The media's treatment of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan is on a par with that faced by his mother Diana, the late princess' brother said in an interview published on Sunday, warning that lessons needed to be learned from that period.
Diana died aged 36 in a 1997 Paris car crash as photographers pursued her on motorbikes, sparking an outpouring of grief and a reckoning over whether the media bore some responsibility for her death after splashing details of her life across front pages for years.
"If you look at an article in a tabloid about Diana or the couple that you were mentioning, Harry and Meghan, you know, they can be really, really unpleasant," Diana's brother, Earl Charles Spencer, told the BBC.
"And I think it would be really beholden on people to learn from Diana's example.
"I'm not here to speak for Harry and Meghan, but for anyone who's being destroyed in this way daily, it must be such a cancerous influence in their life,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
Harry, Diana's youngest son, and Meghan, cited the impact of what they called a toxic media on their lives before they quit royal duties and moved to the United States in 2020.
They also sued much of the British tabloid press - with varying degrees of success - before they moved back to Britain in August.
Spencer has made headlines around the world in the last week after his book, "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister", was serialized in the Daily Mail, accusing her former husband, the now King Charles, of sounding "giddily elated" in the hours after her death.
The palace hit back by saying the king "is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss".
The publication of the book and the return of Harry and Meghan to Britain are another challenge for the king, who is still undergoing treatment for cancer.
Diana's family accused the royals of showing a lack of support or care towards the late princess before her death, a charge that was repeated by Harry, who is now largely estranged from the rest of the royal family.
