Prince Harry's Likeness to King Charles Shared After Courtroom Testimony

Prince Harry's physical likenesses to his father, King Charles III, have become the subject of a new viral video after the royal recently addressed historic "hurtful, mean and cruel" tabloid speculation that he wasn't in fact the monarch's son.

Harry discussed the rumor that he was in fact the product of an affair between his mother, Princess Diana, and Major James Hewitt in the 1980s, as part of his ongoing phone hacking lawsuit with Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) earlier this month.

Harry became the first senior royal in over 130 years to give evidence in open court on June 6, giving personal testimony to a judge over the physical and mental affects that stories written by MGN titles between 1996 and 2011—that are claimed to have been obtained illegally—had on him.

MGN admitted to one case of unlawful information-gathering relating to the prince, but denied numerous others, including allegations of phone hacking.

Among the stories highlighted by Harry was one detailing an alleged plot to harvest his DNA, which could be used to test for his biological parentage. In his witness statement, the prince said: "Numerous newspapers had reported a rumor that my biological father was James Hewitt, a man my mother had a relationship with after I was born.

"At the time of this article and others similar to it, I wasn't actually aware that my mother hadn't met Major Hewitt until after I was born. This timeline is something I only learnt of in around 2014, although I now understand this was common knowledge amongst the defendant's journalists.

"At the time, when I was 18 years old and had lost my mother just six years earlier, stories such as this felt very damaging and very real to me. They were hurtful, mean and cruel. I was always left questioning the motives behind the stories. Were the newspapers keen to put doubt into the minds of the public so I might be ousted from the royal family?"

A video uploaded to TikTok by user remembering.diana comparing the physical similarities between Harry and King Charles, as well as Prince William and Princess Diana, has been viewed over 700,000 times since being posted on June 12.

The clip has received in excess of 50,000 likes and 600 comments, many of which noted the royals' familial likenesses.

"It's hilarious that people genuinely think that Harry isn't Charles' son," wrote one user. "Harry looks like his dad and has his Mum's heart," posted another, with a further comment reading: "Harry looks so much like Charles, I don't understand why people still say James [Hewitt] is his father."

A number of TikTok users also pointed out the striking similarities between William and Diana, something Harry commented on in his recently published memoir, Spare.

Writing a personal description of his brother from a meeting in 2021 when relations between the pair were strained, Harry said: "I took it all in: his familiar scowl, which had always been his default in dealings with me; his alarming baldness, more advanced than my own; his famous resemblance to Mummy, which was fading with time. With age. In some ways he was my mirror, in some ways he was my opposite. My beloved brother, my arch nemesis, how had that happened?"

"Diana and William [are] literally the same person 😭," noted one TikTok commenter on the new viral video.

"William is the splitting image of Diana," said another, with a further adding: "William is Diana & Harry is Charles !!! Omg you can see it."

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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