Last week, Meghan Markle launched the first episode of her new podcast, Archetypes, and it represented the beginning of her return to the spotlight. She also invited New York’s Allison P. Davis to the estate in Montecito where she lives with Prince Harry and their two children, Archie and Lili Mountbatten-Windsor. While the duchess revealed she is planning on making an eventual return to Instagram, she also opened up on her ongoing hard feelings about the way she was treated by the British tabloids. 

She told New York that she started her most recent Instagram account, the now-defunct @SussexRoyal, because she wanted to bypass the Royal Rota system, where certain members of the U.K. press have early access to photos and news events. “Why would I give the very people that are calling my children the N-word a photo of my child before I can share it with the people that love my child?” she asks, still ruffled. “You tell me how that makes sense and then I’ll play that game.”  

As the Daily Mirror’s royal editor Russell Myers pointed out on Twitter, it’s not entirely clear who Meghan is directing the “n-word” accusation at here. “If this is directed to the media,” he said. “It’s an incredible thing to suggest with, to my knowledge, no basis whatsoever.”

Some version of this complaint has been repeated by Meghan and Harry since they first announced their royal exit back in January 2020, specifically that they were frustrated that they needed to cooperate with outlets that they thought were spreading falsehoods about them. 

In the conversation with New York, Meghan blamed tabloid culture in the U.K. for distancing her from her estranged father, Thomas Markle, and added that Harry’s relationship with Prince Charles was also affected. “Harry said to me, ‘I lost my dad in this process.’ It doesn’t have to be the same for them as it was for me, but that’s his decision,” she said.

Meghan invited Davis to pick Archie up from school with her and gave her fruit and vegetables from the garden, along with some homemade jam. Meghan said that she never had to sign a non-disclosure agreement upon leaving the royal family and anything she hasn’t said comes from the fact that she’s “still healing.” 

Davis relays the next beat of the conversation:

Though it’s somewhat vague, it gives a bit more context to a series of reports that claim that the relationship between Meghan, Harry, and the rest of the royals is still difficult, despite their public appearance with royals during the Platinum Jubilee back in June.

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