An emotional Prince Harry appeared on the verge of tears as he gave evidence Wednesday in his final legal showdownwith Britain’s tabloid media.

“They have made my wife’s life an absolute misery,” he said in London’s High Court during questioning by his lawyer David Sherborne, referring to Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. His life had been “commercialized” since he was a teenager, he said.

“The defense claim that I don’t have any right to privacy is disgusting,” added Harry, whose voice cracked at various points as he gave evidence.

Harry, who is estranged from the royal family, testified in court for the second time as he leads a group of seven high-profile claimants, including Elton John and actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, in a privacy lawsuit against one of Britain’s biggest news organizations, Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).

They have accused ANL, the publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday newspapers, of using unlawful methods to snoop on them for sensational headlines, including tapping and hacking phones and obtaining private medical and financial records through deception, chiefly from 1993 to 2011.

ANL has strenuously denied the allegations and called them “preposterous smears” before the hearing began Monday.

After a minor technical glitch delayed proceedings Wednesday, Harry, who was dressed in a dark suit, took questions from ANL’s lawyer Antony White, who asked him whether information in the articles could have come from friends or social circles.

“The kind of information that ends up in articles is not the kind of stuff that I would be talking about openly,” Harry replied. He said later that sources “were used as a cover to make up quotes” and “disguise the true origin of information.”

Buckingham Palace, in his experience, rarely corrected stories, Harry said. “It was more just ignore it.”

“If you complain, they double down on you, in my experience,” he said, explaining why he had not objected to the articles at the time. He added that he had followed the family protocol of “never complain, never explain.”

Under the English civil court system, witnesses present written testimony, and after the assert that it’s the truth, they are immediately put under cross-examination. Harry said in his 23-page witness statement that he was distressed and disturbed by the newspapers’ intrusion into his early life and that it made him “paranoid beyond belief.”

Harry broke with tradition in 2023 when he became the first senior royal in 130 years to give evidence in court during a lawsuit against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People tabloids.

King Edward VII had been the last to do so when he testified as a witness in part of a divorce case in 1870 and 20 years later in a slander trial over a card game, both while he was Prince of Wales and before he became king.

Speculation has been rife about whether the end of Harry’s case could lead to a reconciliation with his father, King Charles III, after years of mounting royal tensions.

Prince William, Harry’s older brother and the heir to the throne, and Princess Kate are in Scotland this week. Their spokesperson declined to comment on whether the trio would meet up, as did a spokesperson for Harry. Charles was in London; it was unclear whether he would meet up with his youngest son.

Harry, who is fifth in line to the throne, has blamed the tabloid press for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, and has been critical about their treatment of Meghan.

He won a payout from MGN, and last January he was awarded substantial damages and an apology from News Group Newspapers, Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm, which settled ahead of a trial.

ANL has denied the allegations.

In a submission to the court Monday, White said ANL’s editors and journalists were “lining up” to reject the claimants’ “allegations of habitual and widespread phone hacking, phone tapping and blagging within the organization.”

“Blagging,” a violation of the U.K. Data Protection Act, is obtaining or disclosing someone’s personal data without that person’s consent.

White’s submission added that the claimants had “failed to establish that the most serious categories of alleged unlawful information gathering — phone hacking and phone tapping — took place at Associated at all, and their allegation of burglary to order was struck out by the Court. The allegation that these practices were ‘habitual and widespread’ at Associated’s titles was simply untrue.”

The case is expected to last nine weeks.