The Duke and Duchess of Sussex tied the knot in 2018 in a lavish ceremony watched by millions. The public started to love Meghan Marke, but just two years into the family, the couple decided to leave Britain and move to the States.
On January 8, 2020, the couple announced the news on their official Instagram account.
“We intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen,” the couple wrote.
“We now plan to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America, continuing to honor our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages.”
The Queen appeared to be fine with Harry and Meghan’s decision, but it was then-prince Charles who got angry and had a hard time accepting his son’s act.
Things turned even more heated after the couple gave Oprah the infamous interview during which they accused the family of a number of things. Among the rest, they claimed that a senior royal questioned the skin color of then unborn Archie, and Meghan was denied any help when she opened up about her mental struggles.
These accusations didn’t stop there. Harry appeared on the Armchair Expert podcast where he claimed that Prince Charles handed down a “cycle” of “genetic pain and suffering,” that he was trying to break.
At the time, both Harry and Meghan refused to reveal the name of the senior royal in question, but now acclaimed author Christopher Andersen wrote in his book Brothers and Wives: Inside the Private Lives of William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan that it was prince Charles who made the “innocent” comment regarding Archie.
“They wouldn’t reveal who it was. Harry later said the comment didn’t come from the Queen or Prince Philip. Well, I found that it was a very innocent comment made by Prince Charles,” Andersen claimed.
“He turned to Camilla and said, ‘I wonder what the kids are going to look like.’ “You know, hair color, eye color, complexion. It wasn’t racially motivated or anything. But the men in gray who run things behind the scenes at the palaces spun it into something more sinister-sounding,” he added.
“Harry was upset and asked Charles and William what was going on. They told him, ‘You’re overreacting; you’re being oversensitive. Let’s move on.’ And it just added fuel to the fire. There was a lot of tension already, and that just made it so much worse.”
Later on, the couple released a Netflix documentary series and Harry published his best-selling all-tell memoir Spare.
The final episode of the series featured the couple on a plane to California, with Harry telling his then-baby Archie to say hi and putting his finger on the mouth as a sign of ‘shhh,’ while Meghan could be heard telling her son that they go where mommy is from.
And although this image portrayed them as both free and happy family, royal experts claim just the opposite. What the Sussexes referred to as to “the freedom flight,” was allegedly far from one according to body language expert Darren Stanton who believes the couple was in a state of panic.
“There was a real sense of urgency in both Harry and Meghan’s faces as they flew to California. Even though they were thousands of feet above the ground, they both lowered their voices as if they didn’t want to be heard,” Stanton said in December, shortly after the Netflix documentary episode was released.
“The couple were obviously in a state of panic to get out of Canada, where they felt exposed. Both Meghan and Harry looked really tired and stressed, while Meghan’s mother also showed empathy for the situation.”
The body language expert concluded: “The fact that Harry called it a ‘freedom flight’ truly explains his mindset at the time. He very much saw it as a cat-and-mouse game, which was a time-sensitive operation.”
“He seems a lot more settled and relaxed in the rest of the documentary compared to the scene of them on the plane. It was very much a turbulent period for Harry and Meghan.”
Meghan claimed during several occasions that she was mistreated by her husband’s family and the media, but apparently, she made her staff feel mistreated as well.
In 2021, The Times published a report stating that multiple royal aides had approached the newspaper, alleging that one of Meghan Markle‘s former aids had filed a bullying complaint against the Duchess during her time at Kensington Palace with Prince Harry.
The complaint accused Meghan of bullying two personal assistants, resulting in their departure from the royal household. The allegations came to light through an email sent by Jason Knauf, who was serving as the acting communications secretary at Kensington Palace at the time.
According to The Times, Knauf addressed his concerns in an email to Prince William’s private secretary.
“I am very concerned that the Duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. The Duchess seems intent on always having someone in her sights,” Knauff wrote.
“She is bullying (name removed) and seeking to undermine her confidence.”
A month later, Knauf submitted his resignation. Around the same time, Meghan addressed the accusations and expressed sadness regarding the matter. Despite Harry and Meghan asserting that the accusations were a “wholly false narrative,” Buckingham Palace opted to investigate the concerns.
Following an investigation, the palace’s human resources policy had been updated but no details regarding the exact changes were released.
In 2022, in her book Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown, author Valentine Low revealed bombshell allegations, quoting sources saying how Meghan Markle screamed at her ex-staffers, verbally attacking them on several occasions.
“There were a lot of broken people,” an insider told Low. “Young women were broken by their behaviour.”
Low recounted an incident where Markle sharply criticized a young female worker in front of their colleagues.
“Don’t worry. If there was literally anyone else I could ask to do this, I would be asking them instead of you,” Meghan allegedly told the worker.
As per the same author, another staffer was “completely destroyed” after working with Meghan.
Yet another person working for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said, “Every 10 minutes I had to go outside to be screamed at by her and Harry. It was, ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this. You’ve let me down. What were you thinking?’ It went on for a couple of hours.”
Harry touched on the allegations in his memoir, acknowledging that “more than once a staff member slumped across their desk and wept.”
“She was also said to have driven our assistant to quit; in fact that assistant was asked to resign by Palace HR after we showed them evidence she’d traded on her position with Meg to get freebies. But because we couldn’t speak publicly about the reasons for the assistant’s departure, rumors filled the void.”
Harry added that there was “frequent bickering around the office” in which “sides were taken: Team Cambridge versus Team Sussex,”
He continued: “Rivalry, jealousy, competing agendas—it all poisoned the atmosphere. It didn’t help that everyone was working around the clock. There were so many demands from the press, such a constant stream of errors that needed clearing up, and we didn’t have nearly enough people or resources.”
Although the topic of the allegations against Harry and Meghan seemed to faded away, late Queen Elizabeth II’s former press secretary, Samantha Cohen, has decided to speak.
Stating she was heavily involved in the investigations by the Palace but not sharing any specifics, Cohen said the Palace couldn’t find any replacement aides for Harry and Meghan because of high staff turnover.
“I was only supposed to stay for six months but stayed for 18 — we couldn’t find a replacement for me and when we did, we took them on tour to Africa with Harry and Meghan to show them the ropes, but they left (quit) as well while in Africa,” Samantha Cohen said.
According to Valentine Low’s book, Cohen was also screamed at by the couple before and during the flight to Australia for their 2018 tour.
“Sam always made clear that it was like working for a couple of teenagers. They were impossible and pushed her to the limit. She was miserable,” a friend of Cohen told the author.
“She was constantly having to battle on Harry and Meghan’s behalf, while taking all this abuse from them.”
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