Meghan and Harry's 'Whirlwind' Media Coverage Echoes Princess Diana—Author

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's broadsides at the monarchy have created a media frenzy akin to Princess Diana's public feud with Prince Charles, a royal author told Newsweek.

The Duchess of Sussex launched her long-awaited podcast to a storm of headlines while Archetypes has surged to number one in the Spotify rankings in multiple countries.

An interview she gave to The Cut at the end of August triggered similar fanfare as have Harry's many interviews about his relationship with the royal family.

Robert Jobson, author of William At 40: The Making of a Modern Monarch, told Newsweek: "It's quite interesting how much news they generate as a couple, it's like a whirlwind really. It's like, in a way, years ago when I was covering the War of the Waleses.

"When you have an attack from one element to the other it creates this tension that doesn't go away.

"There's an expectation of what's next? Whose going to do what next? The narrative gains momentum in the story."

The term "War of the Waleses" refers to the public breakdown of Charles and Diana's marriage in the first half of the 1990s.

The phrase, coined by the U.K. media, encompasses everything from the leaked tape recording of the princess's close confidant James Gilbey calling her "squidgy" during a private telephone call to bombshell TV interviews done by both Charles in 1994 and Diana in 1995.

There were biographies too, starting with Andrew Morton's sensational book Diana: Her True Story, which revealed Prince Charles' affair with Camilla, now Duchess of Cornwall, for the first time in 1992.

Diana's own love life was also thrown into the public domain and she was forced to admit her own indiscretion with James Hewitt, a retired army captain, during her interview with BBC panorama.

Like Meghan and Harry's royal exit, the drama played out chapter by chapter until the couple eventually divorced in 1996.

Diana's life continued to generate headlines after the marriage ended with paparazzi photographers chasing significant sums of money for exclusive pictures of the royal.

Harry and Meghan quit royal duties in January 2020 but tensions that had been mostly private did not fully erupt in public until the couple sat down with Oprah Winfrey for a tell-all interview broadcast by CBS in March 2021.

Meghan accused an unnamed royal of expressing concern about how dark her unborn child's skin might be before he was born and said she was told she could not seek help on a psychiatric ward while experiencing suicidal thoughts because it would make the institution look bad.

Prince Harry accused Prince Charles of cutting the couple off financially after they quit and went on to make further criticisms in May 2021, a month after Prince Philip died.

He said the royals had responded with "total silence or total neglect" to his pleas for help dealing with the media in his mental health docu-series The Me you Can't See and said he was experiencing "genetic pain" from his upbringing during an appearance on the Armchair Expert podcast.

Meghan's podcast Archetypes and an interview she gave to The Cut at the tail end of August, 2022, brought new swipes at the palace.

Dickie Arbiter, Queen Elizabeth II's former press spokesman, told GB News: "Memories are very short, when Harry and Meghan walked out, they pledged that everything they do will be up to the Queen's values. Well so far, they've done nothing up to the Queen's values.

"They've done everything to besmirch them, besmirch the monarchy and besmirch the family. They've besmirched the institution, and the institution is the Queen.

"Where do we go from here? There is no stopping them. They've got so-called advisers in the States, and people who are making money out of them, their security, their advisers, their PR people, and their lawyers.

"Quite frankly, how much longer is this going to go on? How much longer can the Queen take any of this?"

Meanwhile, biographer Omid Scobie recently said Meghan was enjoying using her voice after taking another step away from royal life.

He told Good Morning America on August 24: "This podcast is an opportunity to speak not just unfiltered but also in a way that we haven't heard from her before. This is Meghan not as the Duchess of Sussex, it's another step away from her life as a working royal and one that she's clearly enjoying."

In his Yahoo! News column, he added: "Uncensored and unbothered, Meghan, like Harry, has managed to create a healthier and happier existence since being shown the door after the couple's half in, half out proposal was rejected."