REBECCA ENGLISH: Meghan broke people I know

‘There’s their truth. And then there’s the truth,’ a royal insider once told me. And I’m not sure it’s the kind of ‘truth’ that Meghan Sussex (as she now prefers to be known) has alluded to in her latest publicity blitz.

In an interview with entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den judge Emma Grede yesterday – neatly timed to drop just three days before her new As Ever product launch – the Duchess of Sussex once again took a veiled swipe at the Royal Family.

‘If you could rewrite your public narrative from scratch, is there anything you would do differently?’ Grede, 42, asks cleverly on her podcast Aspire With Emma Grede.

Giving a look that can only be described as pointed, Meghan replies: ‘Yes. I would ask people to tell the truth.’

As if her point hadn’t been made firmly enough, Meghan goes on to refer to a mysterious ‘lie’ told eight years ago.

At the time – 2017 – she was dating Prince Harry before the couple announced their engagement in November of that year.

Grede, a founding partner of Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand Skims, replies: ‘You’re very measured about it… I would just get so angry if I felt like everyone was lying about me all the time.’

‘Peaks and valleys,’ replies Meghan graciously. ‘Of course, I’ve gone through those chapters and you do a lot of work, you do a lot of self work and go, ‘What’s the why?’ It’s happening for a reason.’

She added (naturally) that her ‘dear friend’, tennis champion Serena Williams, told her ‘a lie can’t live forever’, concluding: ‘Eight years is a long time, but not forever.’

There was no explanation of what that fib was or who may have said it, of course.

But British-born, Los Angeles-based businesswoman Grede instantly realised the power of the accusation.

In an Instagram post advertising the podcast episode to her 943,000 followers, she wrote in capitals: ‘I would ask people to tell the truth. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’.

The sly exchange is eerily reminiscent of the duchess’ infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021, in which she claimed that an unnamed royal had questioned the skin colour of her then-unborn son Archie.

She also suggested that he was treated differently from other royal grandchildren in terms of police protection and not having a title because he was mixed race.

Meghan’s hints were incendiary enough to make headlines around the globe – to hugely damaging effect for the Royal Family at the time – even if she did not personally put the boot in herself.

Astonishingly Harry – who himself has suggested Meghan was a victim of media racism – later claimed that the suggestion his wife had accused the Royal Family of prejudice was a figment of the Press’s imagination and yet another attempt to smear her.

Meghan also claimed in the same interview that she could not be expected to stay silent if ‘the Firm is playing a part in perpetuating falsehoods’ about her and Prince Harry.

And she singled the Princess of Wales out, claiming that reports she had made Kate cry in the run-up to her wedding in 2018 were untrue. In fact, she claimed, it was Kate who had made her cry and it was important for people to ‘understand the truth’.

While Buckingham Palace is – for the time being – determined not to be poked into reacting to the Sussexes, those in royal circles have been less coy.

Many are loudly wondering why Meghan has raised the issue after all this time and asking (pointedly) whether she really wants to go down that road again.

As one source tells me: ‘There are a lot of people both within the [royal] households, and outside of them, who would love to say what really happened.’

Truth, it seems, Meghan, is not a one-way street.

Sensationally, explosive allegations include the claim that Meghan bullied members of staff and drove out two female employees when she was a working royal.

Meghan, through her lawyers, has strongly and repeatedly denied the claims and suggested they were part of a concerted campaign to smear her.

But, four years after Buckingham Palace carried out an investigation into the claims, the results of the probe have never been made public. The accusations remain a matter of public record. Other former employees – who refer to themselves half-jokingly as the ‘Sussex Survivors Club’ – have spoken of having PTSD after working for the couple. Others I know say they feel professionally and personally broken.

One former insider I spoke to recently always thought fondly of Harry, but even they have noted how – in the late Queen Elizabeth’s words – some of his ‘recollections may vary’.

Speaking of the duke’s vitriolic 2023 memoir Spare, the source said: ‘I’ve always felt a little sympathetic. But that book was a work of complete revisionism. I was constantly thinking: ‘Hold on, Harry, it didn’t happen like that!’

While this particular friend of mine didn’t have dealings with Meghan, many who did have told me remarkably similar stories.

And some have strongly expressed their frustration at not being able to right the many wrongs they believe were committed during the couple’s brief time as working royals.

The reasons as to why they can’t are complex. Of course there are non-disclosure agreements that legally prevent them from speaking publicly about their experiences working for the royals, for good or bad.

These legal agreements are not uncommon in large firms and there is no suggestion that they are being applied unfairly in the Sussexes’ case.

But it’s important to stress for others there is a strong sense of loyalty to the Royal Family, and what I can only describe as a feeling of personal dignity and integrity, meaning they subscribe to the late Queen’s motto: ‘Never complain, never explain.’

All qualities the Sussexes, who appear to have capitalised on taking down their nearest and not-so-dearest, seem to have spectacularly failed to comprehend.

Many royal insiders cannot fathom why Meghan continues to worry away at this running sore, despite claiming that she is now in her ‘chapter of joy’ and is finally able to be her ‘authentic’ self – hence why she posted the bizarre video of herself ‘twerking’ before the birth of her daughter Lilibet.

They add that Meghan might do well to remember that, if she digs too deep into her royal experience, she might not like what comes to the surface.