What the Palace made of Harry and Meghan’s ‘truth’
It’s clear the Sussexes struggled as their fairytale turned into a nightmare. But on closer inspection, some of their claims belong in the realms of fantasy fiction.
Believe it or not, the Waleses and the Sussexes are exchanging Christmas gifts this year.
In the absence of goodwill between the couples, William and Kate will not deprive three-year-old Archie and Lilibet, one, of a present under the tree. And in one royal tradition that Team Sussex is still on board with, Harry and Meghan have also dispatched gifts for George, Charlotte and Louis, who are nine, seven and four. There will be no presents exchanged between the adults.
While William is still fond of the nephew and niece he has barely seen, one thing is certain - their parents’ Netflix documentary will not be on his must-watch list when the royal family, minus the Sussexes, gather at Sandringham for Christmas.
A friend said: “He says he will never watch it and I know he definitely won’t.” Another source close to the Waleses confirms: “Correct.”
The King and Queen won’t be watching it either, another friend said, but the royal family is aware of the headlines.
At face value, they certainly show that the Sussexes had a torrid time before departing for America. Once upon a time, goes the Netflix Harry & Meghan story, a royal couple fell madly in love, desperate to change the world for the better and serve Queen and country. They were thwarted by a cruel, uncaring institution riddled with racism which was hand in glove with the British media, both determined to drive them into exile.
It is clear that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex struggled as their fairytale turned into a nightmare. But on closer inspection some of their claims from the first three episodes of their six-part series belong in the realms of fantasy fiction, according to courtiers who worked alongside them.
Take the couple’s claims that Meghan, 41, a former actress well versed in red carpet life, was given no help on learning the royal ropes and no advice on fashion, walkabouts or royal protocol.
Unlike the Disney film, The Princess Diaries, when an unsuspecting teenager discovers she is the heir to the throne of a European country and is coached by her grandmother, the reigning queen, Meghan says she was left floundering with no instructions on how to dress, curtsy or adapt to royal life.
“Joining this family, I knew that there was a protocol for how things were done, and, do you remember that old movie [The] Princess Diaries with Anne Hathaway? There’s no class and some person who goes, ‘sit like this, cross your legs like this, use this fork, don’t do this, curtsy then, wear this kind of hat’, - doesn’t happen . . . I never saw pictures or videos of a walkabout, [I was] like, what’s a walkabout?” Harry says he “could talk her through as much as I knew, but the piece I really didn’t know about was the style, how a woman needed to dress”. He says the lack of support was “ridiculous”.
It’s “a total lie,” said a well-placed royal source. “There was prep for everything, walkabouts - even though she was engaged to someone who’d done hundreds of them - clothes, everything. The level of support was intense.”
It can also be revealed that six months before the couple married in May 2018, Harry’s then private secretary, Ed Lane Fox, known as “Elf”, presented Meghan with a 30-point dossier, studiously researched, brimming with information and contacts for the life she was taking on. It covered fashion, the royal family and the constitution, the institution’s heads of department, ladies-in-waiting, arts in the UK, the Charity Commission and public life. Each section suggested an expert who could help Meghan.
“It was huge, the amount of work Elf put into getting her access to anyone, and he gave her books on the stuff,” a source said. It is understood that Meghan took up just two meetings with the suggested experts, one with Sir Christopher Geidt [now Lord Geidt], the late Queen’s private secretary, and another with a “very well-connected, trusted fashion person” for advice on clothes.
Meghan also suggested in the documentary that she had no help learning the national anthem, and had to Google it. A royal source conceded that it was not printed out for her because “you can’t file transfer the national anthem to someone’s brain”.
Then there is Meghan’s assertion that Kensington Palace aides advised her not to invite her niece, Ashleigh Hale, the daughter of her estranged half-sister Samantha Markle, to the wedding. Meghan said her “very small comms team” gave the advice because “they just couldn’t wrap their head around it . . . how do we explain that this half-sister isn’t invited to the wedding, but that the half-sister’s daughter is? And so, with Ashleigh, the guidance at the time was to not have her come to our wedding . . . I called her and . . . and we talked her through what guidance we were being given and why this assessment was made and . . . that’s painful.”
In the program, an emotional Ashleigh, an immigration lawyer, said she was “hurt” by the decision. She said “communication with Meg became less and less frequent,” and she felt Meghan’s relationships were being “managed on some level” by the royal household.
