Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Netflix show: Prince William steps out after bombshell claims
Prince William’s family stepped out in a show of unity after the Sussexes dropped more bombshells in their Netflix series.
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The Wales family kept calm and carried on with their children, George and Charlotte, amid shocking new claims about the royal family in the second half of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s incendiary Netflix series.
Prince William’s family, a primary focus of the final three episodes, attended the ‘Together at Christmas’ Carol Service at Westminster Abbey with King Charles and Queen Consort, Camilla as the fallout from shocking new claims continued.
During the concert, due to be aired on Christmas Eve, Prince William delivered an address taken from the Queen’s 2012 Christmas speech hailing “the spirit of togetherness” and the importance of “to serve, not to be served”, The Sun reports.
The late monarch had told the nation that Christmas was “a time for coming together” - a message echoed by the Prince William at the carol service.
Here’s everything we know from the episodes:
ROYALS AND RACISM
The Duchess accused the royals of racism and refers to herself as a “foreign organism”.
She recalled: “There was this moment where our private secretary, she worked with the Queen for almost 20 years I think, and what she said to me was it’s like this fish swimming perfectly, powerful, it’s on the right current, and then one day this organism comes in.
“This foreign organism and the entire thing goes [eyes to the side and squeak]. What is that?
“What is it doing here? It doesn’t look like us, it doesn’t move like us. We don’t like it, get it off of us.”
“And she just explained, you know, that you’ll soon see that it’s stronger, faster, even better with this organism as a part of it.
“It will be hard at the beginning for them to adjust to this new thing, but then it will be amazing. And I was really hopeful that that was true.”
MEGHAN AND HARRY’S WEDDING
In episode four, Ms Markle said she was “so calm” during the morning of her wedding.
She wanted a mimosa, a croissant and to play the song, Going to the Chapel — which she did.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex also shared that King Charles had helped organise the music for the wedding including the soaring choral piece for her walk up the aisle and the Kingdom Choir who sang a gospel rendition of Stand By Me.
She said asking her future father-in-law to walk her down the aisle was “really important” as “I’ve lost my dad in this.”
“Him as my father-in-law was really important to me, so I asked him to walk me down the aisle and he said yes,” she said.
“The whole thing was surreal.”
‘THE BUBBLE BURST’
In the opening moment of episode 5, Ms Markle said: “So I just did everything I could to make them proud and to be really part of the family”, as vision showed members of the wider royal family heading to church on Christmas Day in 2018.
“And then the bubble burst.”
Prince Harry’s recollections of the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey – his and Ms Markle’s last official duties as royals – suggest it was an awkward affair.
The family was often focused on how things looked rather than how they felt, Prince Harry said – and this event both looked cold and felt cold.
‘AUSTRALIA WAS THE TURNING POINT’
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle believe the huge success of their Australian tour, which began with the announcement of her pregnancy, made them more popular than Prince William and Catherine and prompted Palace courtiers to start briefing against them.
At this time they became pregnant and they started a journal when they discovered they were pregnant. Ms Markle said they both had “always wanted” to be parents.
BETTER THAN CHARLES, KATE, WILLIAM
The Prince said they had proven to be too popular, with the pregnancy announcement amping up their status as the rock star royals.
“The issue is when someone who should be a supporting act is stealing the limelight or is doing the job better than the person who was born to do this, that upsets people, it shifts the balance,” he said.
“(Because) you’ve been led to believe that the only way that your charities can succeed and the only way that your reputation can be grown or improved is if you’re on the front page of the newspapers.
“But the media are the ones who choose who to put on the front page.”
REAL REASON BEHIND MEGXIT
The decision to step away from the royal family was not Meghan Markle’s, but Prince Harry’s, the fifth in line to the British throne has revealed.
Prince William “screamed and shouted” at Prince Harry and Prince Charles said “things that simply weren’t true” during a meeting at Sandringham to discuss the Sussexes plans to withdraw from the royal family,
Love her or loathe her, it would be a hard-hearted viewer who couldn’t be moved by her tears over the death threats she received.
