Ruth Dudley Edwards: The falsity of Meghan Markle’s claims are being exposed

But hundreds of thousands of us signed a petition to bring him back

Since then, Good Morning, Britain has lost 40% of its viewers and Wake Up, his diatribe against the ‘woke’ culture, is back on the best-seller list.

Fearful of being denounced as racist or uncaring about other people’s mental health, the press has been careful, but gradually they’ve been exposing the falsity of some of the claims.

For instance, Meghan’s account of the secret wedding with just the Archbishop of Canterbury in their ‘backyard’ three days before the public event in Windsor has just been rubbished by the former official who issued the licence for the public event: “What I suspect they did was exchange some simple vows they had perhaps written themselves, and which is fashionable, and said that in front of the archbishop or, and more likely, it was a simple rehearsal.”

Meghan had a memory lapse about being an innocent who knew nothing of British royalty.

School friends including her maid of honour from her first wedding say she was always fascinated by the Royals and Diana in particular: there is a photograph on social media of 15-year-old her sitting with a friend on a railing outside Buckingham Palace.

The palace, she said, had given her no help in understanding the monarchy, her role and royal life, yet she had the support of the officials in Harry’s household, was befriended by the Queen, Charles and Camilla and provided with aides.

If her passport was removed and never returned and she wasn’t allowed out for months, how did she make 80 trips overseas including travelling to New York for a $500,000 baby shower?

She said she received no help from the palace’s human resources department or anyone else when she reported that her mental health was threatened, which made her suicidal.

Why did she not speak to her mother — a licensed mental health social worker — royal doctors, the therapists used by her husband and his brother or their contacts as patrons of a mental health charity?

The tabloids are as awful to the royals as to any other celebrities (remember what Kate went through with months of humiliating headlines about Waity Katie before he proposed?) but Meghan insisted they singled her out for particular persecution.

The producers displayed 48 headlines to back her up, of which it has turned out 21 — including the worst ones — were Australian or American.

Several of the others were distorted.

There was a picture of headline from the Mail/Online saying ‘Megan’s seed will taint our Royal family’: what was left out was ‘UKIP’s chief’s glamour model, 25, is suspended from the party over racist texts about Prince Harry’s wife to be’.

Worst of all was the suggestion that it was their son Archie’s colour that had prevented him from being made a prince and given adequate security protection.

During her pregnancy, said Meghan, speaking of pressure on her mental health, “we have in tandem the conversation of ‘he won’t be given security, he’s not going to be given a title’ and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he was born”.

This was said before Harry joined them.

Seemingly under-rehearsed, he said that there was one conversation with him before she was pregnant in which a relative wondered what skin colour their babies would be.

Oh, and the rules about titles were laid down a hundred years ago by George V and security provisions are decided by the police and depend on your place in the hierarchy and the work you’re doing.

The Queen is notoriously devoted to the Commonwealth, knows every head of its 54 states and remembers their predecessors, over seven decades has visited most of the countries they represent and cherishes the organisation’s diversity of colour, religion and political beliefs.

Other members of the royal family undertake overseas visits or, domestically, develop friendships and relationships with institutions and individuals of all races and creeds.

To have the family accused of racism was devastating.

The Queen challenged it gracefully:

“The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan. The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.

“Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much-loved family members.”

The truth is that Meghan, bored by the mainly mundane duties of royalty and deeply resentful of the hierarchical primacy of William and Kate, persuaded her fragile husband to demand the right for them to live abroad and retain the status, income and privileges of working royals while carrying out only the duties that suited and together carving out a career as a high-earning celebrity couple.

When the Queen told them they could not have the royal cake and eat it, they retaliated by complaining to an audience of billions that they’ve been badly treated.

It’s back-firing.

Pity about Harry.

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