‘People are wrong. My mother wasn't…’: Prince Harry's strong statement on Diana

Prince Harry said articles of this kind caused him to doubt some of the people closest to him.

Prince Harry contradicted his brother Prince William's account of their mother Princess Diana's paranoia during his witness statement in a phone hacking lawsuit in UK. The Duke of Sussex accused The Sunday Mirror of using illegal tactics to get a story on a "series of heart-to-hearts" he had with King Charles III in January 2003. The article contained "details of private conversations I had with my father about my future, mainly that I didn't want to go to University and would rather join the Army."

Prince Charles with his wife Princess Diana in front of Lodge Canberra, Australia, Nov. 7, 1985. (AP File)

Prince Harry said articles of this kind caused him to doubt some of the people closest to him, just like his mother Princess Diana felt.

"It was so conflicting. It's only now, realising what the [Mirror Group's] journalists were doing, and how they were getting their information, that I can see how much of my life was wasted on this paranoia," Prince Harry said.

“I've always heard people refer to my mother as paranoid, but she wasn't. She was fearful of what was actually happening to her and now I know that I was the same,” he added.

But Prince William described Diana as "paranoid," in a strongly worded statement condemning her treatment by BBC journalist Martin Bashir who had faked financial documents suggesting that staff was betraying her in order to secure a bombshell 1995 TV interview with Panorama.

Prince William had earlier said, "It is my view that the deceitful way the interview was obtained substantially influenced what my mother said. The interview was a major contribution to making my parents' relationship worse and has since hurt countless others. It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC's failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her."

In his Netflix series, Prince Harry had said, “I think she had a lived experience of how she was struggling living that life. She felt compelled to talk about it. Especially in that Panorama interview. I think we all now know that she was deceived into giving the interview. But at the same time, she spoke the truth of her experience.”