Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have created a new life in the US. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex left the royal family several years ago now, but the aftermath shocked the royal family to its core. Harry and Meghan have accused the royals of questioning Archie’s skin color before he was born, and many other accusations and personal attacks were presented in both their explosive Oprah interview and Harry’s book Spare.
There is no question that the relationship between the royals and the Sussexes is at a low point, and even though Harry was at King Charles’ coronation, everything seems to have stayed the same between, for example, Harry and William. In the midst of all this, Charles reportedly tried helping Meghan in the best way he could and is said to have been the only royal to have contacted her and Harry after the Oprah interview.
Sadly, Meghan revealed that she had been suicidal while being a working royal, Charles sent her a letter. However, Meghan wasn’t satisfied with the then-prince’s answer, and the rumors said it had a crucial effect on a huge decision.
Harry and Meghan go back a long way. The couple began dating after meeting at a tennis tournament in London in 2016, and it didn’t take long before love flourished. But already before tying the knot, some of Meghan’s friends felt she wouldn’t be happy with him.
Prince Harry & Meghan Markle
In a 2019 ITV interview, Meghan revealed that some of her friends even warned her not to marry Harry because of the media scrutiny she was about to face.
“It’s hard. I don’t think anybody can understand that. In all fairness, I had no idea, which probably sounds difficult to understand, but when I first met Harry, my friends were so excited, my US friends were happy because I was happy,” Meghan said.
“But my British friends, they were sure he was lovely, but they said I shouldn’t do it because ‘the British tabloids will destroy your life.’ Because I’m American, I very naively didn’t get it. It’s complicated.”
The Duchess added: “I never thought that this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair, and that’s the part that’s really hard to reconcile.” She continued: “I’ve said for a long time to H – that’s what I call [Harry] – it is not enough to just survive something. That’s not the point of life. You’ve got to thrive and feel happy.”
“I really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a stiff upper lip. I tried, I really tried. But I think what that does internally is probably really damaging,” she added.
On May 19, 2018, Harry and Meghan tied the knot in a grand ceremony at St. George’s Chapel.
At the time, it was clear that the royal family had embraced Meghan. Especially King Charles, who performed an incredible gesture to the Duchess during the ceremony, as her father wasn’t invited.
King Charles escorted Meghan to the aisle at her wedding
According to royal biographer Robert Hardman, Charles asked Meghan if she wanted him to escort Meghan to the aisle. In his book Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II, Hardman wrote that Charles got a quick answer, but it wasn’t what he expected.
In fact, Meghan surprised the now-King, asking him to meet her halfway down the aisle. She wanted to make her big entrance into the chapel on her own.
“Feeling for his future daughter-in-law, the Prince of Wales offered to step in, saying he would be honored to escort Meghan up the aisle of St George’s Chapel to the altar. The reply, according to one friend, was not quite what he was expecting: ‘Can we meet halfway?’” Hardman wrote.
“Here was an indicator that this was no blushing bride, but a confident, independent woman determined to make a grand entrance on her own.”
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In 2018, in the BBC documentary Prince, Son, and Heir, Harry spoke about his father’s offering to walk his wife down the aisle. Harry initially said he had asked his father about it, and that Charles immediately agreed.
“I asked him to and I think he knew it was coming, and he immediately said, ‘Yes, of course, I’ll do whatever Meghan needs and I’m here to support you.’” Harry recalled.
“For him, that’s a fantastic opportunity to step up and be that support, and you know, he’s our father, so of course, he’s going to be there for us.”
Meghan Markle said ‘unnamed royal’ commented about Archie’s skin color
Few would have predicted it on their wedding day, but Harry and Meghan began their verbal attacks on the royals in the year following their exit.
In the infamous Oprah Winfrey interview, Meghan claimed she had been poorly treated, even stating that The Firm, as they call themselves, didn’t help her when she was experiencing mental health problems.
Meanwhile, the Duchess revealed several shocking things in the interview with Oprah, for example, how an unnamed royal commented about Archie’s skin color.
