Queen Elizabeth II ‘saddened’ by Harry and Meghan’s descriptions of rejection, racism; family will address it privately, palace says

By William Booth,

Frank Augstein AP

LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II issued a personal statement Tuesday saying “the whole family was saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan” after the couple gave an explosive interview to Oprah Winfrey charging racism and rejection by the monarchy.

In remarkable admission, the queen said, “the issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning.” But the queen also suggested the royal family did not fully support the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s assertion of how they were treated or what was said. “While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately,” she said.

She closed, however, by saying, “Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members.”

Her majesty’s subjects — and a global TV audience — were gobsmacked by revelations from Prince Harry and Meghan that their own family asked questions about their unborn son’s skin color and that “the Firm,” as insiders call the institution, rebuffed her pleas for help when she felt suicidal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/entertainment/top-moments-from-prince-harry-and-meghans-interview-with-oprah-winfrey/2021/03/07/9d08a802-b1b5-4883-b5a4-e4d73a74c8e3_video.html

Royal correspondents reported earlier that the palace held “crisis meetings” after the airing of Oprah Winfrey’s two-hour interview with the California couple on Sunday in the United States and Monday in Britain.

On Tuesday, the Telegraph reported “palace officials have prepared a statement” but Queen Elizabeth II — Harry’s grandmother — had not signed off, as she wanted more time to consider it. BBC royal correspondent Daniela Relph said Buckingham Palace “will not want to feel rushed into saying something.”

[Meghan-critic Piers Morgan storms off set after being criticized for his attacks on royal couple]”

Before the Tuesday evening statement by the queen, Diane Abbott, the longest serving Black member of parliament and a leader of the Labour Party, said the palace needed to respond. On the BBC, Abbott wondered if the royal family “learned anything over the last 25 years since what happened to Princess Diana left the monarchy. … It does not look as if they have.”

Diana, Harry’s mother, was killed in a car crash in a Paris tunnel in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi. In a precdent-smashing interview in 1995 with the BBC, which is filled with echoes that reverberate today, Diana confessed that after the birth of Prince William, she felt depressed, and became bulimic and self-harming. Diana said the palace considered her unstable and a threat to the monarchy, but, she said, “Every strong woman in history has had to walk down a similar path, and I think it’s the strength that causes the confusion and the fear.”

 Abbott told the Guardian newspaper: “For a lot of Black and mixed-race women, when they can look at what we’re now hearing, what’s happening to Meghan, they can realize: if this can happen to her and if it could be so crushing and humiliating to her, I can face up to how that sort of thing makes me feel.”

Activists for mental health expressed disappointment that public commentators have wondered aloud if Meghan was really as fragile as she claimed.

In the olden days — meaning before Haz and Meg, as they are nicknamed, took center stage — the palace was loath to comment on anything controversial. Its public relations strategy was hunkering down.

That attitude was on display earlier on Tuesday, when Harry’s father Prince Charles made his first public appearance since the Winfrey interview, when he visited — accompanied by press — a vaccine “pop-up clinic” at the Jesus House church in north London.

[Harry and Meghan: A timeline in images]

The heir to the throne jokedwith those getting their covid-19 jabs, but when a reporter from Sky News “asked the royal what he thought about the interview … he did not reply and was ushered out of the building.”

In another act of artful dodging, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was asked Monday what he thought of Harry and Meghan’s charges against the House of Windsor and he replied he had “always had the highest admiration for the queen and the unifying role she plays.”

But Buckingham Palace — and even the queen — have been more directly responsive recently.

After Harry and Meghan announced in January 2020 their plan to “step back” from their jobs as “senior working royals” and make new, financially independent lives abroad, the queen wished them well.

“I recognize the challenges they have experienced as a result of intense scrutiny over the last two years and support their wish for a more independent life,” Elizabeth said, giving them Her Royal Highness stamp of approval on the split.

In the wake of her son Prince Andrew’s scandalous friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and allegations by a woman who said she was groomed by Epstein to have sex with the prince, Buckingham Palace has released a number of statements denying that Andrew did anything wrong.

Then it acknowledged he was stepping down from a public role. And then Andrew basically disappeared from public view.

Last week, Buckingham Palace announced that its human resources department would investigate accusations by former employees that Meghan bullied her staff.

Buckingham Palace stated that “we are clearly very concerned about allegations” in an article in the Times of London — that Meghan drove young female staffers “to the point of tears,” pushed two personal assistants “out of the household” and undermined confidence in a third.

The news of a 2018 complaint over bullying by Meghan was seen by many as a preemptive strike by palace staff to undercut the royal couple’s complaints of shabby treatment by the palace.

And so the question just hangs there: if the queen would sign off on an investigation into Meghan’s alleged bullying, why wouldn’t the monarch press for an inquiry into whether palace courtiers failed to help provide mental health protection for Meghan, who told Winfrey that life in the gilded bubble felt “unsurvivable” and she considered suicide as the best way out.

A YouGov opinion poll of 4,656 people conducted after the Winfrey interview was aired Monday night in Britain found the public divided, 32 percent versus 32 percent over whether Harry and Meghan were treated fairly or unfairly by the royal family. The remaining 36 percent said they did not know.

william.booth@washpost.com