Mahfouz had met Harry in 2013 and 2014 and donated £50,000 to his charity Sentebale and £10,000 to Walking With The Wounded, of which Harry is patron. The pictures were leaked by American celebrity website TMZ on 21 August 2012, and reported worldwide by mainstream media on 22 August 2012. While on holiday in Las Vegas in August 2012, Harry and an unknown young woman were photographed naked in a Wynn Las Vegas hotel room, reportedly during a game of strip billiards. Subsequently, it was reported that the military had instructed Harry to attend a diversity course. It also criticised all sides for allowing the conflict “to play out publicly” and cited poor internal governance and a “failure to resolve disputes internally” as factors that impacted the charity’s reputation. In March 2025, Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho resigned from their roles as patrons of Sentebale following a dispute between the charity’s trustees and the chair of the board, Sophie Chandauka.
The BBC reported on the “scrapped case”, highlighting NGN’s statement which said that the settlement agreement “drew a line under the past” and that they rejected the claims that would have been made in court about a corporate cover-up. Following Harry and Meghan’s trip to Nigeria in May 2024, Lucia Stein of the ABC argued that the couple could have been used by the royal family, and added that “perhaps how helpful they would have been” had an agreement on a “hybrid working model” been achieved. Harry and Meghan’s exit from the royal family was satirized in a 2023 episode of South Park.

Early life

• The decision to place Harry at Eton went against the past practice of the Mountbatten-Windsors to send children to Gordonstoun, which his grandfather, father, two uncles, and two cousins had attended.
• Referring to the press as “the devil”, he also alleged that “certain members” of his family were “in the bed” with them to “rehabilitate their image”.
• A government spokesperson added in a statement, “The UK Government’s protective security system is rigorous and proportionate.
• Agnatically, Harry is a member of the House of Glücksburg, a cadet branch of the House of Oldenburg, one of Europe’s oldest royal houses.
• Sources at the Home Office have indicated that security is nailed on for Harry.”
• In May 2025, Harry was interviewed by Nada Tawfik of the BBC, during which he reflected on his loss of taxpayer-funded security and his ongoing estrangement from his family.
• On 8 July 2013, the Ministry of Defence announced that Harry had successfully qualified as an Apache aircraft commander.

Harry withdrew the libel claim in January 2024 and became liable for the publisher’s £250,000 legal costs. The prince’s lawyer said the “substantial damages” paid by the publisher would be donated to the Invictus Games Foundation. However, his popularity fell after stepping back from royal duties, and it plummeted after the release of his controversial interview with Oprah Winfrey, his Netflix docuseries, and his memoir. After his marriage, Harry’s popularity skyrocketed above all the other royals as he was deemed likable by 77 per cent of respondents in a poll of 3,600 Britons conducted by statistics and polling company YouGov. Harry received backlash again in August 2021 and 2022 for taking a two-hour flight on private jets between California and Aspen, Colorado, to participate in an annual charity polo tournament. In view of their environmental activism, Harry and Meghan were criticised in August 2019 for reportedly taking four private jet journeys in 11 days, including one to Elton John’s home in Nice, France.

Netflix enlists Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for adaptation of ‘flirty’ romance novel

• Defence Secretary Philip Hammond stated that “additional security arrangements” were put in place, for Harry could be a potential target, but added that he would face “the same risk as any other Apache pilot” while in combat.
• There is now a belief that, barring a last-minute intervention from opponents, the duke will be granted the armed guards and institutional backup he used to get when he was a working royal.
• In May 2024, Mr Justice Fancourt refused Harry the permission to include claims against Rupert Murdoch, expand his case’s scope back to 1994 and 1995 to cover allegations involving his mother or to add new allegations from 2016 involving his then-girlfriend Meghan.
• Harry and Meghan stepped down as working royals in January 2020, moved to Meghan’s native Southern California, and launched Archewell Inc., a Beverly Hills-based mix of for-profit and not-for-profit business organisations.
• They are still referred to as “His/Her Royal Highness” in legal and private settings.
• However, his popularity fell after stepping back from royal duties, and it plummeted after the release of his controversial interview with Oprah Winfrey, his Netflix docuseries, and his memoir.
• Prince Harry’s fight to have his official, armed full-time security reinstated when he visits the U.K.

