Volume II of Netflix's Harry & Meghan docu-series dropped this morning, bringing with it even more royal bombshells than last week's episodes. Perhaps most notable, is Prince Harry's claim in episode four that his wife Meghan Markle was doing the royal job "better than the person who was born to do it."
And it's not hard to guess who Harry is referring to, as the people "born" into the role are his brother Prince William, as well as his brother's children and his own children – who we very much doubt he's talking about.
Alongside a series of clips from some of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's first royal engagements as a married couple, a friend of the pair tells the camera: "They were so popular, so popular with the public that the internals at the Palace were incredibly threatened by that."
The documentary then cuts to a clip of TV presenter Piers Morgan saying, "They're becoming bigger than William and Kate."
Enter: Prince Harry and his controversial comment about his brother. The royal claims that the "problem" began when Meghan – who he describes as "someone who is marrying in" and therefore "should be a supporting act" – was "doing the job better than the person who was born to do it."
"That upsets people," Harry adds.
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The Duke of Sussex went on to blame the media for pitting himself and his wife against other members of the Royal Family. "The media are the ones who choose who to put on the front page," he says, noting that the "penny dropped" for Meghan when she found herself on the front pages of the newspapers more frequently than other, more senior royals. Harry then recalls how his mother had felt the same way, and the documentary cuts to a clip from Princess Diana's Panorama interview in which she discusses crowds of people being more interested in speaking with her than with the then-Prince Charles.
"This new couple could destabilise the power dynamics," the Sussexes' former royal spokesperson, James Holt (who is now Executive Director at their Archewell Foundation) says of the situation, adding that "they needed to be put in a box or be made irrelevant" – viewers are then left to come to the conclusion themselves of who would do that.
Cosmopolitan UK has reached out to the Palace for comment.
Cosmopolitan UK is reporting closely on the Harry & Meghan documentary and you can read all the latest stories here.
