Meghan Markle’s 20 jaw-dropping claims about royal life before dramatic return

Meghan Markle is preparing for a shocking return to Britain, more than six years after she and Prince Harry walked away from royal life and began a new chapter thousands of miles away in California. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are expected to return with Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet later this month, with their children reportedly set to begin school in the UK when the new academic year starts in September.

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It is a significant change for a couple who have spent years publicly detailing their grievances about their experience within the Royal Family and life under the intense spotlight that came with it. Since stepping back as working royals in 2020, Meghan, in particular, has made a string of extraordinary claims and revelations about her time in Britain, spanning explosive allegations about the institution to deeply personal accounts of how royal life affected her.

There was the bombshell Oprah interview, followed by the Sussexes’ Netflix documentary, magazine interviews and Meghan’s own podcast appearances, each offering further insight into why their royal chapter unravelled so spectacularly.

Now, after years of keeping Britain at arm’s length, the Sussexes are apparently heading back. Harry, 41, and Meghan are reportedly planning an extended stay rather than a return to official royal duties, meaning there will be no dusting off the Palace balcony spot just yet.

Archie and Lilibet’s school has not been publicly identified and is expected to remain private, while the family are understood to be looking beyond London for their new British base rather than moving back into a royal residence.

But before the suitcases are unpacked and Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, walk through those British school gates, it is worth dusting off the rather colourful catalogue of controversies Meghan has left in her wake.

Here are the Duchess’s controversial and, in some cases, downright ridiculous claims from the years since her royal fairytale spectacularly unravelled.

Perhaps the most explosive moment of Meghan and Prince Harry’s 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey came when the Duchess claimed conversations had taken place within the Royal Family about their unborn son’s skin colour. Meghan said there had been “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born”, but declined to identify the person involved. Harry later disputed the suggestion that the couple themselves had accused the Royal Family of racism, telling ITV in 2023 that the British press had made that interpretation and describing the issue as “unconscious bias”.

During the same interview, Meghan discussed conversations surrounding Archie not becoming a prince alongside her claims about his skin colour and security. However, when Archie was born in 2019, he was a great-grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II and was not automatically entitled to be a prince under King George V’s 1917 Letters Patent. Prince William’s children were different because the Queen had issued new Letters Patent in 2012 extending princely titles to all children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, meaning George, Charlotte and Louis were entitled to be princes and princess from birth. Archie became entitled to use the title Prince following Charles’s accession to the throne in September 2022.

Meghan said her biggest concern over Archie’s title was his security. The Duchess told Oprah that her concern was not the grandeur of her son becoming a prince but what she believed it would mean for his protection. She discussed being told Archie would not receive security while conversations were taking place about whether he would receive a title. However, being a prince or princess does not in itself automatically entitle a member of the Royal Family to taxpayer-funded police protection.

One of Meghan’s most extraordinary remarks about the British media came during her 2022 interview with The Cut. Discussing the Royal Rota system and the expectation that photographs of her children could be distributed to British publications, Meghan questioned why she should provide pictures to people she said were “calling my children the N-word”. It was an exceptionally serious characterisation of the press environment she believed her family had faced in Britain.

Meghan claimed she was “silenced” after joining the Royal Family. The Duchess painted a deeply restrictive picture of life inside the monarchy during her interview with Oprah. She was asked directly whether she had been silent or silenced; the Duchess answered: “The latter.” She argued that, despite having been outspoken, particularly on women’s rights, she found herself unable to publicly respond to what was being said about her after marrying Harry.

Meghan accused “The Firm” of playing a role in “perpetuating falsehoods” about the Sussexes. During her explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Duchess suggested the institution had played an active part in allowing damaging claims about her and Harry to continue. Meghan said: “I don’t know how they could expect that after all of this time, we would still just be silent if there is an active role that The Firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us.” The remark.”

In the same interview the Duchess claimed that after joining the Royal Family, those personal items were handed over and that she did not see them again until she and Harry left. Meghan used the experience as an example of just how dramatically her independence had changed after becoming a working royal. She said: “When I joined that family, that was the last time, until we came here, that I saw my passport, my driver’s licence, my keys.”

Meghan claimed she could not simply leave or live normally. The Duchess described losing much of the independence she had enjoyed before marrying Harry and said there were periods when she barely left the house. She claimed she was once told not to go out because she was “everywhere” in the media, despite arguing that she had actually been largely confined at home. The account formed part of Meghan’s wider portrayal of royal life as an increasingly restrictive existence.

Meghan said she was prevented from seeking professional help. In one of the most serious disclosures from the Oprah interview, the 45-year-old revealed that her mental health had deteriorated to the point where she “didn’t want to be alive anymore”. She claimed she approached a senior figure within the institution about seeking professional treatment but was told it would not be good for the institution. Meghan also said she approached the Palace’s human resources department but was told they could not help because she was not a paid employee.

Meghan claimed she was not properly prepared for life inside the monarchy. Speaking in the Sussexes’ Netflix documentary, the Duchess rejected the idea that there had been extensive behind-the-scenes coaching to prepare her for becoming a working royal. She joked that there was no Princess Diaries-style class teaching her everything she needed to know and claimed she was largely left to figure things out herself. Meghan even said she learned the British national anthem by searching for it online, explaining: “I Googled it and I’d sit there and I’d practise and practise.”

