Meghan Markle, in a tell-all interview with Oprah, has given a rare insight into her relationship with Kate Middleton, admitting to the fact that their relationship has been tense.
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When Oprah asked her to share details on media reports which stated that the Duchess made Kate cry in the days leading up to her wedding with Prince Harry in April 2018, Meghan said: “The reverse [of what was reported] happened. And I don’t say that to be disparaging toward anyone, because it was a really hard week of the wedding. And she was upset about something, but she owned it and she apologised and she brought me flowers and a note apologizing and she did what I would do if I knew that I hurt someone, right? To just take accountability for it.”
“What was shocking was, six or seven months after our wedding, that the reverse of that would be out in the world,” she added.
In November 2018, it was reported that Meghan had driven Kate to tears over dresses to be worn by the flower girls at the wedding.
Meghan told Oprah that it was actually Kate who’d been upset about “something pertaining to the flower girl dresses” and that the Duchess of Cambridge’s actions, which she refused to disclose, had made her cry.
“It really hurt my feelings,” Meghan said. “And I thought in the context of everything else going on in those days leading to the wedding that it didn’t make sense to not just be doing what everyone else was doing, which was trying to be supportive knowing what was going on with my dad and whatnot.”
Meghan asserted that it wasn’t a “confrontation” with Kate and that she has forgiven her sister-in-law. However, she said that it was hard for her later to be blamed by the media for something she didn’t do.
Meghan said she still doesn’t understand why the wedding communications team didn’t defend her.
“Everyone in the institution knew it wasn’t true,” she said.
When Oprah asked why the palace didn’t go on the record to dispel the story, Meghan responded, “That’s a good question. I would hope that [Kate] would’ve wanted that corrected. Maybe in the same way that the palace wouldn’t let anybody else negate it, they wouldn’t let her. Because she’s a good person.”
It is pertinent to add here that Kate’s youngest son Prince Louis was born less than a month before Prince Harry and Meghan’s wedding.
‘I didn’t want to be alive anymore’
Meanwhile, Meghan also said that she contemplated taking her own life after joining the royal family, and raised allegations of racism in the monarchy during an explosive television interview.
Explaining the couple’s dramatic exit from royal life, Meghan said she was denied help during her mental health crisis, was targeted by lies, and that there was official concern about the skin colour of her unborn son.
“I… just didn’t want to be alive anymore. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. And I remember how he (Harry) just cradled me,” she told Winfrey, describing the impact of a torrent of vitriol from hostile tabloids and social media.
“I went to the institution and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help … And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.
“I remember this conversation like it was yesterday, because they said, my heart goes out to you because I see how bad it is, but there’s nothing we can do to protect you because you’re not a paid employee of the institution.
“This wasn’t a choice. This was emails and begging for help, saying very specifically I am concerned for my mental welfare.”
Asked if she had had suicidal thoughts while pregnant, Meghan replied “Yes. This was very, very clear.”
Meghan, 39, also told of royal “concerns” about “how dark” her son’s skin would be, saying Harry revealed to her official conversations over Archie’s appearance, as well as the security he would be entitled to, ahead of his birth on May 6, 2019.
“They didn’t want him to be a prince or princess, not knowing what the gender would be, which would be different from protocol and that he wasn’t going to receive security,” said Meghan.
“In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time, so we have in tandem the conversation of, you won’t be given security, not gonna be given a title and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
Asked who the conversation was with: “I think that would be very damaging to them. That was relayed to me from Harry, those were conversations the family had with him.”
Meghan and Harry welcomed their first child Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor in May 2019. They are currently expecting their second child. In the interview, the couple revealed that they are expecting a girl and that she is due sometime in the summer.
Later, when asked if she was not supported by the powers that be, she said: “There’s the family, and then there’s the people that are running the institution, those are two separate things and it’s important to be able to compartmentalise that because the queen, for example, has always been wonderful to me.”
The two-hour interview with the queen of US television was the biggest royal tell-all since Harry’s mother Princess Diana detailed her crumbling marriage to his father Prince Charles in 1995.
