A royal expert is speaking out this week to say that Prince Harry might have “threatened” to drop his “truth bombs” in his tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey before Queen Elizabeth stripped him of his military titles.

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams told Daily Mail that Harry may have hinted to courtiers that he was considering doing the interview in March before it was announced that he was being stripped of his military titles under the final terms of the Megxit deal.

Harry was stripped of military titles that included Captain General of the Royal Marines as part of his decision to step back as a front line royal. Less than 24 hours later, Meghan and Harry reportedly agreed to do the interview with Oprah.

“There is no doubt that Harry valued his patronages terribly and there’s absolutely no doubt that if you look at this as a probable revenge,” Fitzwilliams said. “They were told it was made pretty clear to them a year before them at the Sandringham Summit, they more or less knew they were going to lose their patronages.”

“There were endless rumors in the years that followed that they were going to keep them – and they were left open,” he added. “It’s also very possible that they threatened they might do this (interview), and perhaps the palace courtiers negotiating didn’t believe them.”

Fitzwilliams also believes that Meghan and Harry’s 2019 interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby during their  royal tour of Africa may have acted as a “warning shot” to the Palace about the possibility that they could one day “go public.” In this interview, Meghan described her life as a royal as a a “struggle” and said “not many people” had asked her if she “was okay.”

“Tom Bradby, at the time of the Sandringham Summit, he was threatening that they might go public with something the royals didn’t like,” said Fitzwilliams. “The exact timeline with this (Oprah interview) is very difficult to know who to believe and what to believe.”

“All I can say is there is a perverse logic to this, because if you’re going to lose something that you value and you want to make it clear that you’re not walking away, then you can use the nuclear option,” he continued. “This was a nuclear option.”

This comes after a source told the Sun that Harry was livid when he was stripped of his titles.

“Harry and Meghan were very cross before Oprah because the final Megxit separation had just been signed off which included Harry not keeping military roles,” this source said. “That was what made him so angry. He’s very emotional and his military roles were very important to him given that he served.”