“TO MAKE A complaint” is a standard piece of legal jargon. Take legal action against someone and you are, technically speaking, “making a complaint” against them. But somehow, as the case of HRH Duke of Sussex and Mirror Group Newspapers Limited began in the High Court this week, and as that word “complaint” rang out again and again—as Prince Harry was questioned by the Mirror’s barrister on “what you are complaining about” and “the article about which you complain” and generally about “your complaint”—it started to feel less dryly legal than uncomfortably apposite. “TO MAKE A complaint” is a standard piece of legal jargon. Take legal action against someone and you are, technically speaking, “making a complaint” against them. But somehow, as the case of HRH Duke of Sussex and Mirror Group Newspapers Limited began in the High Court this week, and as that word “complaint” rang out again and again—as Prince Harry was questioned by the Mirror’s barrister on “what you are complaining about” and “the article about which you complain” and generally about “your complaint”—it started to feel less dryly legal than uncomfortably apposite.

“Never complain, never explain” was said to be the late queen’s unofficial motto. It also appears to be Prince Harry’s, except that he has changed “never” for “perpetually”. To add to Prince Harry complaining on film (streaming now on Netflix) and Prince Harry complaining in print (£28 from all good bookshops), now Britain can enjoy the spectacle of Prince Harry complaining in court (available if you can get a seat). This week, the case opened in the Royal Courts, in London. The last royal to appear in court was Prince Anne, for an attack by her dog, Dotty, in 2002. The last time one was questioned was when the future Edward VII appeared in a trial about (among other things) baccarat in 1891.

The general storyline of the latest instalment will by now be familiar, namely that Prince Harry has, as he put it in his witness statement, “a very difficult relationship with the tabloid press in the UK”. He claims that they made his life a misery; made him out to be “a thicko”; and, more importantly, that some journalists used illegal means to get information on him.

Like many sequels, this one was a little slow to get going. Prince Harry should have arrived in the High Court on Monday, but failed to turn up on time. This is not that unusual: witnesses routinely forget to turn up at court. Most witnesses, however, are not turning up in courts that are named after their families, to sit before their families’ crests and to be questioned by barristers—King’s Counsels—who are named after their fathers. The judge pronounced himself “a little surprised” that the witness would not be available.

It is lines of such muted majesty which have made this sequel so superior to its prequels. Aesthetically, the latest instalment in the chronicle of Harry’s complaints is underwhelming. Whereas Harry’s Netflix documentary was a symphony in camel cashmere, Britain’s High Court is pure office drear, with lever-arch files and lanyards and formica desktops. The dialogue, however, has been unimprovable.

Chiefly because there has been some. Previously, Harry’s anguished emoting has been performed either as a solo lament (as in the 416 pages of “Spare”), or to the sympathetic agreement of other interviewees (as in “Harry & Meghan”, the Netflix documentary) or even to standing ovations (“The Late Show”). This instalment was instead performed before Andrew Green KC, a barrister who, as the Legal 500 bills him, is “A beast in court…An opponent to be feared.”

A trial that had begun by feeling like an exercise in unearned privilege, as a royal court danced attendance on an absent prince, ended by feeling like an exemplar of meritocracy as the King’s Counsel less questioned the king’s son than quietly carbonised him. Mr Green asked Harry if he remembered this fact (he didn’t) or was aware of that article (he wasn’t) or could explain how two of his claims—one in his witness statement, one in “Spare”—flatly contradicted each other (he couldn’t). At one point, Mr Green asked Harry whether he had written his own witness statement or was “just reading out something that has been drafted by your solicitors for you”.

The “beast” offered no emoting; and certainly no standing ovations. At one moment in the trial Harry made the point that a certain article was related to a certain invoice. “And so what?” asked Mr Green. Harry explained that thought this made the article suspicious. “And so what?” repeated Mr Green.

The phrase felt like a summary of the entire proceedings. As Mr Green himself pointed out, everyone knows that the complainant has had a life of appalling press intrusion. And yet increasingly, as his complaints accumulate, the reaction of the British public to the king’s son is, like the reaction of the King’s Counsel, to be a weary “And so what?” ■