Kensington Palace has defended Prince Harry’s decision to speak out against what it claims is unacceptable media intrusion into his relationship with the American actor Meghan Markle after the Sun yesterday told him to “get real” and the Daily Mail argued his public status “comes at a price”.
The 32-year old prince had on Tuesday issued a statement decrying “a wave of abuse and harassment” of Markle in UK papers, which included an alleged “smear” report in the Sun about footage of her that appeared on the Pornhub adult website and “racial undertones” in comment pieces, including in the Mail on Sunday.
Sarah Vine, writing in the Daily Mail, was among the tabloid commentators to hit back. She said: “He seems to be saying: ‘Even though I lead a life of unbelievable privilege and could conceivably one day be king, I am entitled to exactly the same privacy as the humblest dweller of the humblest bungalow.’” 
The Sun said: “We understand Harry’s worried about the level of interest in them. But he needs to get real. He is an heir to the throne, living a privileged life at public expense.”
A source close to the prince said the palace did not accept their arguments and stressed he was trying to defend Markle, not himself, from unwanted coverage.
“All this is not for him,” the source said. “He was asking to protect someone else and their privacy, someone he has been in a relationship with for a few months.”
Prince Harry and his advisers are understood to be satisfied that even if newspapers have pushed back against his statement, at least their readers and users of social media now know how much the coverage of his relationship with Markle means to him and his views on the reporting of so far.
“That’s what he wanted to do,” a palace source said. “This was a debate happening in public being encouraged by a handful of papers and he has added his voice to that and went straight to the public. Millions of people will have seen that statement directly.”
His statement, which Kensington Palace published on the royal family Facebook page, said: “He knows commentators will say ‘this is the price he has to pay’ and that ‘this is all part of the game’. He strongly disagrees. This is not a game – it is her life and his.”
The statement was shared more than 11,000 times on the social media platform. One user, Thomas Marlow, commented: “Wow I have to say that this is a very modern approach for a royal to release such a thing. The press put his mother in her grave, he has every right to want to protect his girlfriend.”