Prince Harry has claimed Meghan Markle’s popularity “upset” other members of the Royal family.
The final three episodes of the couple’s docu-series ‘Harry & Meghan’ premiered on Netflix today, which featured more shocking claims about their time as senior working royals.
In episode four, Harry suggested members of his family resented Meghan’s popularity during the couple’s official tour of Australia and New Zealand in 2018.
The Duke and Duchess embarked on the tour shortly after they announced Meghan was pregnant with their first child.
In the documentary, Harry says: “The issue is when someone who is marrying in, who should be a supporting act, is then stealing the limelight, or doing the job better than the person who was born to do this, that upsets people. It shifts the balance.”
Over a montage featuring Kate Middleton and Harry’s father King Charles, he continues: “You’ve been led to believe that the only way your charities can succeed, and the only way that your reputation can be grown or improved, is if you are on the front pages of those newspapers. But the media are the one to choose who to put on the front page.”
The documentary also features commentary from Meghan’s friend Lucy Fraser, who says their Australia tour was a turning point because they were so popular with the public.
Lucy then claims “the internals at the palace” did not like it.
The episode opened with Meghan recalling the moment her private secretary, who previously worked for the Queen, once compared her to a “foreign organism” entering the Royal family.
Meghan said her secretary told her: “‘It is like a fish that is swimming perfectly. It is powerful, it is on the right current. Then one day this little organism comes in. This foreign organism. And the entire thing goes… What is that? What is it doing here? It doesn’t look like us. It doesn’t move like us. We don’t like it. Get it off of us.'”
“And she just explained that, you know, they’ll soon see, that it’s stronger, faster, even better with this organism as part of it,” Meghan continued.
“‘It will be hard at the beginning for them to adjust to this new thing but then it’ll be amazing.’ And I was really hopeful that that was true.”
The final three episodes of the series take fans behind the scenes of their 2018 wedding, their decision to quit life as senior working royals, and their move to find “freedom” in California.
They also make shocking claims that there is a conspiracy against them between Buckingham Palace and the British press to “scapegoat” them to ensure negative press about other Royals would “go away”.
Meghan’s lawyer Jenny Afia alleges in the series: “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.”
Meghan then says: “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.'”
Her friend Lucy Fraser added: “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.”
The Palace declined to comment on this in advance of the episodes airing.
