Prince Harry is serving the royal tea on those paternity claims.
The Duke of Sussex took the stand in London’s High Court on June 6 to share testimony in his phone-hacking case against Mirror Group Newspaper Limited, the publishers behind the Daily Mirror, The People and the Sunday Mirror. (In the lawsuit, Harry—as well as other public figures—claimed that MGN unlawfully obtained information about them over the years, an accusation which the group has denied.)
And in addition to speaking out inside the courtroom, Harry’s written witness statement was also released, in which he—among many other topics—addressed speculation that he’s the biological son of Princess Diana and her former partner Major James Hewitt, not King Charles III.
In the witness statement, obtained by The New York Times, Harry referenced a December 2002 article published by The People titled, “Plot to rob the DNA of Harry.” As Harry noted, the article reported “a plot to steal a sample of my DNA to test my parentage.”
“Numerous newspapers had reported a rumor that my biological father was James Hewitt, a man my mother had a relationship with after I was born,” he wrote. “At the time of this article and others similar to it, I wasn’t actually aware that my mother hadn’t met Major Hewitt until after I was born.”
Harry added that he only learned about this timeline of events around 2014, years after speculation about his biological father emerged.