British Royal Family Staff Members Are Reportedly Determined To Get Revenge On Prince Harry

The British royal family, or The Firm, is a complex web consisting of the actual monarchy itself and the various people who work for it. As we discovered in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's controversial Netflix docuseries, "Harry & Meghan," this large group of people is not always a united front. The Sussexes revealed that each family has their own team of aides, press personnel, and various other individuals.

When speaking to Netflix about each royal family member's press office, Harry commented, "I have 30 years' experience of looking behind the curtain and seeing how this system works and how it runs [...] Just constant briefings about other members of the family, about favors inviting the press in. It's a dirty game," (via Cosmopolitan). However, one thing may be major enough to unite palace officials and personnel.

According to "Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival," the 2023 tell-all by royal author Omid Scobie, certain royal aides reportedly want to continue punishing Harry for stepping down from his official duties. And, Scobie detailed how staff members finally got their chance when the prince returned to the U.K. for his grandmother's funeral.

In September 2022, at Queen Elizabeth II's funeral, her children and grandchildren gathered to pay their respects, which included a silent vigil. At first, it seemed like Prince Harry would be the odd man out next to his older brother and their cousins, unable to wear his official military uniform after defecting from the royal family a couple of years prior. However, King Charles III eventually gave in, allowing Harry to don the proper attire while standing vigil over his beloved grandmother. 

Unfortunately, when the decorated military veteran arrived at Frogmore Cottage, his uniform was missing a few crucial pieces. When the Duke of Sussex brought up the uniform's lack of Her Majesty's initials and an ornamental aiguillette, official palace staffers reportedly denied him access to the items and refused to fix his uniform. Scobie railed, "Some of these people are determined to make him [Harry] feel like s**t, determined to continue punishing him for leaving, it's bullying," (via The Mirror). 

Harry pointed out that the queen would have wanted to see him in his uniform. Moreover, his disgraced uncle, Prince Andrew, was allowed to wear his despite the controversy swirling around him. Royal insiders claimed palace staff members are anything but bullies, with one informing the Daily Mail: "The suggestion that [royal aides] were briefing negative stories [about Harry and Meghan] is totally fabricated." According to the source, right from the start, they wanted nothing but to appease the Sussexes. 

In Tina Brown's book, "The Palace Papers," she writes that a palace staff member once clarified: "When you move to a situation where you've got full-time members of staff who work for an institution — the palace — they're employees, not contract people, they work within a policy framework," (via Newsweek). Meghan Markle's upbringing was wildly different to Prince Harry's, which understandably may have led to a bumpy start when she entered royal life. 

However, two palace aides asserted that bullying from the Duchess of Sussex was so severe that it ultimately forced them to leave their positions. As Page Six reported at the time, their allegations were formally lodged with human resources by Jason Knauf, the Sussexes' palace communications secretary, in 2018, who wrote, "The duchess seems intent on always having someone in her sights. She is bullying Y and seeking to undermine her confidence." 

In his bombshell memoir, "Spare," Harry maintained that these stories were completely untrue and that there were deeper issues at work, stating simply, "Sides were taken. Team Cambridge versus Team Sussex," (via Newsweek). While the divide is obvious, what really happens behind closed palace doors will remain a mystery. But with such speculation being as lucrative as it's long proven to be, it's unlikely the drama will die down anytime soon.