Why does Prince Harry look so happy to be in court in London?

Well, that wasn’t on our March 2023 bingo card: Prince Harry popping up back in the U.K., cheerily greeting journalists on his way into a London courtroom, along with Elton John.

Once you understand why Harry’s heading to court, it becomes clearer why he’d be displaying such glee while entering the most exalted halls of justice in Britain, the U.K.’s high court.

Harry, you see, is suing his arch-nemesis The Daily Mail, via its parent company, Associated Newspapers Ltd. Specifically, he is accusing the newspaper group of “unlawful information gathering,” “gross breaches of privacy” and “abhorrent criminal activity.”

For the non-legal scholars amongst us, this essentially translates to: Harry is claiming that one of the U.K.’s largest media organizations was up to some shady tricks to get juicy stories about him. These alleged tactics, which the case claims were committed by 73 journalists and editors over several decades, include hiring private detectives to plant listening devices in homes and cars, paying people to listen in on private phone calls, bribing the police for sensitive information, calling up hospitals and doctors and using impersonation to get private health details, and illicitly accessing bank accounts and credit reports.

Associated Newspapers Ltd. has denied these allegations, calling them “preposterous smears.” (It has also attempted to conceal the staffers’ identities by invoking the Human Rights Act … a piece of legislation its editorial pages argued against.)

If you’ve read Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” this may all sound familiar. In one passage, he writes about finding out that a tracking device had been placed on his then-girlfriend’ Chelsy Davy’s car, presumably to help photographers get lucrative shots of her.

It’s not the first time the royals have taken on a tabloid for phone hacking. At trial in 2014, it was revealed that The News of the World had hacked Kate Middleton’s phone 155 times, Prince William’s 35 times and Harry’s nine times. The paper used the info gleaned from listening to voice messages in order to write “exclusive” stories about the royals.

What makes this lawsuit different, however, is that Harry has joined forces with a raft of other famous folk including Elton John, Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost to take on the papers together, all making similar allegations. And Harry’s attendance in person today — reportedly he sat quietly in the back, taking notes in a black notebook — intensified the spotlight on what was already likely to be a highly publicized circus, especially since this was just a pretrial hearing. (It’s likely to go to trial in May, the week after the Coronation.)

The fact that Harry flew in from California for this — amid his legal wrangling over his security in the U.K., ongoing negotiations about his and his family’s role in the Coronation, and the risk of “but isn’t he an eco-warrior?” barbs that will be thrown his way for frequent flying — is a clear statement about how passionate the prince is about this battle against the media’s unethical tactics. It’s a subject he’s spoken about repeatedly: A significant chunk of the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, for example, focused on the “hate campaign” the couple claim was launched against Meghan by some sections of the U.K. media. And in an interview with ITV in January, Harry claimed that certain royals (specifically, his stepmother, Camilla) co-operate with these outlets in order to score positive coverage at the expense of negative stories about others, likening it to “getting bed with the Devil.”

This isn’t Harry’s first lawsuit against a tabloid. In fact, he’s currently involved in a separate lawsuit against Associated Newspapers Ltd., in which he is claiming defamation over a story that said he tried to “cover up” the fact he was in a legal fight with the U.K. government over his security when he’s in England. (That lawsuit against the government, by the way, is also on its way to the High Court.) Harry’s wife, Meghan, recently won her own three-year-long lawsuit against Associated Newspapers Ltd., over their breach of her privacy when they published a personal letter between her and her father, Thomas Markle.

Of course, Harry’s rare U.K. visit has inevitably spun up more coverage around his family, and the endless soap opera that is their relationship with the wider royal clan. This morning, stories ran about how likely it is that Harry will see his father or brother on his first trip back to the U.K. post-memoir; when asked for comment, Buckingham Palace said Charles isn’t in Windsor or London, and is getting ready for a state visit to Germany on Wednesday. (William, for his part, is apparently otherwise engaged on school holidays with his kids and Kate.)

Harry knows we’re going to be talking about him — the coverage over his contested attendance at the Coronation and “eviction” from Frogmore by Charles prove this point — and seems to be trying to direct the conversation toward something he cares about, and maybe, just maybe, quiet the often untruthful, frequently cruel narratives that have clearly tormented him all his life. As he told 60 Minutes earlier this year, the aggressive hounding by the media is the reason he fled the U.K. — and, he believes, “is at the epicentre of so many problems across the U.K.”

Harry’s presence in court today says this is personal, and that he is prepared to sacrifice his own privacy and trade on the same star power that made him the media’s target in the first place to make his point. Harry’s once recounted that Charles told him trying to take on the media is “a suicide mission,” and his defiant, oddly cheerful appearance at the courthouse does have the air of someone who’s quite happy to risk it all to slay the beast, or as he has called the tabloids, “the dragons in Game of Thrones.”

This may turn out to be a landmark case in British media. After all, the last time the royals took on phone hackers it led to the closure of one of the country’s most popular tabloids, the News of the World.

And the trial hasn’t even started yet! Stay tuned.

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