I am genuinely worried for Harry's mental health now after this

[Squabbledee]

Give it another week of worldwide chewing over his words and all the drama it's creating, I'm genuinely worried for Harry. How can you go anywhere and hold your head up after you've opened yourself to such ridicule? He might want an un-royal life but he is a prince non-the-less. Where's the dignity? He really, really needs help. I sincerely hope it gets it. The fallout from this won't be forgotten in a hurry. And to top it off, how can he make his family truly secure now?

They only met 7 times before the engagement and 12 before the actual wedding.

surely that cannot be true??

@TheWeeDonkeyFella
Google it some reports say 13 others 12.

Prince Charles’s spent £150,000, a large sum back then, on the services of a PR bigwig Mark Bolland to achieve this.

This isn’t quite true. Bolland was a Palace staffer.

Well you've surprised me with that snippet @Sugarfree23.That's just bonkers and maybe explains some of the issues even without the third wheel in their marriage.

@TheWeeDonkeyFella honestly it stunned me when I found that out too. It was more or less an arranged marriage organised between their Grannies.

The Queen Mother really meddled in stuff she shouldn't have. I believe she was also responsible for having the young Charles go away with the Navy for 7 mths, when he was showing interest in Camilla, he unfortunately didn't make feeling clear, communication wasn't what it now, he came back to find her hooked up with Parker-Bowes.

Blossomtoes The details of the PR blitz to malign Diana are outlined in Tom Bower's book, "Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles."

It details how the and Prince Charles and Camilla queen allegedly worked with Bolland to defame Diana. In one excerpt, published by the Daily Mail, Bower wrote, "The first hurdle, they agreed, was to demythologize Diana by portraying her as a manipulative hysteric."

To be fair she was a bit of an hysteric. She used to imagine slights and fall out with people all the time. And she did manipulate. For example, she often used to ring the press to inform them where she was going to be to take pictures.
So I don't think that calling her a manipulative hysteric could be considered defamatory really.

To be fair she was a bit of an hysteric. She used to imagine slights and fall out with people all the time. And she did manipulate. For example, she often used to ring the press to inform them where she was going to be to take pictures

So I don't think that calling her a manipulative hysteric could be considered defamatory really.

Pretty nasty thing to say about someone who is dead though! I am sure she had her flaws like everyone else but living under constant public scrutiny can’t have been easy. And remember she had the charmer Martin Bashir telling her falsehoods about her own staff being untrustworthy.

That she was unstable and hysterical was certainly the story that has been continually told about her in the press.

Funnily enough Gyles Brandreth called Diana an hysteric out of the blue on ITV’s This Morning a few weeks ago. He has been friends with Camilla since they were both teens.

It’s an old misogynistic tactic to try and discredit women who are challenging the patriarchy or who are “are not going quietly” by calling them mad or hysterical.

As for manipulating the press, if you are someone who has a high level of press interest in you, and your photo is on the front page of the tabloids day after day, it’s very sensible and probably necessary to try and control the narrative a little. You may as well use the interest to suit your own ends if everyone else is exploiting it for theirs! That’s savvy if you ask me.

@HamBone " Anne and Edward are also “spares” and seem pretty balanced-yes, Ann had a failed marriage and Edward struggled to find a career path, but they seem to have got through it. "

Ann is so down to earth, that she was even invited to and attended Capt'Mark Phillips daughters wedding a few months ago. Not only that but the girl had been a very regular and welcome visitor to her home since she was a kid. That seems like a very well balanced person to me.

Ooops @HamBone sorry, i meant to point out in that last post that i was agreeing with you but clicked ' post ' too soon.

William says they're the same twitter.com/Dharghan_/status/1615379002352353282?t=2wLaBOp9WmT4UJIxHKkc_A&s=19

The thing is, though, that they were simply taking the myth away and portraying her as she undoubtedly was. It may be a misogynist tactic to call an awkward woman a hysteric, but we should not let that close our eyes to the fact that sometimes it's true.

The thing is, though, that they were simply taking the myth away and portraying her as she undoubtedly was. It may be a misogynist tactic to call an awkward woman a hysteric, but we should not let that close our eyes to the fact that sometimes it's true

Actually no. That’s my point. They were doing far more than taking the myth away. This was a planned campaign to discredit it.

What does hysteric mean in this context? If it is “true” you must be able to explain it? Is it a medical diagnosis or is it a subjective opinion? If the former, do you hold qualifications in psychiatry? In order to qualify as “an hysteric” does someone have to betray symptoms five minutes or day or three hours a day? Please explain to me why this condition only appears to affect women and not men?

Sorry, a planned campaign to discredit her.

They were doing far more than taking the myth away. This was a planned campaign to discredit it.

It wasn't a secret to anyone at the time that Diana was mercurial in her moods. She dropped family members and friends over slights that were often imagined. She had a temper and threw and broke things. Whether justifiably savvy or not, she used the press to publicise photo ops and made denials to the press about things that were true. Such as her book. She had a message and she manipulated the press and those around her to get that message across.

Where is the myth that she was not manipulative or a hysteric? She had both good and bad qualities but she was certainly no saint.

Well we can all be moody and many of us have tempers. I have not personally read about her having a propensity to throw things. I think Diana, with the burden of pressures she endured, would have been more than justified in displaying both.

Being accused of being an hysteric is an entirely different thing though, and I think something which has been put about by various interested parties shall we say, solely in order to discredit her. It’s interesting to me that these particular broadcasters and journalists use the very same “script”.