Meghan said she wasn’t taught how to curtsy, wave or dress for royal engagements. Reflecting on her introduction to life as a working royal in the Sussexes’ Netflix documentary, Meghan described the experience as a “baptism by fire”. She said there was no extensive training behind the scenes and recalled having to quickly learn everything from how to wave to how to behave at engagements. Meghan also described Harry helping her put together appropriate outfits shortly before appearances as she attempted to navigate the expectations of her new role.

Meghan revealed her surprise at having to curtsy to Queen Elizabeth II in private. In the Netflix documentary, the Duchess recalled believing that curtsying was largely part of the public “fanfare” surrounding the monarchy before discovering that royal protocol continued privately. Recalling being asked whether she knew how to curtsy before meeting the late Queen, Meghan compared the experience to Medieval Times, the American dinner-and-tournament attraction. She then performed an exaggerated curtsy while recounting the encounter, a moment from the documentary which subsequently attracted considerable criticism.

Meghan claimed royal formality continued even behind closed doors. The Duchess recalled meeting Prince William and Princess Catherine while she was barefoot and wearing ripped jeans, explaining that she had been a “hugger” and had not initially realised that this could be “jarring” for some Britons. Meghan suggested she had expected the formality associated with the royals’ public appearances to disappear in private. Instead, she said she quickly discovered that the formality and stiff upper lip displayed “on the outside, carried through on the inside”.

Meghan claimed royal hierarchy influenced the colours she was able to wear. Discussing her predominantly neutral wardrobe during her time as a working royal, Meghan said there had been “thought” behind her preference for camel, beige and white. She said her understanding was that she could not wear the same colour as the late Queen at a group event and should also avoid matching more senior members of the family. Meghan said she therefore wore muted shades in an attempt to “blend in” and insisted: “I’m not trying to stand out here.”

Meghan insisted it was Princess Catherine who made her cry before the royal wedding - not the other way around. The Duchess used her Oprah interview to challenge reports that she had reduced Catherine, 44, to tears during a disagreement in the run-up to her 2018 wedding to Harry. Meghan said: “The reverse happened”, describing the episode as a significant turning point in her relationship with the media and institution. However, she also stressed that Catherine had subsequently apologised, brought her flowers and taken responsibility for what happened.

The Duchess sparked a royal frenzy when she claimed she and Prince Harry had actually “got married” three days before their spectacular Windsor wedding. Speaking to Oprah, the Duchess said: “Three days before our wedding, we got married”, explaining that the couple had privately exchanged vows with the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, Justin Welby later confirmed that their legal marriage took place at St George’s Chapel on May 19, 2018, saying he would have committed a serious criminal offence had he signed a false marriage certificate. A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan subsequently clarified that the couple had “privately exchanged personal vows” three days before their official wedding.

Back in 2021, the Duchess claimed she knew relatively little about the Royal Family before her relationship with Harry and entered royal life “naively”. She told Oprah the Duchess said she had not grown up following the monarchy closely and insisted she had never researched her future husband online, explaining that she instead relied on what Harry chose to tell her about himself. Meghan said she had not fully understood what becoming part of the institution would entail, adding that she had never researched what the role would actually mean for her day-to-day life. However, her pre-Harry lifestyle blog, The Tig, showed she was certainly not completely unfamiliar with the royals, having previously written about the fascination surrounding royal weddings and discussed the 2011 marriage of Prince William and Catherine. In the post, she referred to her future sister-in-law as “Princess Kate” while reflecting on women growing up with fantasies of becoming princesses. That does not prove Meghan had researched Harry personally, but it does add an interesting wrinkle to the suggestion that the world of British royalty was entirely foreign to her before she met the Duke.

The former Suits actress compared her experience of joining the Royal Family to Ariel in The Little Mermaid, losing her voice after falling in love with a prince. The Duchess told Oprah that she had watched the Disney film while in Britain and had suddenly identified with its central character. “She falls in love with the prince, and because of that, she loses her voice,” Meghan said, before adding: “But in the end, she gets her voice back.” The comparison became one of the most memorable ways Meghan characterised her experience inside the monarchy and her belief that she had lost the freedom to speak for herself.

Meghan recalled being told that her royal wedding sparked celebrations comparable to those following Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. In her 2022 interview with The Cut, the Duchess said a South African cast member from The Lion King told her that people in the country had “rejoiced in the streets” when she married Harry, just as they had when Mandela was freed. The account subsequently attracted scrutiny after South African actor John Kani, the only South African member of the film’s main cast, said he had never met Meghan and was not at the London premiere where she said the conversation occurred. However, composer Lebo M later said he had briefly met Meghan at the premiere but could not remember discussing Mandela with her, leaving unclear who Meghan was referring to.

Meghan suggested she could never comfortably send her children to school in Britain because of the press attention they would face. During her 2022 interview with The Cut, the Duchess discussed the difference between collecting Archie from preschool in California and what she believed the equivalent experience would be like in the UK. The article reported Meghan believed she would “never be able to do school pickup and drop-off without it being a royal photo call with a press pen of 40 people snapping pictures”. Defending her concerns, Meghan said: “Sorry, I have a problem with that. That doesn’t make me obsessed with privacy. That makes me a strong and good parent protecting my child.” The remarks are particularly striking now, with Archie and Lilibet reportedly set to enrol at a British school as part of the Sussexes’ UK return.