All of which is myth, say impeccably placed royal sources of the decision to have only one family member, Meghan’s mother Doria, on their wedding guest list of 650 at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. “That just didn’t happen,” a source said of Meghan’s account. “We never gave any advice, steer or guidance on who of her family or friends should or shouldn’t come to her wedding. I have a very clear memory of her [Meghan] saying that she had a niece who she would in other circumstances have liked to invite, but she didn’t want to invite her because it would have put her under intense scrutiny. It was not a question she put to us. We would never tell her not to invite her own niece to the wedding and we would never get involved in any management of personal relationships.”
Another royal source confirmed: “Harry had concerns that Meghan had no family at the wedding which would look weird. Meghan didn’t want the media to know about Ashleigh. No one on earth would have said don’t invite family to wedding. That’s a complete and utter lie. We wanted more family there to make it look less weird for her.”
What of Meghan’s assertion that their seemingly blissful engagement interview with the BBC presenter Mishal Husain was an “orchestrated reality show” where “we weren’t allowed to tell our story"? Husain responded last week with words borrowed from the late Queen after the Sussexes’ interview with Oprah Winfrey last year: “We know recollections may vary on this particular subject but my recollection is definitely very much, asked to do an interview, and do said interview.”
A source involved with the interview said everything went according to Meghan’s script: “Every word of that interview was what they wanted to say. She controlled every micro-detail of how their engagement publicly went.”
Of all the blows that the Sussexes landed on the monarchy last week, the most “wounding” for William, according to friends, was Harry’s assertion that he married Kate because she “fits the mould” rather than for love.
Harry, who once described Kate as the sister he never had, said: “I think for so many people in the family, especially the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit the mould as opposed to somebody who perhaps you are destined to be with. The difference between making decisions with your head or heart.” Ouch.
An old friend of both brothers said: “That was so cheeky, that’s a love match if ever there was one. Catherine doesn’t even fit the mould - she’s not an earl’s daughter or blue-blooded. The sadness is Harry was so close to Catherine.”
Another close friend of the royal family, who saw the King on Thursday when Harry & Meghan aired, said: “It is so awful. What on earth are they doing? I want to say to them: ‘Think of your futures. Think of how you may regret this in years to come.’”
However loaded the missiles, William has instructed friends not to retaliate: “William does not want us fuelling the conflict, he’s been very clear on that. He’s keen to have as much of a normal week as possible.” Another friend has given him sage advice: “I reminded him to keep his rifle pointed at the target and not to be distracted, even though it’s all f***ing tedious in every sense of the word.”
On Friday a source close to the Waleses said William was “on great form” and “looking to the future” as he chatted to winners of his Earthshot Prize from his family home, Adelaide Cottage in Windsor, and worked with Kate on projects for next year. “They know the British people expect them to roll their sleeves up and get on with the job.”
Last week, Harry and Meghan said of their series: “We hope it helps others to heal and to feel inspired” but a trailer for the next three episodes, which will drop on Thursday morning, features the duchess’s words: “This is when a family and a family business are in direct conflict.” That doesn’t suggest the next instalment is likely to boost transatlantic family ties or heal ever-deepening wounds.
On Thursday afternoon, Charles, Camilla, William and Kate will join other members of the royal family at Westminster Abbey for Kate’s Together at Christmas carol service, celebrating the legacy and values of the late Queen and those doing unsung community service. They hope it will send a punchy “united front” image as the next Californian torpedoes explode.
The Sussexes’ series was the most-watched Netflix offering on Thursday on both sides of the pond. But the New York Post described it as a “hypocritical attention grab” and “big snooze”, while others raised eyebrows at why a couple once so keen on privacy shared 15 hours of intimate video footage with the director Liz Garbus.
Their spokeswoman set the record straight, refuting the idea that they quit royal life for privacy: “Their statement announcing their decision to step back mentions nothing of privacy and reiterates their desire to continue their roles and public duties . . . They are choosing to share their story on their terms.”
A former courtier wondered how it would go down if staff and members of the royal family responded in kind: “Can you imagine if we’d recorded our own videos to capture our exasperation and despair?”
Perhaps the most surprising Netflix review came from the Hollywood bible Variety, which published a flattering interview with Meghan in October. It said the series revealed “how pinched and unimaginative their presence on the world stage has become”, with the couple showing “little interest in looking forward rather than back, or at the world outside rather than the world of Haz and Meg”.
The royal residents of California may have secured a multimillion pound deal, but Variety asked us to “pity them, too”. Why? Because “they may have shed their responsibilities to the crown, but they’re still in a kind of service . . . forced into restaging the story of their courtship, wedding and family feuds past the point that they, or anyone other than diehard fans or haters, can still care. Even after breaking free of Buckingham Palace, they’re still someone’s subjects.”
The Sunday Times
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