NEARLY THERE ...QUEEN READY TO SIGN OFF ROYAL DEAL
THE Duchess of Sussex’s sister accused Meghan and Prince Harry of a “gross breach of duty” yesterday.
Samantha Markle said she believes Meghan was the driving force behind the couple’s bombshell decision to step back as senior members of the Royal Family.
The Duchess’s half-sister said the royals are “among so many people hurt”.
She likened the developments to the “incredibly wrong and shocking” treatment of her father Thomas, who she said had been the victim of “a smear campaign”.
Apologise
In an interview with Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford on ITV’s This Morning yesterday, Samantha launched a withering attack on Harry and Meghan.
She said: “They have a lot of apologising to do.”
Asked if she had a message for her half-sister, Samantha said: “I would say life is very short and, in the big picture, the money and the fame don’t really matter.
“What really matters is personal integrity, honesty, family.
“I would hope that she would come to grips with that, apologise and, certainly for the benefit of Archie and the British Royal Family, move forward, being honest, and look after the best interests of others. It’s so important.”
Samantha, 55, said she believed Meghan at first enjoyed the attention of being a royal before facing criticism over spending and an apparent fall-out with Prince William and Kate.
Speaking from Florida, Samantha said: “I feel that she did enjoy it when there was the fab four.
“There were the photographs of, you know, her hair blowing in the wind, the smiling and the waving and the contrived British accent.
“It was all seemingly great and wonderful then. When the public began to criticise some of the expenditures and the behaviours and protocol that had been broken, the tune changed.”
Freedom
Samantha said Meghan has now “flipped the script”.
She added: “I feel like she knew what she was getting into and perhaps it was control.
“Maybe she thought that she would be given more responsibility and freedom than she actually was, but within any structured environment those things are not instantaneous.
“There is a protocol and a hierarchy and a manner of going about things diplomatically and it takes time, and perhaps she expected too much too soon.”
Asked who made the decision to step back from senior royal life, Samantha said: “I’m feeling as though it was her decision, because she wasn’t happy with the criticism that was taking place publicly.”
Samantha added: “I just thought it was a gross breach of duty and responsibility and
honour and confidence that had been placed on her.”
She said claims of racism over Meghan’s treatment in the UK were “a misplacement of blame to avoid accountability”.
Samantha dismissed Meghan’s visit’s to women’s charities in Canada in recent days as “a PR stunt” and not representative of the true Megan, adding: “In my opinion, she is someone else.”
She said neither her or her father Thomas, who missed his daughter’s wedding in 2018 after suffering a heart attack, has seen grandson Archie.
Samantha said: “It’s sad that he has not had the opportunity to meet Archie and I think it’s really sad for Archie, even though he’s really small now, as he gets to be a little bit older.
“My dad is a great dad.
It’s a loss to Archie not to have that opportunity while my dad is alive.”
Samantha said she believed that matters had now gone too far for there ever to be a reconciliation between Meghan and her father. She added: “Prince Harry and Meghan have quite a bit of apologising to do.
“We aren’t talking about teenagers, we are talking about adults who knew what they were doing and, in regards to my father, it was so incredibly wrong and shocking.”
She claimed that Thomas would testify against Meghan in court in a legal battle being waged over a letter she sent him and published in a Sunday newspaper. She described the legal action as “somewhat ludicrous”. Samantha, who is Thomas’s daughter from his first marriage, said she had made a number of appeals to Meghan to speak to her father and “end the rift” in the family.