Prince Harry's latest crusade against the British press ended in defeat in a U.K. court Tuesday, with royal journalists saying it could prove disastrous on multiple fronts for the errant son of King Charles III, including a “severe financial reckoning” that could leave him and his wife, Meghan Markle, forced to absorb millions of dollars in legal costs.

Harry received the news that he and six other high-profile claimants had lost their $63 million privacy claim against the Daily Mail while the California-based Duke of Sussex is in the U.K. to promote next year’s Invictus Games in Birmingham. Actually, Harry had just arrived at an Invictus Games event in London when the High Court ruling was made public. The judge dismissed every one of the 97 allegations of illegal news gathering made by Harry and the other claimants, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley.

Almost immediately, royal observers began to assess the blow to Harry’s already beleaguered reputation, especially given events of the past two weeks. Harry, a once beloved royal who has become increasingly unpopular in his home country, was supposed to enjoy a triumphant and heart-warming rapprochement with his father this week by bringing along Meghan and their two children, Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, along to enjoy a family reunion with the king for the first time in four years.

Instead, Charles reportedly told Harry this weekend that he was rescinding an invitation for him to stay at Buckingham Palace during his London visit after his 41-year-old son spent the past two weeks engaging in what some commentators have called attempted “emotional blackmail” of him and of the British public. Harry railed to select media outlets about not getting the taxpayer-funded police protection he wanted, went back and forth over whether Meghan and the children were even coming to England, leaked claims about terrorist threats made against him and failed to meet a specified deadline for letting the palace know if he needed accommodations.

However, Tuesday’s court ruling could prove to be “a completely different order of disaster” for Harry, said Tom Sykes, the European editor for the Daily Beast and the author of The Royalist Substack. Dan Wakeford, the former People magazine editor who now writes the Celebrity Intelligence newsletter, concurred that the legal defeat is “monumental” for Harry.

“The financial reckoning is severe,” Wakeford reported. Sources have told Wakeford that Harry’s litigation against three different British news publishers have already cost tens of millions, with this case against the Daily Mail alone costing an estimated at $38 million in legal fees and trial costs. Adding to Harry’s burden — and potentially Meghan’s as well — is that, under British law, losing in court typically means paying not just your own costs but a share of the winning side’s, potentially adding several million more to a legal bill, Wakeford said.

These court costs could hit a household that is already severely stretched by the $3 million that Harry and Meghan annually pay for their personal security operation, Wakeford said. They also have a mortgage on the nine-bedroom Montecito mansion they bought in 2020 after they left the U.K. and stepped away from royal duties. In the years since, the couple, who are said to want to enjoy a billionaire lifestyle, have lost major, multimillion-dollar production deals with Spotify and Netflix, with Netflix downgrading their status to a “first look” arrangement. Meanwhile, Meghan’s As Ever lifestyle brand is reportedly “in a slump” and struggling to offload unsold inventory of her famous jam, according to Newsweek and Page Six.

Wakeford reported that Harry received around $29 million in inheritance from his late mother, Princess Diana, as well as from Queen Elizabeth II and his great-grandmother, the Queen Mother. But with that inheritance “already largely absorbed by legal fights and property, (Tuesday’s court defeat) pushes an already tight, five-year runway (to establish themselves financially) even tighter.”

As for Harry’s reputation, Sykes said the duke “made a complete fool of himself” by joining this court case in the first place, and he made “a complete fool of himself in his evidence and in the witness box,” coming across to the court as “bullish, sarcastic and arrogant” during his testimony.

The judge in this case, Mr. Justice Nicklin, ruled that Harry and the other claimants had often relied on “inference” to prove claims of phone hacking and blagged private medical records, adding that “suspicion, even where understandable, was not enough,” The Telegraph reported.

Harry’s claims that Daily Mail reporters could only have obtained private information about him through illegal means proved especially problematic, according to Sykes. His allegations were contradicted by testimony and evidence presented by two royal reporters, Charlotte Griffiths and Katie Nicholl, who both showed that they once enjoyed a friendly relationship with Harry. Griffiths, in particular, produced a chain of flirty Facebook messages from 2011 to 2012 in which she addressed Harry as “Mr. Mischief” and he called her “sugar” and lamented missing “our movie snuggles,” according to Sykes.

“The portrait that emerged was not of a hunted man and a criminal newsroom but of a prince who partied with the press when it suited him, briefed it through palace channels when it suited him, and sued it when it suited him,” Sykes wrote.

Paul Dacre, who edited the Daily Mail during the time Harry and the other claimants alleged it engaged in illegal news-gathering, said he felt “sorry” for the “confused and angry” duke, while insisting the case “should never have been brought to trial,” The Telegraph reported.

But Dacre also blasted Harry for launching a failed campaign “against the free press.” Dacre said, “The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante.”

_____

©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at mercurynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.