Prince Harry says William ‘can’t leave the system’ but insists he will ‘always be there for him’

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Prince Harry said his father Prince Charles has ‘made peace’ with being in the ‘toxic environment’ of the royal family in another bombshell claim which has emerged from his and his wife Meghan Markle‘s interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Reigniting his war with the press, Harry said the Prince of Wales had come to accept the ‘control’ and ‘fear’ which he alleged members of the royal family are subjected to ‘by the UK tabloids’.

He claimed that while he had tried to help members of his family ‘see what has happened’, he was ‘very aware’ that his brother Prince William cannot ‘leave the system’.

The prince then added, ‘but I have’ – a reference to his and Meghan’s decision to move to California last year.

However, Harry insisted that he would ‘always be there’ for both his brother and his family.

Meghan also claimed in the clip that she was treated differently to Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge by the press, saying that ‘rude’ comments made about William’s wife did not compare to the ‘racist’ treatment she said  she received. 

It comes after Prince Harry claimed in a clip released earlier that racism drove him and Meghan out of Britain and the Queen was too busy to meet him. 

The Duke of Sussex accused the Queen of snubbing him after she was allegedly overruled by royal aides when she tried to invite him and Meghan on a trip to Sandringham after they announced they were stepping down.  

Harry said he received a message from the Queen saying he wanted them to visit ‘the moment you land’, but he later got a message from his private secretary at the time saying the trip had been cancelled. 

Harry said he then rang the Queen from Frogmore cottage and she said: ‘Yes, there’s something in my diary that I didn’t know that I had.’

The prince claimed the exchange showed that even the Queen could be overruled by aides, despite them giving her ‘very bad’ advice.   

Meghan also spoke about her family for the first time, claiming that she ‘didn’t have a relationship’ with her sister, Samantha, and that she only changed her surname to Markle after she married Harry. 

It came as Tory MPs today led the backlash against Prince Harry and Meghan’s ‘appalling’ accusations of racism against the Royal Family as they accused the couple of ‘detonating a nuclear weapon’ with the allegations. 

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson refused to comment on Meghan’s claims of racism in the Royal Family, saying it was a ‘matter for the palace’.  

In both broadcasts, Meghan and Harry steered clear of criticising the Queen or talking about the Markle family but revealed:

• Harry claimed racism was ‘a large part’ of why he and Meghan had decided to leave Britain; 
• Prince said Queen was ‘overruled’ by royal aides when she tried to organised a visit to Sandringham;  
• Oprah has since said it was not the Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh who made the racist comment about how dark their baby’s skin would be; 
• Meghan said she and Kate’s experiences dealing with the press were different, saying ‘rude and racist are not the same’;
• Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said the allegations made by the Duchess of Sussex in her television interview must be taken seriously – while PM declined to comment on slurs to queen;  
• In the main interview, couple revealed the gender of their baby – a girl due this summer;
• Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, made Meghan cry ahead of the royal wedding – but ‘owned it’ and apologised;
• Meghan described meeting the Queen for the first time and having to learn to curtsy from Fergie. Sussexes say they speak to Her Majesty regularly on Zoom and called last week when Philip became ill;
• Duchess claims she was ‘naive’ when she joined the Royal Family – and never researched what it would be like or anything about Harry. She said that she was initially welcomed by the royals, but was later ‘silenced’ and felt trapped. She said officials had ‘lied’ to protect other royals instead of them and took her ‘passport, my driving licence, my keys’;
• Meghan claims a member of Harry’s family was ‘worried’ about Archie’s skin colour when asked if he was ‘too brown’. Harry was asked about it and refused to say who it was; 
• Duchess described being cradled by Harry after feeling that she no longer wanted to live; Meghan claimed she begged for help from Palace but denied it because she wasn’t a ‘paid employee’; 
• Harry says his family failed to ‘support’ and ‘understand’ them and reveals Charles stopped speaking to him and ‘cut me off financially’, leaving him to use Diana’s inheritance;
• Couple show of the hens they rescued from a factory farm for ‘Archie’s Chick Inn’ as Meghan says they want to ‘live authentically’ in their LA mansion. Couple also shared unseen picture of Archie at the beach;
• Harry says he is ‘hurt’ but ‘completely respects’ Queen’s decision to strip couple of all their patronages, but says he has ‘no regrets’ about their decision saying: ‘I’m really proud of us’. 
• But Meghan said: ‘My regret is believing them when they said I’d be protected.’ 

