Strange thing Meghan Markle missed in her bombshell statement
Bombshell reports of a letter between Meghan Markle and King Charles caused Meghan to speak out – but there was one glaring omission.
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My head hurts. With less than two weeks to go until we are all subsumed by the whirligig of gilt and ermine and Prince Louis scampering about Westminster Abbey with a sceptre purloined from GaGa aka Queen Camilla, of the coronation, here we are on a Monday contemplating the fundamental nature of actuality.
Why, you might ask, are philosophical concepts of the sort better suited to some beret-wearing undergrad who has just gotten their hands on their first copy of Camus on the cards?
Would it surprise you if I told you it has everything to do with Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex?
This weekend was a giddy 48 hours in the royal world, where there were multiple releases of touching private photos of HRHs, a bombshell bit of UK reporting, a statement from the Sussex camp, and then talk of lawyers’ letters flying about the place in London.
Let’s start with late Friday, on what would have been Her late Majesty’s 97th birthday with Buckingham Palace putting a heart melting photo of the powerhouse monarch surrounded by her two youngest grandchildren and most of her great-grandchildren. It was touching, single-tear-sliding-down-one’s-cheek stuff.
However, conspicuously missing from the shot were Meghan and husband Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex’s two wee titled tots, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. (Also absent was Princess Eugenie’s son August and Princess Beatrice’s daughter Sienna in case anyone cares much.)
Rubbing a tad more salt into the Sussex wound was that this image was taken by Kate, the Princess of Wales, who had been permitted to capture the late monarch with her great-grandchildren, a distinction reportedly denied to Harry and Meghan by Her late Majesty last year.
But, the drama was just beginning.
Less than 24 hours later, the UK Telegraph put out a sensational story, breaking the news that Charles had written to Meghan after the Sussexes’ Oprah Winfrey interview in 2021 and she had written back to her father-in-law about her “racism concerns”.
“A source has said that the Duchess feels she has not received a satisfactory response to her concerns,” the paper’s royal editor Victoria Ward reported.
“The Duchess is understood to feel that concerns she has raised, which crucially include the way in which bullying complaints against her were handled and the allegation that neglect by the institution led her to feel suicidal, have still not been resolved.”
Ward also revealed that the letters name the senior member of the royal family who Meghan told Oprah had expressed the “concerns and conversations” about her unborn first child’s skin colour, a detail that remains one of the great royal mysteries.
So here we had not only a huge story with lots of new details about one of the most sensational chapters in modern royal history but the degree of insight into Meghan’s thoughts and feelings would seem to suggest this could only have come someone inside the Sussex camp who had the 16-digit access code for the Duchess’ diary.
It seemed – and let’s just really stress the word ‘seemed’ here – like someone, somewhere was keen to upset the Palace apple cart and to derail all that cheery, nice publicity Team Crown had going on.
Then Meghan responded via biographer and Sussex mouthpiece Omid Scobie putting out a statement that read in part: “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.”
At which point in the weekend, I was ready to hide under the covers and wait for the tempest to pass such was the whiplash.
But in the cold light of the week and amply fortified, there is something decidedly curious about that Meghan statement in that there is one thing missing: An actual denial.
Now, maybe the 41-year-old and her press team as they sat around an ethically sourced conference table felt that these two sentences constituted a clear refutation of her involvement in any way with the Telegraph piece.
With two small children, a blog to possibly be relaunching and the occasional rumour of political ambitions, the former Suits actress hardly has the time for rear view-mirror navel-gazing.
Still, it seems a strange omission or oversight to not include a clear rejection of the Telegraph story given. (In fact, putting out this statement only confirmed that these letters had whizzed backwards and forwards between California and London in 2021.)
At some point over the weekend, lawyers – two sets it would seem – got involved in this rumpus.
Not long after the Telegraph story was published, Times’ royal correspondent Valentine Low tweeted a link and posted, “Why does the Sussex camp want to leak all this? Is it Meghan trying to prevent an outbreak of peace between Harry and his father? And intriguing that they should resort to the sort of briefing that they condemned in others.”
But, Low then followed that up the next day, posting: “Given that legal letters have been sent by the Sussexes’ lawyers as well as the palace’s since the story was published, it seems I was wrong in assuming that it came from the Sussex camp. Sorry to all about that. But even more intriguing!”
(Combined, these two tweets have been shared more than 600,000 times as of writing.)
“Intriguing” indeed.
The Sussexes have repeatedly over the years – at Usain Bolt-like speed – called in the lawyers when journalists or news outlets overstep the bounds, with Meghan having successfully sued the Daily Mail for publishing parts of a letter she sent her estranged father Thomas Markle.
When it comes to Harry, it is perhaps easier to list the Fleet Street powerhouses he is not currently taking to court than those he is.
Which is to say, if this weekend’s story was a bunch of baloney or was entirely the work of some very loose, unsanctioned lips leaking to a royal correspondent, you would think that the Duke and Duchess of all people would be happy to point fingers.
Except … despite Low’s reference to “legal letters,” the Telegraph story is still online and has not been amended to include anything to suggest that it is the subject of a legal complaint.
(You want to guess which is the only British newspaper to whom Harry granted an interview to promote Spare? One that has remained out of his legal crosshairs? The Telegraph.)
Something else that can be filed under ‘intriguing’ is three words oddly lacking from Meghan’s statement – Duke of Sussex. According to the release, she is “going about her life in the present” – whatever happened to ‘their life’? And can the same be said for the happiness-challenged Duke?
Based on what we have seen over the last five months, the 38-year-old seems chronically unable to look anywhere but in the rear view mirror, having spent the beginning of this year dragging worldwide audiences though his tortured psyche and deeply fraught, if not damaged, relationships with his family.
It does not come as much of a surprise then that The Sun ran a story this weekend claiming the “homesick” Duke was “desperate to come back for the coronation and spend quality time with his family”.
It would be nice to think that while Meghan was “going about her life in the present” Harry is doing the same, eagerly filling the many, many hours in his day between his morning green juice and sunset asanas in the garden by making plans for the future and having thought showers all over the place.
If he is, so far he has done a bang up job of keeping that completely under wraps.
Aside from Harry’s years-in-the-making doco about Invictus Games and his occasional outings as coaching platform BetterUp’s Chief Impact Officer, the man would not seem to have much, if anything, on his plate.
The bigger problem is that professionally, the Duke of Sussex might not have much choice but to keep ‘going about his life in the past’ while Meghan enjoys the present.
Aitch narrating some worthy series about water conservation is hardly going to have subscribers signing up by droves to Netflix; Him spilling the goss with cameras about family Christmas fights and that one time the Queen Mother tried to play his Xbox will.
Spare a thought in all of this for King Charles who, with only 12 days to go until his coronation, has managed to find himself pushed off the front pages. Still there is plenty of time for things to still go right on the day – or so very wrong, especially if Louis gets his hands on the Sovereign’s Orb.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Strange thing Meghan Markle missed in her bombshell statement
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