No end in sight to the fallout from Royals’ Oprah saga
IN battle, the damage inflicted can last for years. The same can be said in wars of words. Disputes can flare between the closest of friends, but it is often within families that the most bitter play out.
Thankfully, such fallouts are usually kept behind closed doors and not afforded a two-hour programme on primetime TV, presided over by Oprah Winfrey.
Unless, of course, you happen to be the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
The fallout from their accusations in that interview is showing little sign of dying down.
During their sit-down with the US chat show queen in March, Prince Harry and Meghan launched bomb after bomb at the Royal family, making a raft of accusations. It led many in the US to turn on the UK.
Some of their claims, such as that they married days before the Windsor Castle ceremony, have since proven incorrect, and recent weeks have shown Meghan has an ability to forget actual events and that her “truth” is not necessarily accurate.
Only last month she was forced to apologise to the High Court over misleading information she gave as evidence in a privacy case against a Sunday newspaper.
Today though, as far as America is concerned, one of the Sussexes’ most incendiary claims – that a royal questioned the future skin colour of Prince Harry and Meghan’s children – refuses to die.
During their interview with Oprah, the Duchess of Sussex was adamant that speculation over what her son Archie’s skin tone would be was driven by bigotry rather than curiosity.
“They were afraid that if he was too brown, it would be an issue?” Oprah asked. “If that’s the assumption you’re making, I believe that’s a very safe assumption,” the Duchess replied.
“Several talks” concerning his skin colour, according to the Duchess, took place “in those months while I was pregnant.”
Harry stated they only had one chat “right at the start” of their relationship, “before we even got married.”
A more forensic interviewer than Oprah may have questioned the discrepancy in their versions, but why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
Now, months later, after one American put the accusations in the public domain, another has seen fit to accuse Prince Charles of being the royal responsible for the remark.
Writing in his new book, out this week, US author Christopher Andersen accuses Harry’s dad of being the one who made the comment, leading to a fierce rebuke by the Palace that the claim was pure “fiction”.
According to the author, Charles’s “innocent” question was being echoed “in a less innocent way throughout the halls of Buckingham Palace” and was “weaponised “by courtiers.
To have such questions raised about Charles must be galling. He was the first senior royal to appoint a black press secretary, while no Windsor has worked harder to improve cross-community relations. He is the founder of the British Asian Trust, and he has had and continues to have other black, Asian and minority ethnic staff. Andersen assures the world his sources are impeccable, yet it is telling that his book, Brothers And Wives: Inside The Private Lives Of William, Kate, Harry And Meghan, is being published in the US safely out of reach of the prince’s lawyers and Britain’s stringent libel laws.
One question for me does remain, however – for a couple who now provide press releases on issues of no concern to them, why hasn’t Harry responded to this claim?