Author’s Note: This article is mostly informative, but the commentary is an opinion. My views do not represent Sightline nor BCS.
On March 7, 2021, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex did a “tell-all” interview with Oprah, making several devastating claims against the Royal Family. After the interview, most of America seems to be on Meghan’s side, England’s people seem to still be firmly on the Royal Family’s side. A public poll from YouGov shows that 45% of Britons like Prince Harry, while 48% have a negative opinion of him. Meghan’s popularity has really dropped to a new low. The poll shows that only 31% of Britons have a positive opinion of her, while 58% have a negative opinion. This being said, it’s pretty clear that their interview with Oprah has certainly changed public opinion… just maybe not in the way they hoped.
In the interview, Meghan claims that Archie was denied his right to a royal title. It’s a little odd that she says, “They were saying they didn’t want him to be a prince or a princess – not knowing what the gender would be – which would be different from protocol,” when she says later on, “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.” This shows that Meghan is aware that Archie was not entitled to the title of prince, as he is not the grandchild of the current monarch. Meghan and Harry say that there were talks of how dark Archie’s skin may be and implied that his race was the reason they denied him the title of prince.
This brings us to the next slightly contradictory statement in the interview. Meghan claimed that there were several conversations about Archie’s skin colour during her pregnancy, but Harry says later on that there was only one conversation, which took place before they even got married. Either way, it’s disgusting someone would bring that up, but it’s important to know the truth of how many conversations there were. Many people think that Meghan lying about how many conversations there were to make the Family look worse, which isn’t exactly “telling the truth,” as Meghan stated she would do in the interview.
During the interview, the topic of the UK press was brought up, and they discussed the horrible headlines that were published about her. During their conversation, images of magazine and newspaper headlines were shown onscreen. But, it’s since been pointed out that many of the headlines were not only from foreign nations, but were also edited to be worse and out of context, or even faked. One headline, supposedly from The Guardian, reads, “BBC’s Danny Baker on comparing Royal Baby Archie to a chimp,” which can’t be found anywhere. Searching that headline will bring up many articles about Baker getting fired, however, one of which was from The Guardian.
The worst example of Oprah’s team altering headlines was one that read, “Meghan’s seed will taint our Royal Family.” The real title of that article was actually, “Meghan’s seed will taint our Royal Family’: UKIP chief’s glamour model lover, 25, is suspended from the party over racist texts about Prince Harry’s wife to be.” This is clearly very different than the title shown in the interview. While the first one seems to be an opinion piece on why Meghan’s racial difference would taint the family, the real article title shows that this was a racist text from the UKIP chief’s girlfriend, whom he later broke up with. This is yet another example in this interview of them exaggerating or even lying about Meghan’s experiences, making the audience pity her more.
One news story they specifically covered was when the UK press was publishing that Meghan had made Kate cry over bridesmaid dresses. Meghan told Oprah that it was actually Kate who had made Meghan cry, but says that Kate later apologized very sincerely and they got over it quite quickly. It would seem that Meghan is telling the truth here, although there are a few people that slightly disagree with the ending. The Times published an article showing pictures of Kate heading to Markle’s cottage with a bouquet of flowers, but also say that Meghan slammed the door in Kate’s face. Both of these stories contradict the book Finding Freedom, which was approved to be published by Meghan, where Omid Scobie claims that ‘there were no tears from anyone.’ Clearly, it’s the book that’s wrong, but it’s an interesting thing to note.
One thing that Meghan appeared to be very upset about was that the Palace didn’t protect her from the press, but protected other members of the Family. But, whether Meghan knew this or not, this is completely untrue. The Palace actually protected her several times, rejecting many high-profile stories that were brought to them and therefore not published. In the event of the whole bridesmaids’ tears debacle, the institution really couldn’t say anything on the matter since it was a private affair and they didn’t have enough information on it. One thing I’d like to personally note is that, even if possible, the institution would most likely never choose to protect Meghan’s reputation over Kate’s, as Kate will someday be Queen Consort, while Meghan will not. The public’s opinion on Kate Middleton is far more important than their opinion on Meghan, and the institution knows that. It seems to be something Meghan has not yet learned, though. She seems to be completely ignorant of the politics of the Royal Family.
