Editorial: The racism row is a grisly royal saga that above all harms the Sussexes

We report today fears that the reputation of the royals has been damaged by a race row.​

The family’s reputation has not been damaged at all in the minds of anyone who thinks about events. It is the reputation of Harry and Meghan that is further damaged by this grisly saga.

Questions are being asked of the Prince and Princess of Wales and indeed of the King after the Dutch version of a sensationalist book named two royals supposedly implicated in claims over racist remarks about Meghan’s pregnancy. The problem is that many observers will have doubts about claims that emerge from people close to Meghan.

The Duchess of Sussex (a title she has generously been allowed to keep after opting for a self-centred life in California) was greeted in Britain with an outpouring of warmth when Prince Harry asked her to be his bride. She was indeed treated almost as a saviour of the staid House of Windsor, as Kate Middleton had been. Adoring crowds came on the streets to see the 2018 wedding of the Sussexes.

But Meghan would later claim she was not made welcome by the royals, while others said she was in fact a bully. Harry and Meghan have since quit royal life and traded handsomely on their royal fame but disgraced themselves with a barrage of devastating claims against a family that, through tradition, cannot defend itself. They have written or acquiesced in books that attack those royals they abandoned.

King Charles has devoted himself to a lifetime of service to his nation. He has been an explicit champion of the huge range of nationalities and cultures that form the Commonwealth.

As the wave of concern and affection that the King received on the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, demonstrated, and the huge interest in and support for the coronation likewise, his selflessness and sense of duty is admired around the world.