In the new clip, Harry and Meghan were asked by Miss Winfrey if any members of the royal family had asked if they felt they had to move to the US because they were not receiving support from them. 

Harry replied: ‘No, sadly not. The feeling is that this was this was our decision therefore the consequences were on us. And despite three years of asking for help and visualising how this might end, it’s been really hard. 

‘Because I am part of the system with them, I always have been. I am very aware that my brother can’t leave that system, but I have.’

Asked if William wants to leave, Harry said: ‘I don’t know, I can’t speak for him. But with that relationship and that control and the fear by the UK tabloids, it’s a toxic environment. 

‘But I will always be there for him and I will always be there for my family. And as I’ve said, I’ve tried to help them to see what has happened.’

And when asked if Prince Charles agrees that it is a ‘toxic environment’, Harry added: ‘He’s had to make peace with it.’

Miss Winfrey then asked the pair why they hadn’t ‘made peace’ as the Prince of Wales had done. 

Meghan immediately interjected to say, ‘because this was different’ and claimed the presence of social media made the situation ‘like the wild west’.  

She said Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge’s previous experience of being called ‘waitey Katey’ before William proposed to her was ‘not the same’ as what she went through.  

‘Plus, my being American. It translated in a different way across the pond. So you had a noise level that was very different but if they can’t see that it’s different…

‘I think the volume of what was coming in and the interest was greater because of social media, because of the fact that I was not just British. 

‘And that unfortunately if members of his family say “well this is what’s happened to all of us”. 

‘If they can compare what the experience I went through was similar to what has been shared with us… Kate was called “waitey Katey” while waiting to marry William. 

‘While I imagine that was really hard and I do, I can’t picture what that felt like, this is not the same,’ she said.

Meghan went on to say that members of the royal family would ‘comfortably’ say ‘we’ve all had to deal with things that are rude’ but then added, ‘rude and racist are not the same’. 

Asked if it would make a difference if members of his family would make an ‘acknowledgement’ that treatment of Meghan was different because of her mixed-race heritage, Harry replied, ‘it would make a huge difference’.

He added: ‘As I said, there’s a lot of people that have seen it for what it was, a lot of people. It’s talked about across the world. Yet the very people that don’t want to see it or can’t see it, choose not to see it.’ 

US breakfast show CBS This Morning aired unseen footage from Oprah Winfrey’s bombshell interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex this morning. 

Among the new claims: 

‘Harry and Meghan ‘left UK because of racism’ 

Asked by Winfrey if the couple left the UK because of racism, Harry replied: ‘It was a large part of it.’

Recalling a conversation he had at a Sentebale fundraiser, he said he was urged by someone who is ‘friends with a lot of the editors’: ‘Please don’t do this with the media, they will destroy your life.’

However, he did not identify who the person was. 

Harry said: ‘One of the people at that dinner said to me, ”please don’t please don’t do this with the media. They will destroy your life. This person is friends with a lot of the editors. I said, so I just elaborate, what do you mean? 

‘He said ”you need to understand that the UK is very bigoted. I stopped and said, ”the UK is not bigoted, the press is bigoted, the tabloids. Is that what you mean?”

Harry claimed the person replied, ‘No, the UK is bigoted’. 

He continued: ‘I said I disagree. If the source of information is corrupt or racist or biased, then that filters out to the rest of society.’    

Harry and Meghan were ‘uninvited’ to Sandringham trip

In another exclusive clip, Harry said he had been suddenly told he was no longer invited to spend time with the Queen at Sandringham in January 2020.