Remember she did have people recording her phone calls, so-called friends selling stories to the press, staff selling photos, paparazzi hiding in bushes to get snaps of her on holiday and a supposedly respectable BBC journalist forging 73 documents in order to deceive her in to giving an interview. Given those circumstances, I think she remained remarkably sane and sanguine tbh!

Yes, but Bolland was salaried. It didn’t cost £150k.

Btw, the contents of Diana’s book, contrary to popular belief at the time, turned out to be the narrative that was true! It was the RF’s story about the marriage of Charles and Diana being a happy one, that turned out to be a lie!

That is what is most problematic about the modern monarchy tbh; the fact that, owing to their Faustian pact with the press, they are more than happy to publicise stories that are good. But when the stories are less than positive, they try and cover them up, or deflect attention elsewhere. And that’s simply not possible nowadays in a world that is less deferential and where everyone carries a camera and recording equipment in their phone.

But Diana wanted the palace to keep up the facade of a happy marriage because,she didn't want to get divorced. She always hoped they'd be reconciled. So Diana was complicit in that. She also told the palace that she had no involvement with the Morton book and the palace believed her and issued denials on her behalf.

She didn't have people recording her calls. A ham radio operator picked up one of her calls. But she had her rooms swept for bugs regularly and none were ever found. Paparazzi did make her life miserable following her. But she also alerted paparazzi as to where she'd be. For instance she alerted them when she kissed Dodi Fayad on the boat. Martin Bashir was despicable but she believed him because she wanted what he was telling her to be the truth. It fitted into her paranoid beliefs. I don't know anythin⁹g about staff selling photos so can't comment on that.

Diana was hounded by the press. But she also learned how to manipulate and use the press to her own advantage. She was a mercurial person and not some sort of total innocent. She'd have been better to take the offer of one of the properties her brother offered her and try to gain some peace of mind.

What motivation did she have to keep up the facade?
Financial worries, fear of loosing face divorce was still a big thing in the 80s, fear of losing her DBoys?

Diana was loyal to Charles and very discreet about their marriage and complicit in keeping the happy family image going, until it was clear that he was never going to give up Camilla.

Remember that in the Tampon tapes, a large part of the conversation, the bits that are funnily enough not often broadcast or printed, concerned a lot of discussion between Charles and Camilla about the logistics of when and where they were going to meet, thanks to the hospitality of friends, and how they were going to keep this information secret from Diana.

So everyone in royal circles knew the details about affair, including Palace and Highgrove staff, except Diana herself, which is a pretty grim scenario if you think about it.

Diana manipulated the press and wrote the book partly because she believed Martin Bashir’s 70 plus pieces of faked evidence, partly because she was in reality being briefed against by Charles ‘ friends, and partly because she had witnessed her own mother lose custody of her four children in a bitter divorce battle when she had fought against the establishment and the establishment closed ranks against her.

Frances Shand Kydd was thereafter described as “a bolter” but she always insisted she had been forced to give up her dc.

So Diana was very wary of the same thing happening to her, especially when her dc were the heir and the spare and she was up against one of the most powerful family’s in the land. Not exactly the perfect recipe for “peace of mind’, so she knew she had to go nuclear or go home, and put her side of the story.

As for the Squidgy tapes, according to Tina Brown’s book, until his dying day the radio ham who recorded them, said he made the recording on Jan. 4, 1990, four days after the conversation likely took place. And the company Cellnet has said that he could not have made the recording on their airwaves in January since they had not yet built a base in the area. (Outside experts confirmed Cellnet’s claim.) Brown cites several experts who argue that Diana’s phone was bugged and speculates the recording must have been replayed over the air in hopes a civilian would pick it up. So it’s possible that Diana’s so-called “paranoia” was not entirely unfounded.

The main point though, which everyone has closed their eyes and mind to, is that, according to Patrick Jephson, Diana was being framed as being “mentally troubled” by the palace, allegedly, and possibly with the approval of Charles or his staff.

This is relevant because of both Harry’s book - whatever you think about it, the briefing tactics he describes sound pretty similar - also because Charles is now our current King.

Patrick Jephson was Diana’s private secretary for eight years who travelled with her all over the world. He has spoken in at least one podcast about this, and said of her,

“The unspoken addition is that everything is alright now because we have her replacement, who is wonderfully down-to-earth and grounded and not at all flakey or paranoid," Jephson said. "I knew Princess Diana probably better than almost anybody — certainly professionally — and she was one of the most sane people I ever met."

This is what Harry has done to his mothers own legacy, a legacy that he in the past has tried to protect. There was a deep cleanse of her past when she died, and for most an attitude of let her rest in piece. She was an outstanding woman but in Harry going after Camilla and in someways the press opens up his own mothers flaws and because people didn’t speak about the negatives surrounding Diana doesn’t mean it was forgotten or erased. I’d say people have been respectful to Diana for nearly 30 years but that doesn’t mean history can rewrite itself

Sorry Peace not piece

Brown cites several experts who argue that Diana’s phone was bugged

Diana had her phones checked for bugs regularly. Jephson, who you clearly trust, said so. They never found any. Tina brown was selling a book. I'm sure she could find/buy experts. If I were writing a book, I'm sure I could "find" people to say lizard people rule the world.

Diana had mental health problems. That doesn't mean she was insane. It's sort of insulting of Jephson to imply differently.