It is Prince Harry’s last great gamble in his seven-year war with the tabloids. When the Duke of Sussex decided to take on Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, he was fueled by almost three decades of fury at how newspapers had treated his family.

What he perhaps did not envisage was the circus the claim would unleash in the High Court: the release of flirty text messages in which Harry was branded “Mr Mischief” by a journalist; revelations about a meeting on a London roundabout; and eccentric legal analogies involving donkeys. The big question now is, will it pay off?