An online investigation revealed that some bots or haters were working in an absolutely frenzy, with 70 per cent of 14,000 hateful tweets coming from just 83 accounts.
MEGHAN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE QUEEN
Ms Markle was grateful for Queen Elizabeth as a “grandmother figure in her life” when they shared their first official engagement together, travelling on the Royal Train, after her wedding to Prince Harry.
The Duchess of Sussex reveals in the fourth episode the Queen put a blanket over her knees when they transferred to a car after sharing breakfast together on the train.
“I treated her as my husband’s grandma and knowing that of course there has to be a completely different sense of propriety and what not in public, when you’re sitting and having breakfast, just to be able to talk,” she said.
“When we got into the car between engagements, she had a blanket and she put it over my knees … I recognise and respect and see you are the Queen but in this moment, I’m so grateful that there’s a grandmother figure because that feels like family.”
Against photos of the pair giggling together while sitting on a stage at an official engagement, Ms Markle said “It was such a good day … we laughed.”
HOW MEGHAN ‘LOST’ HER DAD
Meghan Markle blames the media for the disintegration of her relationship with her father.
She said she reached out to the Queen for advice on how to handle her father, and it was the Queen and the Prince of Wales’s advice that she write her father a letter.
But the receipt of the letter was signed in a signature that was not her father’s, Ms Markle said.
FALLOUT FROM SOUTH AFRICAN TOUR
The fallout from Ms Markle’s candid comment she was struggling to cope with being a royal as a newlywed and new mum during their South African tour would be the catalyst for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to begin their Megxit plans.
Ms Markle said she hadn’t expected the interview with Tom Bradby would be used in the Palace-sanctioned documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey nor that her comments about not being OK would reverberate around the world.
“Because I was so exhausted I was just really grateful that someone seemed to ask something like I was a human being,” she said.
“I guess I just never thought that they would use it in the documentary – it was like ‘Bye, see you on the flight’”.
Her husband again drew a comparison between his mother and wife for their candour about suffering depression, with the Netflix documentary sharing footage from Princess Diana’s controversial interview with Martin Bashir for the BBC’s Panorama program.
“No one in the family speaks that openly, no one had done apart from one person, my mum,” he said.
“From an institutional perspective, there was something wrong with her as opposed to the environment or the system we were part of.
“The fallout was bonkers … when you expect support from the people closest, we got the opposite.”
Ms Markle said the media backlash against her candid revelation she was struggling and lack of support from Palace insiders was “a huge turning point.”
“That was when we started having harder conversations about what needs to happen for us to be able to continue to make this work.”
‘FREEDOM FLIGHT’ AFTER SECURITY BEING PULLED
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex recall they were forced to escape Canada for Los Angeles because their security was being pulled.
Episode six starts with Prince Harry doing a video selfie on a private jet. It’s dated 6am, March 14, 2020.
His wife is holding their baby son Archie and her mum Doria Ragland is also on the plane, with the couple’s two dogs.
“We are on the freedom flight”, Prince Harry said in the video laughing. He then puts his fingers to his lips and says, “shh”.
Ms Markle said they had to leave because their location was “exposed” and they knew their “security was being pulled”.
“Everyone in the world knew where we were,” she said.
Her mum Ms Ragland said she was worried for them too.
“I just knew the stress they were under,” she said.
“It felt like they were running”.
MEGHAN’S CONFIDANTE
Ms Markle reveals she poured out her heart to someone she had never even spoken to before, American actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry, who just happens to be a billionaire.
She said she called him while holed up in Canada hidng from the world’s media after Megxit.
Mr Perry had previously sent her a note before the wedding, after seeing that her father had done a deal with the paparazzi, to say he was praying for her and to keep strong.
“I immediately empathised with her,” Mr Perry said.
Ms Markle said months and months and months went by, but then one day in Canada she called him and it was the first time they ever spoke.
“I was just a wreck, I was just crying and crying,” Ms Markle said.
“Sometimes it is easier to open up to someone who knows nothing at all. And that was that moment with me and Tyler.”