“In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time. So we have in tandem the conversation of ‘he won’t be given security, he’s not going to be given a title’ and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born,” Meghan Markle recalled.
As she became a working royal, Meghan felt she had to endure constant criticism and sexism, as well as racist remarks from the media. Her mental health deteriorated, but, as mentioned, she felt she didn’t get any support from the royal family members.
It went so far that Meghan became suicidal.
“I just didn’t see a solution. I would sit up at night, and I was just, like, I don’t understand how all of this is being churned out. And, again, I wasn’t seeing it, but it’s almost worse when you feel it through the expression of my mom or my friends, or them calling me crying, just, like, ‘Meg, they’re not protecting you’. And I realized that it was all happening just because I was breathing,” she explained.
“I was really ashamed to say it at the time and ashamed to have to admit it to Harry, especially, because I know how much loss he’s suffered. But I knew that if I didn’t say it, that I would do it. And I just didn’t want to be alive anymore. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought,” Meghan added.
Meghan didn’t attend King Charles’ coronation
“And I remember how he just cradled me. 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.”
The relationship between the Sussexes and the royal family deteriorated quickly, and many of The Firm’s members were outraged by the claims made against them.
Princess Eugenie is reportedly the only royal who has visited Harry, Meghan, and their two children, Archie and Lilibet, in California. Meanwhile, Harry and Meghan have not been back to the UK more than necessary, with the Duchess being back in her old home country only once, for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in 2022.
When King Charles was crowned in Westminster Abbey last May, one of the main topics that gained a lot of interest was whether Harry and Meghan would be in attendance or even be welcomed.
While the two had lost all confidence of most royal family members at that point, in the end, the king would decide if they’d be invited or not.
Finally, Harry decided to come and see his father become king, while Meghan stayed in the US, caring for Archie and Lilibet.
Harry’s visit to the coronation was maybe not a big surprise. However, shortly after the ceremony, he left for the airport and returned to his wife. Some royals reportedly were happy about Harry not joining them for the coronation lunch.
They even had hopes that Harry and Meghan, if she would’ve showed up, would sit far back at Westminster Abbey, not even remotely close to the other family members.
Meghan Markle sent letter to Charles after Oprah interview
The reason Meghan Markle stayed in the US was, as mentioned, to take care of their two children. However, it’s known that her mother, Doria Ragland, usually helps Meghan with the kids if plenty is going on; therefore, could there have been another reason why Meghan didn’t travel to the UK with her husband?
According to The Telegraph, reporting on it in April of last year, there is. After the Oprah interview, Meghan decided to share her concerns about unconscious bias with Prince Charles and sent him a letter.
Later on, King Charles, then prince, decided to send a response to Meghan where he expressed his sadness over the tensions within the family, specifically between Harry & Meghan and the rest of The Firm.
Also, Charles was believed to have been the only senior member of the royal family to reach out to the Duchess after the Oprah interview.
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The Telegraph report unveiled new details, among them that Meghan told Charles that she never intended to accuse the royal family of racism but rather to discuss the unconscious bias.
Speculations surrounding Meghan Markle not attending the coronation arose. It was rumored that the real reason for her now showing up was that the Duchess was disappointed about Charles not addressing her concerns about the unconscious bias in his letter.
Meghan Markle spokesperson shut down coronation rumors
However, a spokesperson for Meghan later shut down the speculations, saying it was “ridiculous.”
“The Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago. Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating,” Meghan’s spokesperson told People Magazine.
In an ITV interview in early 2023, Harry decided to address the matter of alleged racism within the oral family, telling the interviewer that they did not believe they were.
“No,” Harry said. “The British press said that, right? Did Meghan ever mention ‘they’re racists?’”
“The difference between racism and unconscious bias… the two things are different. Once it’s been acknowledged or pointed out to you as an individual, otherwise an institution, that you have unconscious bias, you, therefore, have an opportunity to learn and grow from that… otherwise, unconscious bias then moves into the category of racism,” he added.
