Has Prince Harry really won his tabloid battle?

The settlement between Prince Harry and News Group Newspapers is a dramatic, high stakes, turnaround. But it’s courtroom drama without the court.

Prince Harry’s team hailed the deal that stopped the trial as a “monumental victory”, receiving an undisclosed amount of “substantial damages” and an “unequivocal apology”.

They say he’s been vindicated – but will there also, deep down, be some mixed feelings about not getting his day in court? Was this really “slaying dragons” of the tabloid press, as he’d celebrated after a previous win when he’d given evidence in court against Mirror Group Newspapers?

Co-claimant Lord Tom Watson paid tribute to Prince Harry’s tenacity in pursuing this case for so long, praising his “bravery and astonishing courage”.

While on the opposing side of the scrapped case, NGN says the agreement “draws a line under the past” and they reject the claims that would have been made in court about a corporate cover-up.

When NGN has spent £1bn on previous claims, they might think any extra spent on staying out of court was a win for them too.

Why did Prince Harry strike a deal now?

It seems a change from Prince Harry being adamant that this was about “accountability”.

“The goal is accountability. It’s really that simple,” Prince Harry told a media event in New York last month, about why he was taking on the Murdoch press.

“The scale of the cover up is so large that people need to see it for themselves,” he said.

He was fully aware of the financial risks built into such civil disputes, but seemed determined to press on, not just for himself but for 1,300 claimants who he said had settled but had “no justice”.

“Accountability” was mentioned again in a statement read out on behalf of Prince Harry and Lord Watson.

“The time for accountability has arrived,” but it meant in terms of calling on Parliament and the police to pursue what they called the “unlawful activity now finally admitted” and “the perjury and cover ups along the way”.

There was a similar call for a follow-up when Prince Harry won against the Mirror group newspapers, but there has been no imminent sign of action.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise that there was a deal.

There has always been immense pressure for a settlement, because the curve of civil law bends so strongly in that direction.

Even if a claimant wins a case, they could end up paying the costs of their opponents, if the damages award is less than they have been offered.

The legal costs and damages at stake in this case could have been £10m. That’s a big poker hand decision for anyone. Plus the unknown jeopardy of what might happen in the court case and what questions Harry might have faced on the witness stand. He might have had his case ruled out of time or had his claims rejected.

The psychological cards would all have been stacked towards doing a deal. Does everyone have a price? Even when they’re seen as the last man standing?

In terms of the amount of damages paid to Prince Harry, or what he might do with the money, that hasn’t been made public.

But what Prince Harry’s team have seized upon is the skyscraper scale of the apology – seeing it as a “collapse” of the NGN’s denials.

They might argue that even if he had fought the court battle and won, there wouldn’t be any more to be gained.

This has always been a very personal battle for Prince Harry, the battle with the tabloids touching on his childhood as well as his adult life. So it’s significant that the apology includes an admission of a “serious intrusion” into the “private life of Diana, Princess of Wales”.

That could mean more to him than any financial deal.

Prince Harry’s team also repeated the claim that “the Sun, the flagship title for Rupert Murdoch’s UK media empire, has indeed engaged in illegal practices”.

This references the apology’s mention of “unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for the Sun”.

NGN’s statement emphasises that this applies to the activities of external private investigators, “not by journalists” on the Sun.

But it narrows some of the fastidious distancing that there’s been between what had happened at the shut down News of the World and the Sun.

While the statement from Prince Harry’s team lambasts those presiding over a “toxic culture” in parts of the media, past and present, and repeats its claim about a corporate cover-up, these are attack lines from a court case that will now never happen.

NGN rejects the claims of a cover-up and the destruction of evidence. But the overall tone of the response is relief at the end of arguments over old battles, and that this now draws a line under all these disputes over front pages from decades ago.

“Indeed the judge made it clear in remarks in court at the end of the hearing that these cases are likely to be the last liable to go to trial,” said NGN.

The bombshell case that was going to see Prince Harry giving evidence against his tabloid tormentors is over before it began. Who, in the end, will be more pleased about that?