King Charles not his real father: Prince Harry opens up on rumour

Prince Harry speaks out against rumours regarding his paternity and fears being removed from the royal family. He has taken legal action against Mirror Group Newspapers for alleged phone hacking, including an article discussing rumours about Major James Hewitt being his biological father.

Prince Harry leaves the High Court after giving evidence in London, Tuesday, June 6, 2023.(AP)

Prince Harry recently spoke about rumours regarding his paternity, stating that they were both damaging and personally significant to him. He also expressed fear that journalists might attempt to remove him from the royal family.

The Duke of Sussex has taken legal action against Mirror Group Newspapers for alleged phone hacking, including an article titled “Plot to rob the DNA of Harry,” published in The People on December 15, 2002. The article discussed rumours suggesting Major James Hewitt as Harry’s biological father, who was known to have had an affair with Princess Diana.

In a witness statement, Harry said, as quoted by Newsweeek: “This article, which was published on page 4 of The People and was written by Dean Rousewell, reported a plot to steal a sample of my DNA to test my parentage.”

“Numerous newspapers had reported a rumour that my biological father was James Hewitt, a man my mother had a relationship with after I was born.

“At the time of this article and others similar to it, I wasn’t actually aware that my mother hadn’t met Major Hewitt until after I was born.

“This timeline is something I only learnt of in around 2014, although I now understand this was common knowledge amongst the defendant’s journalists.

“At the time, when I was 18-years-old and had lost my mother just six years earlier, stories such as this felt very damaging and very real to me.

“They were hurtful, mean and cruel. I was always left questioning the motives behind the stories. Were the newspapers keen to put doubt into the minds of the public so I might be ousted from the royal family?”

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Harry’s account revealed that the rumour about his real father was put to rest when he turned 30, which was two years before meeting Meghan Markle and a year after Prince George’s birth. The court heard that The People and the Daily Mirror had published articles about a plot to obtain Harry’s DNA and sell it to a newspaper, aiming to determine if Charles or Hewitt was his biological father. Another article in the Mirror, titled “Plot to steal Harry DNA,” was mentioned in Harry’s case.

The prince said in his witness statement: “This article elaborates on the money that could be obtained from obtaining my DNA and selling it on to a foreign newspaper.

“It reports that St James’ Palace believed my DNA was to be offered ‘to a foreign newspaper for tens of thousands of pounds.’

“Again, I do not believe this information would have been put into the public domain by anyone at the palace, given the security risk this poses.

“The article also reports that Spain was thought to be a strong possibility for the location of the ‘honeytrap’ to take place. Again, I’m not sure where the [Mirror Group’s] journalist would have got this information from.”

Harry describes how Charles, then Prince of Wales, liked to tell an anecdote about meeting a patient at psychiatric hospital Broadmoor who believed he was the Prince of Wales: “Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I’m even your real father? Maybe your real father is in Broadmoor, darling boy!”

Harry wrote: “He’d laugh and laugh, though it was a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumour circulating just then that my actual father was one of mummy’s former lovers: Major James Hewitt.

“One cause of this rumour was Major Hewitt’s flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism. Tabloid readers were delighted by the idea that the younger child of Prince Charles wasn’t the child of Prince Charles.

“They couldn’t get enough of this ‘joke,’ for some reason. Maybe it made them feel better about their lives that a young prince’s life was laughable.”