Mr Perry said Ms Markle could have said a lot more in the Oprah interview, but didn’t because she was “classy”.
Prince Harry revealed Mr Perry had loaned them his LA mansion where they were able to hideaway without anyone knowing where they were - even Harry’s family - for six weeks before they were outed by the press.
“My family thought I was in Canada,” he said.
He said they had to move because the Daily Mail revealed their location, resulting in them having to erect a fence to stop the paparazzi from getting photos. They said there were helicopters circling 24/7, as well as drones.
Mr Perry said the chain on the fence was cut every day with people sneaking onto the property.
The couple then outlined their fight with the Daily Mail, after they published Ms Markle’s private letter to her father.
The Mail wanted access to their phones for the lawsuit with everything that included the terms, ‘I love you’, ‘Archie’, ‘Kate’, ‘William’ and ‘Africa’.
Jenny Afia, Ms Markle’s lawyer, said Ms Markle was contacting her at 3am in the morning over the case.
SHOCK TEXT FROM WILLIAM
There is then a video of the couple’s reaction to the Queen’s official response to the interview and then at the same time, Prince Harry gets a text from his brother, but he doesn’t reveal what it says.
But when he shows his wife she says, “Wow”.
MEGHAN’S MISCARRIAGE AND LIFE
Her mum, Doria Ragland recalled the time Ms Markle “wanted to take her own life”. Ms Ragland added that being told that “broke her heart”.
Her friend Abigail Spencer said she had just moved into the new Santa Barbara home, but instead of showing off her new pad, she told her she was in a lot of pain.
“She was holding Archie and she just fell to the ground.”
“I was pregnant, I really wasn’t sleeping. The first morning that woke up in our new home is when I miscarried.”
Prince Harry blamed his wife’s miscarriage on the stress of the Mail’s lawsuit. Her mum Ms Ragland said her daughter was “brave and courageous”.
Ms Markle said she made the choice to write about her miscarriage to help other people.
The pair are then shown sitting at their table together working on their Archewell Foundation, supporting issues that they care about including vaccine equity and racial injustice.
They then show some personal footage of the family playing in the garden with Archie and friends, kicking a ball and on a slippery water slide, as well as days out to the beach.
‘MEGHAN WAS A SCAPEGOAT’
A trailer released by Netflix on Thursday gave the world a taste of what was to come when the streaming giant dropped the highly anticipated volume two.
It marked a major step up in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s accusations against Buckingham Palace and was the first time the pair have explicitly accused royal aides of briefing against them.
In the trailer, Buckingham Palace is accused of making the Duchess of Sussex a “scapegoat” by planting negative stories about her.
Ms Markle claims the palace put out reports about her to make stories about other members of the royal family “go away”.
The Duchess’s lawyer, Jenny Afia, describes it in the trailer as “a war against Meghan” and claims she has evidence that palace aides briefed against the Duke and Duchess “to suit other people’s agendas”.
Ms Afia says: “This barrage of negative articles about the breakdown of the relationship with her father was the final straw in a campaign of negative, nasty coverage about her.”
In the new trailer, Ms Markle claims the negative stories were a form of distraction.
“You would just see it play out,” Ms Markle says.
“Like a story about someone in the family would pop up for a minute, and they’d go, ‘We’ve got to make that go away’.
“But there’s real estate on a website homepage, there is real estate on a newspaper front cover.
“And something has to be filled in there about someone royal.”
PRINCE HARRY’S CLAIM ABOUT WILLIAM
In another Netflix trailer released earlier this week, Prince Harry said: “They were happy to lie to protect my brother.
“They were never willing to protect us.”
It was not clear whether the Duke of Sussex was referring to Buckingham Palace or the media, but this is likely to be confirmed.
Prince Harry said going back was hard especially the chats with his father and brother who were focused on the same “misinterpretation of the whole situation”.
He said none of them wanted to talk about it, presumably the Oprah Winfrey interview and subsequent fallout, but they did.
He said he has had to come to peace with the fact he will never get “genuine accountability or a genuine apology.”