The commission later concluded that the foundation did not act unlawfully, but criticised the board of directors for expending a “substantial proportion of funds” to setting up and closing the charity. In July 2019, Harry and Meghan’s new charity was registered in England and Wales under the title “Sussex Royal The Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Sussex”. Nevertheless, the couple would collaborate with Harry’s brother and his wife on mutual projects, such as the mental health initiative Heads Together. In his statement, he lent his support to the charity by arguing that its role in bringing sport into the life of disadvantaged people would save “hundreds of millions of pounds” towards treating the issues among young people.
The brothers also received the original lyrics and score of “Candle in the Wind”, by harry casino Bernie Taupin and Elton John, as performed by John at Diana’s funeral. Harry and his brother William inherited the “bulk” of the £12.9 million left by their mother on their respective 30th birthdays, a figure that had grown since her 1997 death to £10 million each in 2014. His mother died in a car crash in Paris the following year while he and William were staying with their father at Balmoral Castle.

Charity work

They are still referred to as “His/Her Royal Highness” in legal and private settings. Writing for The Guardian, Stephen Bates stated that Harry’s “megaphone diplomacy isn’t working” and “his private security needs are probably not near the top of anybody’s priorities”. Referring to the press as “the devil”, he also alleged that “certain members” of his family were “in the bed” with them to “rehabilitate their image”.

Prince Harry and Meghan ‘sat on the floor’ in distress as their dog underwent emergency surgery

Harry attended the Defence Helicopter Flying School at RAF Shawbury, where he joined his brother. It was later reported that Harry helped Gurkha troops repel an attack from Taliban insurgents, and performed patrol duty in hostile areas while in Afghanistan. He was immediately pulled out due to the fear that the media coverage would put his security and the security of fellow soldiers at risk.
He lost the legal challenge in May 2023, meaning that he will not be allowed to make private payments for police protection. In February 2023, a High Court judge ruled that the second case should be thrown out; however, the decision was later appealed by Harry’s legal team. Harry filed a lawsuit against the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police in August 2022, challenging the decision by RAVEC from January 2022 which stated that State security could not be made available to private individuals even if they wished to pay for it themselves. Mr Justice Swift also reacted to the Duke’s legal team sending a copy of the ruling to someone who was not a lawyer, describing it as “entirely unacceptable”.

Count Nikolai supports grandmother Queen Margrethe on her big premiere night

Following the first court hearing of the case by the High Court, it was revealed that Harry had ‘exceptional status’ and the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (RAVEC) still determined his personal protective security on a case-by-case basis. In January 2022, it was reported that Harry had been in a legal fight since September 2021 over the Home Office’s refusal to allow him to pay for police protection. The Government of Canada announced RCMP security would not be provided after March 2020 when the couple’s status changed. In June 2023, Harry broke royal protocol by criticising the UK government in his witness statement to a court.

Prince Harry may be closer than ever to a reunion with the royal family following a significant legal win in his long running fight over security in the UK. Harry faced difficulties with obtaining and maintaining publicly funded security, both in Canada and the United Kingdom, after he and Meghan announced their self-demotion within the royal family. Prince Harry and his father, King Charles III, have reunited amid the royal family’s estrangement from the outspoken prince. Harry has previously expressed his feelings about the removal of royal security and maintained that the UK was unsafe for him and his family, including wife Meghan Markle and their two children, Archie, 6, and Lilibet, 4. The Duke of Sussex previously lost his court challenge after Ravec ruled he was no longer eligible for state funded security because he is no longer considered a working royal.
His appeal was rejected by three senior judges in May 2025 and he was likely to be held liable for the UK government’s legal fees. It was also revealed that during the proceedings Harry had leaked information via email to “a partner of Schillings” and to Johnny Mercer, for which he apologised to the court. Despite his lawyers’ attempts to have him pay no more than 50% of the Home Office’s legal costs of defending his challenge, the judge held him liable for 90% of the costs. In February 2024, the High Court ruled against Harry in his case against the Home Office and upheld the decision by RAVEC, stating that there had been no unlawfulness in the decision-making process for his security arrangements. In June 2023, a Freedom of Information request revealed that Harry’s legal fight with the Home Office had cost £502,236, with £492,000 covered by the state and the remaining £10,000 covered by Harry.