Palace under pressure to respond to allegations
▶ Prince Harry and wife ‘driven out by racism and character assassination’
The Duchess of Sussex said racism and Buckingham Palace’s refusal to let her seek treatment for suicidal thoughts led her and her husband to leave the British royal family.
In one of the big revelations of their interview with Oprah Winfrey, which was broadcast in the US on Sunday, the couple claimed a member of the royal family asked “how dark” her son Archie’s skin colour would be.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle said an incident in which the Duchess of Cambridge made Ms Markle cry was a turning point in their relationship with the royal family.
And Prince Harry said he felt “let down” by his father, Prince Charles, who he said stopped taking his calls when he wanted to step back.
The highly anticipated interview was far more accusatory than expected and could become the British monarchy’s biggest crisis since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.
Ms Markle said she came close to suicide while pregnant with her first child.
“I just didn’t want to be alive any more,” she said. “And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought.”
She said that Buckingham Palace’s refusal to rebuff false claims that fuelled negative press against her worsened her depression.
She tearfully recalled Prince Harry cradling her after she told him the extent of her deteriorating mental health.
Prince Harry said Ms Markle’s mixed-race heritage fuelled negative press, and the couple claimed that during the duchess’s first pregnancy, members of the royal family voiced concerns about how dark their son’s skin tone would be.
The couple refused to divulge who made the comments, as doing so would be too “damaging” to the people in question.
However, they said that the conversations over the unborn child’s skin tone occurred at the same time that the palace decided that the child would not receive the title of prince or princess.
“That was when they were saying they didn’t want him to be a prince or princess – not knowing what the gender would be – and that he wasn’t going to receive security,” said Ms Markle.
Speaking of her conversations with the palace, Ms Markle said she told officials: “We haven’t created this monster machine around us in terms of clickbait and tabloid fodder.
“You’ve allowed this to happen, which means our son has to be safe.”
Prince Harry repeatedly drew parallels with the scrutiny his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, endured before her death in 1997.
“I saw history repeating itself, because you add racism, and you add social media in,” he said.
Despite the toll on her mental health, Ms Markle claimed
Buckingham Palace refused to let her seek medical treatment.
“I went to human resources and I said, ‘I really need help’,” said Ms Markle.
“They said, ‘My heart goes out to you and I see how bad it is, but there’s nothing we can do to protect you.’”
Ms Markle claimed that she was told not to leave her home for months on end because the royal family’s communications advisers wanted her to keep a low profile amid all the negative tabloid coverage.
She said they would not correct factually untrue stories about her, despite doing so for other members of the family.
She rebuffed a story that she had made Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge and the wife of Prince Harry’s brother Prince William, cry in the leadup to Ms Markle’s wedding. Instead, she claimed, Ms Middleton had made her cry.
Kate, she said, “was upset about something, but she owned it, and she apologised”.
Ms Markle called the incident “a turning point” in her relations with the royal family.
“The narrative about, you know, making Kate cry I think was the beginning of a real character assassination,” she said. “They knew it wasn’t true. And I thought, well, if they’re not going to kill things like that, then what are we going to do?
“I came to understand that not only was I not being protected but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family.”
Prince Harry said that his decision to step back from his royal role led Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, to stop taking his phone calls for a time.
“There’s a lot to work through there, you know? I feel really let down, because he’s been through something similar. He knows what pain feels like,” an emotional Prince Harry said.
“I will always love him but there’s a lot of hurt that’s happened.
“My family literally cut me off financially. But I’ve got what my mum left me and without that we would not have been able to do this.”
He said Charles and Harry’s older brother William were “trapped” by the conventions of the monarchy, but vowed he would “always love” his father.
“My father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave. And I have huge compassion for that.
“Much will continue to be said about that … you know, I love William to bits, he’s my brother, we’ve been through hell together and we have a shared experience. But we’re on different paths.”
Asked whether he told his family about his plans to step away from his royal roles and about a newspaper story that they had “blindsided” the queen with their decision, he said: “I’ve never blindsided my grandmother, I have too much respect for her.”
Asked where the story came from, he said: “I’d hazard a guess that it probably could have come from within the institution.
“I had three conversations with my grandmother, and two conversations with my father before he stopped taking my calls. And then he said, can you put this all in writing?”
The couple also said that their relationship with the royal family would formally finish at the end of this month and that their new child, who is expected this summer, is a girl.
My family literally cut me off financially. But I’ve got what my mum left me. Without it we wouldn’t have been able to do this PRINCE HARRY On his move to the US