Harry claimed the conversation with the Queen happened after he and Meghan announced on January 8 that they were going to step down as senior royals. 

He said: ‘My grandmother had said ‘the moment you land, come up to Sandringham, we’d love to have a chat, come for tea, why don’t you stay for dinner because it’s going to be a long drive and you’re going to be exhausted?”

He said ‘the moment we landed in the UK’ he got a message from his private secretary at the time, passing on a message from the Queen’s private secretary.

Explaining the terminology, Meghan said: ‘A private secretary is sort of like a CEO role in the institution.’

Harry continued: ‘The private secretary had cut and pasted a message from the queen’s secretary saying, ”please passes on to the duke and duchess of Sussex that he cannot come to Norfolk. The queen is busy, she’s busy all week”.’

Oprah asked: ‘After she just invited you?’

Harry continued: ‘Yeah… so I rang her, and that night I said I was thinking about coming, but I hear you’re busy. She said, ”Yes, there’s something in my diary that I didn’t know I had”. 

‘I said, ”Well, what about the rest of the week?’ She says, ‘That’s busy now, as well’. Okay. I didn’t want to push because I knew what was going on.’

Oprah asked: ‘Doesn’t the Queen get to do what the queen wants to do?’

The prince replied: ‘No, when you’re head of the firm, there is people around you that give you advice.

‘And what has made me sad is some of that advice has been really bad.’

Oprah concluded: ‘That was tough. It’s the type of thing when someone says, I’m busy, I’m busy all week, that’s a big sign.

‘When it’s your mother, your grandmother. That’s tough.’     

Harry and Meghan felt ‘unsupported’ by palace 

Winfrey asked if anyone in the family had said they were sorry the couple felt they had to make the move out of royal life because they felt unsupported.

Harry said: ‘No, sadly not. The feeling is that this was our decision, therefore the consequences are on us.’

He said it was ‘really hard because I am part of the system with them, I always have been’.

He added: ‘But I guess, and I am very aware of this, that my brother can’t leave that system but I have.’

Asked if William wanted to leave the system, he replied: ‘I don’t know, I can’t speak for him.’

Philip ‘was not the royal who had concerns over Archie’s skin tone’  

Oprah revealed on Monday morning that behind the scenes, Prince Harry told her it was neither The Queen nor Prince Philip who had concerns over Archie’s skin color before he was born, but he would not reveal the identity of who it did.

Harry and Meghan revealed on Sunday night in their bombshell interview with Oprah that there was a ‘conversation’, before Archie’s birth, about his skin and how ‘dark’ it would be.

It was a stunning claim that prompted Oprah and the millions watching to ask who it was who had said it.

Harry refused to reveal that person’s identity on Sunday night as did Meghan. They said they wanted to protect whoever it was.

On Monday morning, Oprah said on CBS This Morning that when the cameras were down, Harry made it clear to her it was neither of ‘his grandparents.’

‘He did not share the identity with me but he wanted to make sure that I knew and if I had an opportunity to share it, that it was not his grandmother nor his grandfather that were a part of those conversations.

‘Neither his grandmother nor grandfather were a part of those conversations. He did not tell me who were a part of those conversations, as you can see I tried to get that answer. On camera and off. ‘ 

Today, Tory MPs led the backlash against Prince Harry and Meghan’s ‘appalling’ accusations of racism against the Royal Family as they accused the couple of ‘detonating a nuclear weapon’ with the allegations. 

The Duchess of Sussex said ‘concerns’ were raised about ‘how dark’ Archie’s skin would be before he was born because she is mixed-race and Harry is white, but refused to say who made the alleged comments. 

One Tory MP, who did not want to be named, suggested that the couple appeared to be ‘telling the Royal Family I’ve got this nuclear weapon and I’m going to detonate it’.

Conservative MP Andrea Jenkins tweeted: ‘Today’s Commonwealth Day gives us all another reminder of Her Majesty’s long life of service and duty, continuing to work for us all despite her husband being in hospital. Britain stands with our Queen.’

