Hostages to fortune: Pair ‘trapped’ by life at palace
THE Duke and Duchess of Sussex felt ‘trapped’ and isolated while living as royals in the UK.
Meghan told Oprah Winfrey she struggled to adjust to the loss of freedom after moving to Britain, with her movements tightly controlled.
‘When I joined that family that was the last time – until we came here – that I saw my passport, my driver’s licence, my keys,’ she said. ‘All that gets turned over. I didn’t see any of that any more.’
Meghan revealed she felt unable to leave her palatial surroundings for lunch with friends, amid fears over media coverage and intrusion.
She claimed a member of the royal family had suggested she ‘lay low’ for a while. But the duchess told Oprah: ‘I said [to them], “I have left the house twice in four months, I am everywhere but I am nowhere.”
‘I continued to say to people, “I know there is an obsession with how things look, but has anyone talked about how it feels? Because right now I could not feel lonelier.”’ She added: ‘There was very little that I was allowed to do. So, of course, that breeds loneliness.’ The duchess recounted on one occasion when she asked for help ‘to go somewhere’ but was told that she couldn’t.
‘I couldn’t call an Uber from the palace. You couldn’t just go,’ she said.
Harry told Oprah what his wife experienced was symptomatic of what other royal family members, such as his mother Princess Diana (pictured), went through and they faced a lifetime of restrictions within the ‘system’. The duke said he ‘didn’t have anyone to turn to’ and that ‘I myself was trapped. I didn’t see a way out.’
He added: ‘I was trapped but I didn’t know I was trapped. Like the rest of my family are, my father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave and I have huge compassion for that.’