The royal households have been directly accused of deliberately planting negative stories about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to deflect attention from less favourable coverage of other royals as part of what a lawyer calls “a war against Meghan”.
In the latest trailer for the Sussexes’ controversial Netflix documentary, the duchess’s lawyer, Jenny Afia, claims to have seen evidence of briefing from the palace against the couple.
Meghan appears in the teaser, before the release of the final three episodes on Thursday, saying: “You would just see it play out, like a story about someone in the family would pop up for a minute, and they’d go, ‘We’ve got to make that go away’.
“But there’s real estate on a website homepage, there is real estate there on a newspaper front cover, and something has to be filled in there about someone royal,” she said.
Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace declined to comment.
As footage of Buckingham Palace is shown, Afia, of Schillings, says: “There was a real kind of war against Meghan and I’ve certainly seen evidence that there was negative briefing from the palace against Harry and Meghan to suit other people’s agendas.”
The duchess’s friend Lucy Fraser adds: “Meg became this scapegoat for the palace. And so they would feed stories on her whether they were true or not to avoid other less favourable stories being printed.”
Afia says: “This barrage of negative articles about the breakdown of the relationship with her father was the final straw in a campaign of negative, nasty coverage about her.”
Volume II of Harry & Meghan, comprising the final three episodes of the docuseries, will stream on Netflix on Thursday.
As Meghan spoke, footage was played of newspaper front pages with the headlines “Meghan made Kate cry” and “Heir heads” – about Kate and Meghan’s flower dress dispute and the Sussexes’ use of private planes – along with others saying “Meghan: I won’t parade with baby” and “Celeb BB royal ‘race’ row”.
In her Oprah Winfrey interview, Meghan said Kate, now the Princess of Wales, made her cry before her wedding at a flower girl dress fitting – not the other way round, as had been reported. She added that the false reports were a turning point, and “everyone in the institution knew that wasn’t true” but it was not corrected.
In a previous trailer, Harry makes the intriguing claim: “They were happy to lie to protect my brother,” before adding: “They were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”
The identity of the “they” to which Harry is referring in his claims about Prince William is not immediately clear, though speculation will be that his comments relate to senior members of the royal family and their aides.
Harry also says “to see this institutional gaslighting” as footage is shown of newspaper presses rolling. Meghan tells the camera: “I wasn’t being thrown to the wolves. I was being fed to the wolves.”
In the episodes broadcast last week, the couple accused the media of “destroying” them before they left the UK, and said the royal family failed to understand that Harry’s future bride required protection.
While Harry did accuse his family of unconscious racial bias, and failure to protect Meghan from racially charged reporting, the couple have so far focused on the early days of their relationship and directed their ire at the media.
Details of the drama within the royal family surrounding the couple’s departure from the UK are expected to be aired in Thursday’s episodes. In one clip, Meghan says on camera: “This is when a family and a family business are in direct conflict.”
