Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on Sunday in a startling and revealing interview which they granted to Oprah Winfrey made damning revelations about how they were treated by the Royal Family in the United Kingdom prior to and after they gave birth to their son, Archie.
In the interview, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex detailed their struggles as working royals. Meghan’s statement to the effect that the royal family expressed concerns about their baby Archie’s skin colour has sent shock waves across many jurisdictions across the world.
Meghan revealed that “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born” were brought up to her husband ahead of her son’s birth.
According to her, the Royal Family did not want her son to be a prince or offer him security. When asked by Oprah why this was so, she said” it had to do with how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
Oprah asked if her son being “too brown” would be a problem, Meghan replied: “If that is the assumption you are making, that is a pretty safe one.”
Meghan revealed: “That was relayed to me from Harry, those were conversations the family had with him, and I think it was really hard to be able to see those as compartmentalised conversations.”
Harry also said it “hurt” that his family did not speak out against articles “with colonial undertones” written about his wife.
Megan disclosed that she contemplated suicide while in the royal family and she had asked officials at Buckingham Palace for medical help, but was told it would damage the institution.
Meghan said: “I was ashamed to have to admit it to Harry. I knew that if I didn’t say it, I would do it.”
Meghan admitted to Oprah that she would have committed suicide and since the royal family won’t help her, she turned to a friend of Princess Diana’s for help.
She said she struggled with her mental health due to the intense pressures of being in the Royal Family, and that she had suicidal thoughts. “I just didn’t want to be alive any more,” she said.
She explained: “And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. And I remember, I remember how [Harry] just cradled me and I was… I went to the institution, and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help.
“I said that I’ve never felt this way before and I need to go somewhere. And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.”
She added; “A friend said: ‘I know you don’t look at pictures, but oh my god, you guys look so great,’ and sent it to me,” the duchess said. “I zoomed in and what I saw was the truth of what that moment was, because right before we had to leave for that, I had just had that conversation with Harry that morning.”
“And we went. And that picture, if you zoom in, what I see is how tightly his knuckles are gripped around me. You can see the whites of our knuckles because we are smiling and doing our job, but we are both just trying to hold on.
“Every time those lights went down in that royal box, I was just weeping. [Harry] was gripping my hand and it was: ‘Okay an intermission’s coming, the lights are about to come on, everyone’s looking at us again’ … and you had to just be ‘on’ again.
“You have no idea what’s going on for someone behind closed doors. You’ve no idea. Even the people that smile the biggest smiles and shine the brightest lights, it seems.”
Meghan Markle accused the royal family of keeping silent while the press twisted stories about them and distorted the truth.
“They didn’t want him to be a prince or princess … which would be different from protocol and that he wasn’t going to receive security,” Meghan said. “It was really hard. … This went on for the last few months of our pregnancy. … I was very scared of having to offer up our baby, knowing that they weren’t going to be kept safe… He needs to be safe, so we’re not saying don’t make him a prince or princess, whatever it’s going to be. … We haven’t created this monster machine around us in terms of clickbait and tabloid fodder. You’ve allowed that to happen, which means our son needs to be safe.”
She added: “I heard a lot of it through Harry and parts of it through conversations with family members. It was a decision that they felt was appropriate.”
“That’s also part of the spin that was really damaging,” Meghan recalled. “I thought: ‘Can you just tell them the truth? Can you tell the world you’re not giving him a title, and we want to keep him safe?”
She told Oprah: “Growing up as a little girl of color, I know how you want to see someone who looks like you in certain positions. I could never understand how it wouldn’t be seen as an added benefit and a reflection of the world.”
Meghan added that Kate had “really hurt my feelings” a few days before the wedding, but that she had apologized and is “a good person”.
She said It was not a “confrontation” and it would not be “fair” to Kate to go into detail. But she added that it was “hard to get over” being blamed for something she did not do.
“Everyone in the institution knew that wasn’t true,” she continued, and said she hoped Kate “would have wanted that to be corrected”.
Asked if she thinks there was a separate standard for her and Kate, and if so why, Meghan said: “I don’t know why. I can see now what layers were at play there.
“And again they really seemed to want a narrative of a hero and a villain.”
Prince Harry also revealed that his family cut him off when he stepped down as a working member of the royal family and he had to rely on the inheritance his mum, Princess Diana left him.
He said: “My family literally cut me off financially. And I had to afford security for us.”He explained that he was cut off in the first quarter of 2020. He continued: “But, I’ve got what my mum left me and without that, we would not have been able to do this.”
Asked by Oprah why they chose to step down from their roles as senior royals, Harry said: “Lack of support. And lack of understanding.”
Harry denied that he “blindsided” the Queen with the news, saying he has “too much respect” for his grandmother, and said they have a good relationship.
However, he said that his father, Prince Charles, had “stopped taking my calls” at one point when he left the UK. Asked about the “tipping point” which led to the couple leaving, Harry said he was “desperate”.
He continued: “I went to all the places which I thought I should go to, to ask for help – we both did, separately and together.”
Oprah asked: “You left because you were asking for help, and didn’t get it?” Harry replied: “Yeah. Basically. But we never left.” Meghan added: “We never left the family.”
Harry told Winfrey he feels “really let down” by his father, the Prince of Wales, “because he’s been through something similar, he knows what pain feels like, [and] Archie’s his grandson.
“But at the same time – I will always love him – but there’s a lot of hurt that’s happened and I will continue to make it one of my priorities to try and heal that relationship. But they only know what they know, or what they’re told.”
Asked whether he would have stepped down from his role if not for Meghan, Harry said: “No.” He continued: “I myself was trapped. I didn’t see a way out. I was trapped but I didn’t know I was trapped.” Oprah pushed Harry to explain, to which he replied: “Trapped within the system, like the rest of my family are. My father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave.”
Speaking about his relationship with his brother, William, Harry said that at the moment it is “space”.