Meghan and Harry claimed that they were actually married in secret three days before the royal wedding because they believe the wedding to be for everyone else and not them. Markle said, “No one knows that. But we called the Archbishop, and we just said: ‘Look, this thing, this spectacle is for the world, but we want our union between us. So, like, the vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury.” However, English law dictates that there must be two witnesses to make a marriage valid, and so this so-called ‘wedding’ was not legal, as Meghan seems to believe. Furthermore, Reverend Edward has said, “Justin had a private conversation with the couple in the garden about the wedding, but I can assure you, no wedding took place until the televised national event.” While this lie doesn’t really seem all that harmful, it does add to the list of things that sully the couple’s credibility.
Another thing that the couple seemingly lied about is the planning of their exit from the Family. Headlines all published that the couple had blindsided the Queen with their announcement, something Meghan and Harry disputed. Although it does seem to be true that they didn’t blindside the Queen, their claim on how long they’d talked about it seems pretty unlikely. While denying having surprised Her Majesty, Meghan said, “So I remember when you talked to her several times about this [Megxit] over . . .” to which Harry interjected, “Two years.” Two years ago would’ve been around March 2018, but the couple didn’t marry until May 2018. Harry may have been rounding up, but this seems like a pretty crucial detail to be nonchalant about. Whether he meant to or not, this seems to be yet another lie.
The most egregious thing Meghan said during this interview, in my opinion at least, is that she never looked Harry up and she didn’t have much interest in the Royal Family. This is incredibly infuriating to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, I find it completely ridiculous and disrespectful to the Royal Family and England that she would marry into such a prestigious family without having done any research. While Meghan admits that she went into it naive, I don’t think that word even begins to cover it. Whether you know much about the Royal Family or not, it’s pretty common knowledge that they don’t exactly live normal lives. Meghan was to become a SENIOR royal, marrying a prince, becoming SISTER-IN-LAW to the future King of England… and she didn’t do any research? She didn’t look into what her new life would entail, what she might need to learn in order to be a proper royal? I find that incredibly disrespectful and just plain ignorant.
However, it would seem that Meghan was not as clueless about the Royal Family as she claims. One of Meghan’s childhood friends, Suzy Ardakani, has claimed that she and Meghan had spent playdates watching a video recording her mother took of Princess Diana’s wedding. In the book Finding Freedom, a biography of Meghan Markle, the author wrote, “Aged 16, she watched the funeral of Diana with her friends, tears coursing down their cheeks at the poignant moment when the cameras zoomed in on the royal coffin.” To cry for a woman you never met suggests that you really liked her and felt connected to her, not indifferent as Meghan claims. Although it could be argued that Diana was an exception to Meghan’s indifference, another old friend of Meghan’s, Ninaki Priddy, said to some interviewers that they had visited Buckingham Palace when they were younger, and even said, “Meghan was always fascinated by the Royal Family. She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0.” This has led some people to claim that Meghan purposefully targeted Harry for a relationship, in an attempt to realize her dream of becoming ‘Princess Diana 2.0.’ The last nail in the coffin for Meghan’s apparent admiration for the Royal Family is an entry on her old blog, The Tig, After Prince William and Kate’s wedding, saying, “Little girls dream of being princesses, and grown women seem to retain this childhood fantasy. Just look at the pomp and circumstance surrounding the Royal Wedding.” After all that, can we really be expected to believe her lie that she was indifferent toward the Royal Family?
There are many more lies you can look into, I just picked the ones I found to be the biggest. All that having been said, I don’t personally believe a word Meghan says until it’s been proven true. I personally find it a bit odd that the couple had so many false claims in their interview, and I’m intrigued to see if they’ll ever clear up any of the confusion.