Finding Freedom, the new book about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex serialised this weekend in The Times and Sunday Times, lays bare the bitterness and the infighting that Harry and Meghan feel drove them to quit the royal family.
For the first time the full inside story is revealed about their battles with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the senior courtiers from other households – the so-called “men in grey suits”.
• Harry felt “unprotected” by his family and disparaged within palace walls for being “too sensitive and outspoken”.
• He believed that some of the old guard “simply didn’t like Meghan and would stop at nothing to make her life difficult”.
• Senior courtiers in other households felt that the global popularity of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex “needed to be reined in”.
• The royal “establishment” feared that the popularity of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex “might eclipse that of the royal family itself”.
• The relationship between the Sussexes and the Cambridges reached such levels of frostiness that at their final engagement in March, the Commonwealth service at Westminster Abbey, the two couples barely spoke even though they had not seen each other since January. “Although Meghan tried to make eye contact with Kate, the duchess barely acknowledged her,” the authors write.
• Meghan says: “I gave up my entire life for this family.”
• Harry and Meghan felt there were few people in the other palaces they could trust not to leak stories to the media.
• A friend of the couple’s referred to the old guard as ‘the vipers’, while a member of staff from another royal household described the Sussexes’ team as ‘the squeaky third wheel’ of the palace.
• Meghan said tabloid criticism was like “death by a thousand cuts”.
• The couple considered springing a surprise visit on the Queen when they were blocked from seeing her after their Canada trip.
• Harry and Meghan’s decision to keep the royal family in the dark about key moves “created a lot of ill will”.
• The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were upset that private family matters were made public. “It’s not anger,” said a source. “It’s hurt.”
Source: The Times
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