Meanwhile, Fellow MP Michael Fabricant said: ‘Every family is dysfunctional one way or another. The holder of every high position will have personal little secrets they want hidden. We are all human. Only HM Queen seems to float selflessly above it all.’

In the first interview last night, The Duchess of Sussex told Oprah she ‘couldn’t be left alone’ and told her husband she ‘didn’t want to be alive anymore’ before claiming the Buckingham Palace HR department ignored her plea for help because she wasn’t a ‘paid employee’.      

In the first broadcast, the Duchess of Sussex said ‘concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born’ happened ‘in those months when [I] was pregnant’ with Archie. 

However, when Prince Harry was asked about the exchange later he appeared to suggest he heard the alleged slur from a royal figure earlier, before he and Meghan got married. 

He said: ‘That was right at the beginning, when she wasn’t going to get security, when members of my family were suggesting that she carries on acting, because there was not enough money to pay for her, and all this sort of stuff. 

‘Like, there was some real obvious signs before we even got married that this was going to be really hard.’

Meanwhile, Meghan told Oprah she ‘couldn’t be left alone’ and told her husband she ‘didn’t want to be alive anymore’ before claiming the Buckingham Palace HR department ignored her plea for help because she wasn’t a ‘paid employee’.

Describing how she considered ending her life believing it ‘was better for everyone’, Meghan said: ‘I knew that if I didn’t say it, that I would do it. I just didn’t want to be alive anymore. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. I remember how he just cradled me. I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help. I said that ‘I’ve never felt this way before, and I need to go somewhere’. And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution’. 

She said that after confiding in her husband, she was forced to go to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event in January 2019, claiming photos from that night ‘haunt me’. She told Oprah she later reached out to one of the best friends of Diana, Princess of Wales, because she felt unsupported by the palace. 

She said: ‘When I joined that family, that was the last time I saw my passport, my driving licence, my keys – all of that gets turned over’. Meghan said Harry had ‘saved my life’ by agreeing to move to Los Angeles. 

Meghan also sensationally claimed that a relative of Harry asked him ‘how dark’ their unborn child would be with the Duchess claiming Archie being mixed-race was a ‘problem’ for the royals after Oprah asked her if they were worried their son would be ‘too brown’. 

The former Suits star said she would not name the person because it would be ‘too damaging’ for them. But she confirmed that the duke was asked the question – ‘how dark his skin might be when he’s born’ – ‘by family’. She then said Archie may have been denied the title of prince because he is mixed-race, but has never been told. Harry was also asked to identify the culprit but said he didn’t feel ‘comfortable’ discussing it. 

In the most extraordinary royal interview since Diana spoke to the BBC’s Martin Bashir in 1995, Meghan said her sister-in-law Kate made her cry in a row over dresses for the flowergirls, including Princess Charlotte, before her Windsor wedding. She said: ‘She (Kate) was upset about something, but she owned it, and she apologised. And she brought me flowers’.

Harry also laid into his own family, claiming their ‘lack of support and understanding’, the couple’s mental health problems and fears ‘history repeating itself’ with Meghan like his mother Diana, who died in 1997.

Harry also said he felt ‘very let down’ by his father Prince Charles, accusing him of refusing to take his calls and and then ‘cut him off’ financially when they emigrated. 

He said: ‘My father and brother. They’re both trapped’ and added that his mother Diana would be ‘angry and sad’ that he felt he had to leave the royal family, but ‘she saw it coming’. Harry said: ‘All she’d ever want for us is to be happy’, adding that his wife had ‘saved me’, declaring: ‘I myself was trapped, as well. I didn’t see a way out’.   

The prince said he had to sign multi-million dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify because he was spending his inheritance from Princess Diana and claimed the palace suggested that Meghan should go back into acting to pay the bills. 

