Prince Harry Claims That Tabloids Tried to Steal His DNA to Question His Paternity

It all stemmed from rumors of a relationship between Princess Diana and a man named James Hewitt.

Prince Harry's legal case against British tabloid publishers is becoming more and more like the plot of a Netflix drama. In new statements to the court, the Duke of Sussex claims that for much of his life, there was a plot to steal a sample of his DNA so that somehow, someone could prove that he was not the actual biological son of Prince Charles, now King Charles III. According to The Independent, Harry claimed that rumors about his mother, Princess Diana, having a torrid affair with a man named James Hewitt led many to believe that he was an illegitimate heir to the throne, even though the timeline doesn't even work out. Princess Diana hadn't even met Hewitt until after Harry was born.

“They were hurtful, mean, and cruel,” Harry said. “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?”

He went on to say that reporters at Mirror Group Newspapers knew that fact, but chose to ignore it to support their unfounded claims about his lineage.

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

Related: Prince Harry Says That Tabloids Have Always Tried to "Break Up" His Relationships

He continued, saying “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.” He also referenced a “highly placed royal source” that the papers used, which also claimed that his DNA could be “sold abroad.” Harry noted that he is almost certain that there was never any royal source to plant those rumors and that it was all a scheme to sell newspapers. The duke's statements claim that there were 140 articles published between 1996 and 2010 that involved unlawful information gathering, though only 33 were submitted to the current case.

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