Prince Harry has accepted an apology and “substantial damages” from The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline’s publisher after claims that he “snubbed” the Royal Marines after stepping down as a senior royal.
Jenny Afia, representing Prince Harry, said: “The baseless, false and defamatory stories published in the Mail on Sunday and on the website MailOnline constituted not only a personal attack upon the Duke’s character but also wrongly brought into question his service to this country.”
According to Sky News, Prince Harry sued Associated Newspapers for libel over two “almost identical” articles that were published in October with the headline “top general accuses Harry of turning his back on the Royal Marines”.
The articles said that Prince Harry “not been in touch… since his last appearance as an honorary Marine in March”.
Harry’s lawyers said in court documents that the paper “disregarded the claimant’s reputation in its eagerness to publish a barely researched and one-sided article in pursuit of the imperative to sell newspapers and attract readers to its website”.
It has not been confirmed how much he was awarded in damages, but Prince Harry is donating the money to the Invictus Games Foundation, which runs the competition he set up in 2014 for injured, wounded or sick servicemen and servicewomen.
His lawyer said this will allow him to “feel something good had come out of the situation”.
As Prince Harry served as an army officer for 10 years and holds a number of honorary military titles as a member of the Royal Family, royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills said that “any suggestion he has let them [military family] down since stepping away as a senior royal was always going to hit him [Prince Harry] hard.”
“This settlement is as much about showing his military brothers and sisters that he will still fight their corner, as it is another display of the Sussexes’ ongoing personal battle against the UK tabloid press,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Over60.