Asked about his relationship with Prince Charles, Harry said they were now speaking again, adding: ‘There’s a lot to work through there, you know? I feel really let down, because he’s been through something similar. He knows what pain feels like, and Archie’s his grandson. I will always love him, but there’s a lot of hurt that’s happened. And I will continue to make it one of my priorities to try and heal that relationship’.  When asked about if he remains close to William he replied: ‘I love William to bits. He’s my brother. We’ve been through hell together. I mean, we have a shared experience. But we’re on different paths’.    

Meghan claimed she had been completely ‘naive’ about what royal life was like, claiming she didn’t know about needing to curtsy for the Queen and being taught by Fergie minutes before meeting Her Majesty for the first time in 2017. The Duke and Duchess said they speak to her regularly on Zoom – but hinted at little contact with the other royals. 

The Sussexes also revealed they were already planning ‘Megxit’ just six months after they married in May 2018 and Meghan compared life in Kensington Palace to lockdown in the Covid world today because she was ‘banned’ from going to lunch with friends. But said their new life was a ‘happy ending’ for after a journey ‘greater than any fairytale you’ve ever read. 

The Duchess was greeted by Oprah as a friend when the show began and admired her growing baby bump, before the host said that while they knew each other none of the questions had been shared in advance.

The Duchess of Sussex sat alone as she claimed she entered the Royal Family ‘naively’ and didn’t do any research about her husband or the institution before entering it.  

Describing meeting the Queen for the first time at Windsor and that she was shocked when she was told by Harry would need to curtsy to Her Majesty, and was taught by her husband’s aunt Fergie.

Describing her initial experiences of becoming part of the royal family, Meghan said: ‘I will say I went into it naively, because I didn’t grow up knowing much about the royal family.

‘It wasn’t something that was part of conversation at home, it wasn’t something that we followed.’

Meghan said she did not research Harry or the family beforehand, and had little expectation of what becoming a working royal would involve.

She said: ‘I didn’t fully understand what the job was, what does it mean to be a working royal, what do you do?

‘I didn’t romanticise any element of it, but I think as Americans especially – what you know about the royals is what you read in fairy tales.

‘It’s easy to have an image of it that’s so far from reality and that’s what was really tricky over those past few years, when the perception and reality are different things and you’re being judged on the perception but you are living the reality of it, there’s a complete misalignment and there’s no way to explain that to people.’   

A tearful duchess also told interviewer Oprah Winfrey that the stress of her role became so bad that she felt suicidal as a result of the pressure she was under. I didn’t want to be alive any more -this was a very real and frightening constant thought,’ she said.

She said she didn’t want to tell Harry at first because of the loss he had suffered as a result of his mother’s death, but she did and he ‘cradled me’.

Meghan said she begged a senior member of the royal to assist her get help for mental health issue but she was left to suffer alone.

Meghan then denied making Kate cry before her wedding in 2018 – and said the opposite had happened. Oprah asked the Duchess: ‘Was there a situation where she (Kate) might have cried? Or she could have cried?’

But the Duchess of Sussex replied: ‘No, no. The reverse happened. And I don’t say that to be disparaging to anyone, because it was a really hard week of the wedding. And she was upset about something, but she owned it, and she apologised.

‘And she brought me flowers and a note, apologising. And she did what I would do if I knew that I hurt someone, right, to just take accountability for it.’ Meghan added that it was ‘shocking’ that the ‘reverse of that would be out in the world’.

She continued: ‘A few days before the wedding, she was upset about something pertaining – yes, the issue was correct – about flower girl dresses, and it made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings.

‘And I thought, in the context of everything else that was going on in those days leading to the wedding, that it didn’t make sense to not be just doing whatever– what everyone else was doing, which was trying to be supportive, knowing what was going on with my dad and whatnot.’

Meghan also said: ‘It wasn’t a confrontation, and I actually think it’s… I don’t think it’s fair to her to get into the details of that, because she apologised.

‘What was hard to get over was being blamed for something that not only I didn’t do but that happened to me. And the people who were part of our wedding were going to our comms team and saying: ‘I know this didn’t happen. I don’t have to tell them what actually happened’.’  

