Let’s get the story straight
Staff DID fight for them
Whatever took place during the wedding dispute, Meghan appears to have been hugely upset that the claim she’d ‘made Kate cry’ ended up in print.
She told Oprah that she found it ‘hard to get over’ the Palace’s failure to then put her version of events on the record.
Later, she elaborated: ‘they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family, but they weren’t willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband.’
It’s unclear (because Oprah failed to ask) who exactly these ‘liars’ were. Or what ‘lies’ they supposedly told.
however, convention would have made it impossible for royal press officers to make any comment on what was a deeply personal (and private) incident in which basic facts were likely to be in dispute.
as an insider told us: ‘there were clearly
WHEN their son was born, Harry and Meghan chose not take up his courtesy title, the Earl of Dumbarton. Neither would he be called ‘Lord Archie’, the established form for the son of a Duke. Instead, plain old ‘Archie’ would do.
According to their biographer and favoured journalist Omid Scobie, this was ‘all part of giving him as normal a life as possible’.
That was the story, at least. But behind the scenes, it turns out that the issue was, in fact, the subject of a furious dispute.
Meghan — who elsewhere in her interview with Oprah had insisted she wasn’t much bothered about titles — complained that ‘they’ (by which she appeared to mean Palace officials) ‘didn’t want him to be a Prince or Princess’.
Viewers were told that this supposed snub was delivered around the same time as ‘conversations about how dark his skin might be’.
In other words, Meghan appeared to be suggesting that it was racially motivated.
In fact, royal protocol dictates that the great-grandchild of a monarch does not normally become a Prince until their two versions of the same event. Whatever the institution said would only draw more attention to it.’
Palace press officers are, of course, public servants. Unlike hollywood Pr agents, they cannot — and should not — contest every single false rumour.
Conveniently ignored by Meghan in this whole rumpus is the fact that Palace spin-doctors did indeed go to war on her behalf on several high-profile occasions, knocking down many stories that were put to them (and were not published as a result).
Notably, they formally denied stories about her alleged extravagance in the refurbishment of Frogmore Cottage. they also brought two cases to the Press regulator, Ipso, on the Sussexes’ behalf, winning one and losing the other.
The truth about royal protocol and princes
grandparent takes the throne. Later in the interview, Meghan seems belatedly to acknowledge this fact, saying: ‘There’s a convention . . . I forget if it was a George V or George VI convention, that when you’re the grandchild of the monarch — so when Harry’s dad becomes king — automatically Archie and our next baby would become Prince or Princess.’ However, she then claims plans are afoot to ‘change the convention for Archie’. Indeed, Prince Charles is thought to be in favour of a slimmeddown monarchy, with fewer princes and princesses. But this shift pre-dates Harry’s marriage and has nothing to do with race.