Meghan excluded
The couple claimed the acrimonious Sandringham summit, where senior royals thrashed out details of the couple’s departure as working royals, was deliberately timed to exclude the duchess, who had flown back to Canada to be with their son, Archie. “Imagine a conversation, a roundtable discussion about the future of your life, when the stakes are this high, and you as the mom, and the wife – and the target in many regards – aren’t invited to have a seat at the table,” Meghan said. Harry added: “It was clear to me that they planned that so you weren’t in the room.”
Frosty relations
Of the couple’s final engagement as working royals at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey, Harry said: “I felt very distant from the rest of my family, which was interesting, because so much of how they operate is about what it looks like, rather than what it feels like. And it looked cold, but it also felt cold.” Returning later for the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral was hard, he said, “especially spending time having chats with my brother and my father who just were very much focused on the same misinterpretation of the whole situation”. He added: “I’ve had to make peace with the fact that I’m probably never going to get genuine accountability or a genuine apology.”
Death threats
Meghan cried as she said negative press coverage had led to online death threats, including one tweet that said: “Megan just needs to die, someone needs to kill her, maybe it should be me.” She said: “I was just, like, OK, that’s like what’s actually out in the world? It’s not just a tabloid. It’s not just some story. You are making me scared, right? And like, that night, to be up and down in the middle of the night, looking down the hallway, like: ‘Are we safe, are our doors locked? Is security on?’ – that’s real. ‘Are my babies safe?’
And you’ve created it for what? Because you’re bored, or because it sells your papers, or because it makes you feel better about your own life. It’s real, what you’re doing. And that’s because I don’t think people fully understand.”
Queen too busy
Harry claimed the Queen invited them to tea and to stay the night during a brief visit to the UK in 2020, saying she had no plans all week. But once they landed, aides told him she was busy. “Once we were back in the UK, I rang her and said: ‘We’re now told that you’re busy.’ And she said: ‘Yes. I didn’t know that I was busy. I’ve now been told I’m busy all week. I’ve actually been told I’m busy all week.’ I was, like: ‘Wow’.” Meghan said: “I remember looking at H and thinking: ‘My gosh. This is when a family and a family business are in direct conflict because they’re blocking you from seeing the queen, but what they’re really doing is blocking a grandson from seeing his grandmother.”
Stealing the limelight
“The issue is, when someone marrying in should be a supporting act, is then stealing the limelight or doing the job better than the person who is born to do this, that upsets people,” Harry said. “But the media are the ones who choose who to put on the front page. The first time that the penny dropped for her, M and I spent the night in a room at Buckingham Palace after an event where every member of the family, senior members of the family, had been, including the queen. And on the front page of the Telegraph: Meghan. She was like: ‘But it’s not my fault’. And my mum felt the same way.”
Harry’s decision
Harry said it was his decision to step back as a working royal, not his wife’s. “I’ve seen little cartoons of me on all fours and her holding a dog lead, and me wearing the dog collar. How predictable that you know the woman is to be blamed for the decision of a couple. In fact, it was my decision. She never asked to leave. I was the one that had to see it for myself. But it’s misogyny at its best.”
Meghan said of people blaming her: “He wouldn’t have ever been attracted to me if he wasn’t already on his own path.”
Bullying allegation
James Holt, the executive director of Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation, said the timing of allegations that Meghan had bullied staff “has even been admitted by the journalist that wrote it that it was done explicitly because of the Oprah interview”.
Harry added: “I can’t think what my mum went through all those years ago by herself. To see this institutional gaslighting that happens … it’s extraordinary.
“And that’s why everything that’s happened to us was always going to happen to us. Because if you speak truth to power, that’s how they respond.”
Grateful crew
Flying back to Canada after their final duties as working royals, Meghan said the head of the crew spoke to her after she boarded: “He came and knelt next to my seat and he took his hat off and I just remember looking at him and he goes: ‘We appreciate everything you did for our country.’ And it was the first time I felt like someone saw the sacrifice, not for my own country; for this country that’s not mine.”
