MARKLE’S sparkle is fading fast.
Just 42 months after the world rejoiced as the Duchess of Sussex walked out of Windsor Castle’s chapel into the sunlight as a member of the Royal Family, the American actress has now had to apologise for misleading the British High Court.
The crash of Meghan’s credibility has been dramatic. Her integrity hangs on a thin thread. There will be many in Britain, not least among the Royal Family, who will smile with relief that the woman who hit them with accusations during the Oprah Winfrey interview is getting a taste of her own medicine.
Not least of her many false accusations on Oprah was her claim no one in Buckingham Palace was “willing to protect me” and they forced her to be “silent”.
To me, much of the evidence now suggests Palace officials worked overtime to advise and protect her.
The saga of Meghan’s risk of heading towards a downfall has some way to run, but this week saw the first cracks in the walls of secrecy she built over the past five years to conceal her true nature.
If her case finally comes to trial in the High Court, Meghan will testify against her father and up to four former Palace officials. She would make sure the Royal Family is in her firing line. Catastrophic harm would be inflicted upon those she deeply resents: Charles, William and Kate.
The drama, probably best described as a tragedy, started on her wedding day. Stricken by a heart attack, her father Thomas could not fly from Mexico to walk her down the aisle. Thereafter, Meghan refused to speak to him again.
Hurtful and unloving
Overnight, their lifelong bonds were broken. All his calls and texts were ignored. Letters went unanswered. Isolated in Mexico, the doting father became outraged by Meghan’s excommunication. So, he gave a series of TV and newspaper interviews to demand Meghan talk to him, and criticised the Royal Family for failing to support his daughter.
The Royal Family were aghast. According to Meghan, a senior member of the Royal Family “berated” Harry. “Can’t she just go and see him and make this stop?”.
Harry, as Meghan wrote in a series of bombshell emails and texts which were released last Friday, was struggling because “the Royal Family fundamentally don’t understand” even after she and Harry tried “endlessly explaining the situation to them”.
As may become clear in the months ahead, the Sussexes’ “explanations” to Charles about Thomas Markle’s behaviour were likely to be inaccurate. A crisis was unfolding. In Meghan’s words, her relationship with the Royal Family was breaking down.
Read our Meghan and Harry live blog for the latest updates
Three months after the wedding, Meghan made an extraordinary decision. Instead of calling her father or flying to Los Angeles to meet him, she sent him a handwritten five-page letter.
Her motive, she texted to Jason Knauf, her 35-year-old communications spokesman, “is seeing how much pain this is causing H.” She couldn’t fly, she bizarrely claimed, because she could not have discreetly advised him of her arrival.
To write the letter, Meghan sought the help of Knauf. In messages to him, she admitted she wrote her letter in anticipation it could be leaked.
In Thomas Markle’s opinion, the letter was hurtful and unloving. Meghan accused him of inventing his sickness, being paranoid, fabricating stories, attacking Harry and continually lying. She urged him to stop speaking to the media. Although shocked by her allegedly false allegations and showing no concern for his health, Thomas Markle never showed the letter to anyone.
Everything changed when the sentiments of Meghan’s letter were quoted in February 2019 by an explosive article in America’s People magazine, headlined “The Truth About Meghan”. Outraged, Thomas Markle claimed the article was not the truth and defamed him. He allowed parts of Meghan’s letter to be republished by The Mail on Sunday.
Meghan went to war. She sued the newspaper for breaching her privacy and copyright. On the surface, it seemed a slam-dunk case for her to win. Denying she knew People would republish parts of her letter, she demanded huge damages. The newspaper replied that she wrote the “private” letter with the public in mind.
But then, in August 2019, Finding Freedom, a remarkably flattering portrait of the couple’s struggles against the Royal Family, was published. Omid Scobie, the lead author, initially claimed to have received help from Meghan and her friends. The book quoted parts of Meghan’s letter to her father. That raised a problem for Meghan: How could she claim that the newspaper had breached her privacy and copyright and at the same time allow Scobie to publish the letter?
And then, Meghan signed a statement denying either she or Harry had spoken to Scobie or given authority to anyone to speak to the authors on their behalf. She described The Mail’s allegations that she had helped Scobie as “false”, “fantastical” and “a conspiracy theory”.
Both statements were exposed last week as innacurate in the High Court. Knauf produced texts and emails where Meghan sent a two-page brief detailing what he should tell Scobie in a two-hour meeting.
“The book”, said Knauf, “was discussed directly with the duchess multiple times in person and over email.” He also provided an email from Harry asking: “Are you planning on giving them a rough idea of what she’s been going through over the last two years?”
Harry even agreed that Knauf ought to lie: “We have to be able to say we didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Last week, in apologising to the court, Meghan explained that when she signed the statement she had “not remembered” her emails with Knauf. She added that she had “absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the defendant or the court”.
The backwash of Meghan’s climb-down is just the appetiser to what would be an astonishing trial. She could still be saved if the Court of Appeal, despite her misleading the first trial judge, refuses to order a new trial. That decision would cause uproar. A well-established truism of British justice is that litigants must “come to court with clean hands”.
Whatever happens now, Meghan’s reputation in Britain is in freefall. But last week, in New York, her sparkle was as high as ever. Just as her self-damning confession was released, the former actress and Harry glided across the red carpet to wow as international celebrities.
Dressed in a stunning red gown, the “scarlet lady” smiled and told her many fans nothing has changed — she’s still in business. In her mind, whatever happens in London is irrelevant to her glittering future.
