and event founder, that he was “very much” enjoying his life in the US and had no plans to leave.
He said he felt he was living the life his mother would have wanted for him, suggesting he had a level of privacy that would have been impossible in the UK.
“I very much enjoy living here and it’s a part of my life that I never thought I was going to live, and I feel as though it’s the life that my mum wanted for me,” he added.
Elsewhere, the Duke vowed never to settle his privacy claim against the publisher of The Sun.
He acknowledged that he was very nearly the last man standing in the long-running High Court legal battle against News Group Newspapers but insisted he would pursue it to the end to achieve closure for the hundreds of others forced to settle, for whom there had been “no justice.”
“The goal is accountability. It’s really that simple,” he told the summit.
The Duke, who is suing NGN over alleged unlawful information gathering and invasion of privacy, is likely to be the star witness when the case comes to trial in January.
Only he and Tom Watson, the former deputy Labour leader, are still pursuing the claim after 39 others, including the actor Hugh Grant, agreed settlements in recent months.
Grant said he had been forced to settle as he could not risk being saddled with an estimated £10 million legal bill.
NGN, which has rejected allegations of wrongdoing, has settled some 1,300 other claims without making any admission of liability.
“They’ve settled because they have to settle,” the Duke said.
“So therefore, one of the main reasons for seeing this through is accountability, because I’m the last person that can actually achieve that, and also closure for these 1,300 people and families.”
The Duke criticised the British legal system, within which even if a claimant wins, they are liable for the costs of both sides if they had earlier rejected a settlement offer larger than the damages awarded.
“You’re forced to have to settle,” he said. “So actually, there’s no justice for any of these claimants. Even if or when we win, I’m still liable for the legal costs of both sides.”
The Duke won a partial victory in his phone hacking claim against Mirror Group Newspapers last December and is also pursuing a claim against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail.
In April, he will appeal against a High Court ruling having lost his battle against the Home Office for the right to automatic police protection when in the UK.
He said the disclosure process in that case had been “troubling and enlightening” adding: “I never should have had security removed in the first place.”
‘Zero accountability and transparency’
The Duke joked that he had become a “professional” litigant but said he planned to “retire” soon.
“One of the reasons why I am, not so much stuck in litigation, but the reason why these things have happened… is because of my 10 years [in the] military and the values and principles that I live by,” he said.
“That’s not something that I ever want to shrug off.
“It is becoming increasingly hard for people who have values and certain principles to stick to those as the world starts to change.”
The Duke said therapy had helped him realise that there was no point in harbouring anger and resentment towards the media because of his mother’s death as it would not change anything and would not have been what she wanted.
He said he felt sorry for the social media trolls who spread totally unfounded rumours online about his personal life and state of his marriage.
“I feel sorry for them, genuinely, I do,” he said.
The Duke also criticised the social media industry, which has “pretty much zero accountability and transparency, and yet are able to make billions upon billions”.
