Prince Harry has launched a fresh set of explosive allegations against the Royal Family in a candid new interview, claiming he had wanted to extricate himself from the cycle of "genetic pain and suffering" since his early 20s.
The royal renegade appeared on actor Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast to promote his new documentary series with Oprah Winfrey, titled The Me You Can't See - a project exploring mental health and wellbeing.
In the wide-ranging 90-minute interview, the Duke of Sussex, 36, claimed the Royal Family is fraught with "a lot of genetic pain and suffering", an affliction passed down to him by his father, Prince Charles.
He also revealed his desire to break the "cycle" for his children was a major catalyst behind him and his wife Meghan Markle deciding to relocate to the US last year.
Speaking poignantly to Shepard, Harry admitted the impacts of royalty - which he described as "a mixture between The Truman Show and being in a zoo" - were evident when looking back at the turbulent life of his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
Diana, who died in a car crash, aged just 36, in 1997, experienced unprecedented popularity with the British public. But as a result, the royal figure was subjected to intense scrutiny of her personal and private life, largely due to her ill-fated marriage to Charles - which ended in divorce in 1996 - and their extramarital affairs.
"Look what it did to my mum," Harry said. "[I thought], how am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family when I know it's going to happen again?
"I've seen behind the curtain. I've seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don't want to be part of this."
He added that removing himself from "the bubble" and pursuing a life outside the confines of the Royal Family were driven, in part, by a desire to make Diana proud.
"How are you going to make this different, how are you going to make your mum proud?" he continued. "How are you going to use this platform to effect change and give people [the] confidence to change their lives?"
The Duke acknowledged the way he was treated by Charles as a child was likely the same way his father was parented by Queen Elizabeth II and her late husband, Prince Philip, thus perpetuating the cycle.
"I don't think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I've experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I'm going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don't pass it on," he told Shepard.
"Suddenly I started to piece it together and go, 'OK… I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents, so that means he's treated me the way he was treated' - so how can I change that for my own kids?
"And here I am - I moved my whole family to the US. That wasn't the plan but sometimes you've got to make decisions and put your family first and put your mental health first," Harry said.
He admitted he became disillusioned with the realities of royalty in his early 20s, a wake-up call that eventually led to his and Markle's decision to step down as senior royals in January 2020.
"It's the job, right? Grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was in my early 20s and I was thinking, 'I don't want this job, I don't want to be here. I don't want to be doing this,'" he told Shepard.
Harry, Meghan, and their young son, Archie, relocated to California in March 2020 after residing in Canada for a short period. The couple is currently expecting their second child, a daughter.
The appearance on Shepard's podcast follows Harry and Meghan's bombshell, tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey in March, during which they levelled allegations of racism against Buckingham Palace and claimed Markle was left without support while battling depression and suicidal ideation.
Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Prince Charles have so far declined to comment to local media on Harry's latest remarks.
