Prince Harry's lawsuit against British tabloid ends; Duke accepts apology and damages

Prince Harry has accepted an apology and damages from a British tabloid over two articles published last year that claimed he has "turned his back" on the Armed Forces.

One of the articles published in Mail Online claimed that a Top General felt the Duke of Sussex had snubbed the Royal Marines after stepping down as a senior member of the British royal family in March 2020. It also stated that the royal, who succeeded his grandfather Prince Philip as the Captain-General of the Royal Marines in 2017, ignored correspondence from Lord Dannatt, a former Chief of the General Staff.

Lawyers for the Duke described these claims as a personal attack and dubbed the allegations "baseless, false, and defamatory." In the remote hearing held in London on February 1, the legal team stated the prince, who left active service in the military in 2015 after serving for a decade, has ''maintained active links with those forces ever since and will continue to do so in the future," reports Royal Central.

The other article which was part of the libel suit was published by the outlet in September last year, after a fundraiser for Invictus Games scheduled for June 2021 in Los Angeles was cancelled. The event which was hoping to raise £1 million for the Invictus Games Foundation, patronage of Prince Harry, was speculated to have performances by Beyonce and Ed Sheeran.

The article noted that the royal cancelled the programme which was due to be aired on Amazon Prime Video just days after he and Meghan signed a contract with its rival Netflix. However, an Invictus spokesperson had clarified that the "event was shelved because the primary revenue generator was ticket sales from a live concert in Los Angeles in the spring of 2021," which needed to be "reconceptualised" due to the COVID-19 crisis.

"This was an independent decision made prior to a partnership with Netflix. The duke remains committed as ever to the Invictus Games," the spokesperson had said.

The tabloid which had already issued an apology for the two articles in December 2020 offered a legal apology after the recent hearing and paid substantial damage. It had offered to pay the undisclosed amount directly to the Invictus Games Foundation, but the Duke said he wanted the money to go through him so he could ''feel something good has come out of the situation.''