He said he and his wife were moving on, focused on the future, before the documentary cuts to a newborn Lilibet on June 1, 2021.
FALLOUT FROM OPRAH INTERVIEW
The controversial Oprah Winfrey interview is discussed, with the couple saying she reached out to them when they were at Kensington Palace, but the timing of the interview kept changing.
“Sitting down with Oprah was a reaction to what happened that year,” Prince Harry said.
He said they had thought it would be a year of transition, but it was just a “beating”.
“The more distance that came between us having a smaller role with the institution and coming over here, the more of a vacuum was being built,” Ms Markle said.
She said people didn’t understand why they had left, suggesting that was a reason for them doing the interview.
However, the documentary then alleges that the bullying claims against Ms Markle were deliberately leaked by the palace to coincide with the Oprah interview.
Prince Harry compared this with the treatment his mother experienced.
“I can’t think what my mum went through all those years ago by herself,” he said.
“To see this institutional gaslighting that happens is … it is extraordinary,” Prince Harry said. He said the bullying claims came about because they were “speaking truth to power”.
Ms Markle hoped the biggest “takeaway” from the interview would be her depression and how bad it got but it was “entirely eclipsed by race”.
Beyonce texted her after the interview to say she thinks she was “selected to break generational curses that need to be healed.”
WHAT HAS BEEN THE REACTION?
Insiders, The Sun reports, have pointed out that Buckingham Palace regularly defended Ms Markle over untrue stories in the media via lawyers, legal letters and complaints to the British press complaints organisation IPSO.
WHAT DO THE ROYAL EXPERTS SAY?
Television personality Piers Morgan tweeted: “I’m being regularly heard/quoted in this second instalment of the Megsflix whine-a-thon.
“I’m traumatised by this terrible invasion of my privacy … God their incessant whining is so insufferably exhausting.”
Royal correspondent for the Daily Mirror Russell Myers told Lorraine breakfast show: “Saying that a newspaper is responsible for the death of an unborn child is an extraordinary allegation.
Prince Harry’s claim that “lies” were told to protect Prince William has destroyed the pair’s relationship for good, royal experts claim.
Author Tom Bower also suggested that the rift between the pair is a bad look for Britain.
Mr Bower said: “Their mother Diana would be appalled by Harry’s disloyalty.
“Not only is that rupture distressing for William and King Charles, but also for the country.
“The image of warring brothers is terrible for Britain’s global reputation.”
Royal expert Angela Levin said the Sussexes are getting “nastier and nastier”.
“This is just a crumpled, angry Harry that doesn’t know which way to turn.” she said.
“He does what he’s told by Meghan, but he actually can’t work out whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, and he wants to please her.
“I feel incredibly angry and I feel for him because he’s walking a tightrope.”
WHAT DID VOLUME ONE TELL US?
In the first volume of Harry & Meghan, the pair revealed intimate photos from the early days of their courtship as they gave viewers a glimpse of their new life in California after splitting from the royal family.
In a bizarre scene that had the world talking, Ms Markle described having to curtsy to the Queen at her first meeting with the late monarch.
She then laughingly demonstrated an exaggerated curtsy while an embarrassed Prince Harry looked on.
Ms Markle was slammed online over the incident for appearing to mock the institution of the monarchy.
In another controversial moment, Prince Harry made a dig at the royals with his claim that there was a temptation within the royal family to marry someone who “fits the mould”.
“I think for so many people in the family, especially obviously the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit the mould as opposed to somebody who you perhaps are destined to be with,” he said.
“The difference between making decisions with your head, or your heart. And my mum certainly made most of her decisions – if not all of them – from her heart.
“And I am my mother’s son.”
Ms Markle revealed her “awkward” first meeting with Catherine, the Princess of Wales and how the pair shared a hug, described by Ms Markle as potentially “jarring”.
Ms Markle also shocked viewers by claiming her engagement interview was an “orchestrated reality show”.
The docuseries gave many fans their first real sense of Ms Markle’s mother Doria Ragland, who revealed she felt “unsafe a lot”.
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Originally published as Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Netflix show: Prince William steps out after bombshell claims
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