Private Facebook messages exchanged by Prince Harry and Mail on Sunday journalist Charlotte Griffiths in late 2011 and early 2012 have emerged in the final stages of the Duke of Sussex’s privacy case against Associated Newspapers, adding an unexpected personal dimension to one of the most closely watched media trials in Britain. The messages, disclosed in court as the 11-week High Court case drew to a close, appeared to show a flirtatious rapport between the prince and Griffiths before Harry says he realised she was a journalist. The disclosure came as Judge Matthew Nicklin said he would need time to prepare a written ruling in the case, which has been brought by Harry and six other claimants against the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday over allegations of unlawful information gathering. Associated Newspapers denies the claims and has described them as baseless.

At the centre of the latest attention were messages that, according to court reporting cited by People, were exchanged between December 2011 and January 2012. In one, Griffiths described a country house gathering as “a fun weekend of naughtiness.” In another exchange, Harry was said to have joked about drinking her “under the table” and signed off a message with “mwah.” A further message attributed to Harry said: “Hope you’re really well Griff . . . Miss our movie snuggles!!” The tone of the messages matters because Harry had previously told the court he was not friends with journalists and that, once he realised Griffiths worked for the Mail, he confronted the mutual friend through whom they had met and cut off contact. The messages do not in themselves resolve the wider legal issues in the case, but they were clearly relevant to the defence effort to challenge Harry’s account of how closely reporters and social contacts overlapped in his private life at the time.

The court has heard that Griffiths, now editor-at-large at the Mail on Sunday, moved in some of the same social circles as Harry during that period. In her evidence, she said she met him through mutual friends and had attended social gatherings linked to his circle, including time in Ibiza in 2011 or 2012. Harry, during earlier evidence, disputed suggestions that he had been in Ibiza in the way put to him, saying the only time he had been there was with Meghan and their son in 2019. Griffiths also said in her witness statement that she had built up society contacts through west London and the University of Leeds, where she was at university at the same time as Harry’s former girlfriend Chelsy Davy. That background is significant because one of the central disputes in the trial has been whether stories about Harry came from unlawful methods or from an aristocratic and royal-adjacent social scene in which information moved more freely than he has suggested.

Harry’s case against Associated Newspapers has always been about far more than one journalist or one set of messages. He and the other claimants allege what they describe as the “clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering” over roughly two decades, including phone hacking, bugging, deception and the use of private investigators. Associated Newspapers has rejected that description and says the articles at issue were obtained lawfully, through sources such as friends, aides, publicists and others in the claimants’ circles. Harry told the court in January that the press intrusions left him “paranoid beyond belief,” damaged his relationships and affected his mental health. He also said Associated had made Meghan’s life “an absolute misery,” and accused the publisher of “delving into every single aspect of my private life.” Those remarks helped frame the emotional and personal stakes of a case that Harry has presented as part of a broader attempt to hold sections of the British tabloid press accountable.

That wider battle has defined much of Harry’s adult life. He has repeatedly argued that a toxic tabloid culture shaped his youth, affected his romantic relationships and intensified the pressure that surrounded him long before he married Meghan. In court and in public, he has linked press behaviour not only to the strain on his own mental health but also to the trauma surrounding the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. AP reported that Harry has portrayed this lawsuit as the final chapter in his long-running campaign against the tabloids, after previously winning a judgment against Mirror Group Newspapers and securing a settlement and apology from Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper group over claims involving The Sun and the News of the World. In that context, the resurfacing of the Griffiths messages is awkward for him, not because flirtation itself is remarkable, but because the defence has used them to press a broader argument that some of the information published about him may have come through ordinary social contact rather than illegal intrusion.

The messages also reopened questions around one specific detail that featured in court earlier this year: the label “Mr Mischief.” Harry denied ever using that name for himself on Facebook. Later reporting from the closing stage of the trial indicated that the phrase had been used by Griffiths in messages to him, rather than being a pseudonym adopted by Harry. Associated Newspapers’ barrister Antony White KC told the court he was responsible for having earlier put that point incorrectly. On one view, that was a relatively small clarification in a sprawling trial dominated by arguments over private investigators, witness credibility and decades-old reporting practices. But in a case so dependent on memory, inference and the reliability of witnesses, small details have taken on unusual importance. They have shaped how each side tries to establish credibility before the judge.

For now, the legal questions remain unresolved. Judge Nicklin has said he will devote himself full-time to producing the judgment after a short Easter break, and no ruling is expected immediately. What is clear is that the final days of the trial have underlined the central tension running through Harry’s case. He says unlawful intrusion by Associated Newspapers poisoned his private life and exploited his vulnerability. The publisher says the claim is built on weak evidence and ignores the reality that people around Harry did talk. The Griffiths messages do not settle that dispute, but they have ensured that, just as the case moved from evidence to judgment, attention shifted back to the blurred boundary between royal privacy, social access and tabloid journalism that has haunted Harry for much of his life.