But the Duchess of Sussex also insisted that she has now forgiven Kate Middleton and said she bought her flowers to apologise about the incident. 

It then got even more uncomfortable for the royals when Meghan Markle accused the Royal Family of having ‘concerns’ about ‘how dark’ Archie’s skin would be before he was born because she is mixed-race and Harry is white. 

The Duchess of Sussex also described her ‘pain’ that officials had denied Archie the title of prince and accused Buckingham Palace of failing to protect him by denying him 24/7 security.

Meghan refused to say which royal had the conversation with Harry about Archie’s skin colour, claiming it would be ‘damaging’ to the person in her husband’s family who raised it.

She told Miss Winfrey that it was ‘a pretty safe’ assumption to suggest that the royal family member was ‘concerned’ that Archie being ‘too brown’ was ‘a problem’.

When asked if it was ‘important’ for Meghan that Archie be called a prince, she said she doesn’t have any attachment to the ‘grandeur’ of official titles.

But she said it was about ‘the idea of our son not being safe, and also the idea of the first member of colour in this family not being titled in the same way that other grandchildren would be.’ Prince Harry described the conversation as ‘awkward’, saying it left him ‘shocked’. But he declined to reveal anything more about what was said, saying: ‘That conversation I’m never going to share.’  

After Meghan spoke to Oprah alone, she was joined by Harry where they celebrated on screen as they announced to millions watching they were having a baby daughter.

Harry then said the couple left because of the media in Britain and because of a ‘lack of support and lack of understanding’ from his family, and revealed that his father refused to speak to him after they left for Vancouver. And in a sign that his relationship with his brother William is strained, claiming he ‘didn’t have anyone to turn to’ and was ‘ashamed’ to admit his wife struggling.

He said: ‘I love William to bits. He’s my brother. We’ve been through hell together. I mean, we have a shared experience. But we’re on different paths’. Harry added: ‘My family literally cut me off financially. Members of my family were suggesting that she [Meghan] carries on acting, because there was not enough money to pay for her. There was some real obvious signs before we even got married that this was going to be really hard’.     

He also claimed that he was asked by his father, Prince Charles, to put his request in writing ‘before he stopped taking my calls’. 

Asked by Oprah Winfrey during their televised interview about why they left, Harry blamed a ‘lack of support and lack of understanding’.

The chat show queen said she wanted ‘clarity’ and asked Harry: ‘Was the move about getting away from the UK press…because the press is, you know, is everywhere, or was the move because you weren’t getting enough support from the firm?’

He replied: ‘It was both.’

Winfrey asked ‘did you blindside the Queen?’ with the announcement they were leaving the family, and Harry replied: ‘No, I would never blindside my grandmother, I have too much respect for her.’

Asked where that story came from, Harry said: ‘I hazard a guess that it probably could have come from within the institution.’

As Oprah wrapped up the interview the couple insisted that they had had a ‘happy ending’ by moving to LA, with Harry saying he had ‘no regrets’. But his wife added: ‘My regret is believing them [the Royal Family] when they said I’d be protected.’

Meghan then called their journey ‘greater than any fairytale you’ve ever read’ and said Harry had saved her life. Harry replied: ‘Without question, she [Meghan] saved me.’  

The Duchess of Sussex, who brokered the interview, has already accused ‘The Firm’ of ‘perpetuating falsehoods’ about her and Harry and said they refused to be ‘silenced’ any more.

The Sussexes have been branded ‘selfish’ and ‘disrespectful’ to go ahead with the shown when Harry’s 99-year-old grandfather Prince Philip is in hospital recovering from heart surgery. 

The interview, expected to be viewed by tens of millions of people in the US and millions more around the globe, is considered the most important piece of royal TV since Harry’s mother spoke to the BBC’s Martin Bashir in 1995 after she separated from Prince Charles. 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have today insisted that their Oprah interview would be the ‘last word’ on their rift with the Royal Family. 

The couple, who will have their second child later this year, said they felt they ‘needed to have their say’ but now want to ‘move on’.