Byline Times’ exclusive cover story is all about the connections between Dan Wootton, the Windsors, Kensington Palace and the Sussexit. Wootton worked at the Sun in 2019-2020 when he apparently struck some kind of deal with Kensington Palace, and Wootton began bribing Prince William’s private secretary Christian Jones and Jones’s partner for information about the Sussexes. The Christian Jones stuff is insanely complicated, but Byline seems to have extensive sourcing and evidence to back up their reporting. Jones ended up leaving his position as William’s private secretary in January 2021, a year after he likely leaked the Sussexit exclusive to Wootton. Going back to 2020, Harry already had a good idea about who was leaking from his brother’s office as Harry was preparing to remove his wife and son out of the country. Harry believed that he had negotiated a deal with the Windsors at the Sandringham Summit – a year to cool off and figure out their next moves, with royal protection and £700K in funding from Harry’s father. Then, just a few months into that “year-long breather,” Charles cut off the funding and removed the Sussexes’ royal protection, all over Harry’s refusal to back down off the leaks in Kensington Palace. Some highlights from one “well-placed source with knowledge of the matter” who spoke to Byline:

“They threatened the removal of the funding to try and protect the royal household from a potential courtroom scandal with Jones and Wootton very publicly at the centre. The actual removal of the funding weeks later was about control, and designed to force Harry and Meghan to come back to the senior royal family in the UK where their security would be assured.

“The greater truth is that Harry and Meghan make better headlines than the King and Camilla or William and Kate. The idea of them still being in public service but abroad and out of the control of the institution and dominating the media narrative just couldn’t happen. Senior members of the family wanted them back after the transition period and were ready to continue playing dirty to make this happen. They never thought the trial period would work and tried everything to make it fail, starting with the removal of security and then signing off on a 12-month assault by the UK press on Harry and Meghan and everyone in their orbit.”

“As far as the institution of the monarchy went, the Sussexes had either to be safely in the tent in Britain or cast away and castigated as comprehensively as possible in order to reduce the threat of them eclipsing the rest of the family. It’s no surprise they have endured such a degrading time from such a willing British media, when the same just isn’t true elsewhere in the world.”

“[Harry suing tabloids & newspapers] was deemed highly undesirable by the offices of Prince Charles and Prince William because there was always lots of horse-trading going on with the editors and their correspondents to ensure favourable coverage and protection when scandals broke,” the source continued. “No one wanted that stuff to end up in a courtroom. Harry and Meghan were expendable, but the heirs and their wives were not. It sent a chill through Clarence House [for the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall] and Kensington Palace [for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge]. But the Sussexes – particularly Harry – were very keen to get to the bottom of it all. He wanted to know how their private information kept being spun into negative headlines in the biggest newspapers.

“A view was quickly taken within the royal households that everything needed to be brought under control. The removal of the transition funding, which Prince Charles knew was his son’s only lifeline to keeping safe, was considered a very effective way of trying to bring Harry and Meghan to heel in the UK. But it didn’t work.”

[From Byline Times]

While Byline and their sources insist that the objective was bringing both Harry and Meghan “to heel” back in the UK by putting them and their son in mortal danger, I’ve never believed that anyone in the institution wanted Meghan “back” whatsoever. Pre-Sussexit, the institution’s objective was to force Meghan (and only Meghan) out by any means necessary. They wanted to force a divorce or (worse yet) force Meghan to unalive herself. When it was clear that Harry would do anything to protect his wife and son, including flee the country, the objective was (in my opinion) the same: to create a situation where a broke, divorced/widower Harry crawled back to the UK, begging for help. I also think that Charles and William both would have rather seen Harry dead than thriving in America. That’s also clear from their actions. Anyway, thank god for Tyler Perry.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.