Meghan Markle felt ‘unprotected by the royal institution’

Meghan Markle felt ‘unprotected by the institution’ because palace press officers could not defend her against a stream of stories which angered her, reports claim.

In documents filed at the High Court, Meghan’s lawyers said she felt ‘unprotected by the institution’ of the Royal Family and ‘prohibited from defending herself’ against claims levelled against her.

The Duchess said she had ‘become the subject of a large number of false and damaging articles’ in UK newspapers, which caused ‘tremendous emotional distress and damage to her mental health’.

She added: ‘As her friends had never seen her in this state before, they were rightly concerned for her welfare, specifically as she was pregnant, unprotected by the Institution, and prohibited from defending herself.’    

The Duchess of Sussex is suing MailOnline’s owner Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) over an article in The Mail On Sunday which reproduced parts of a handwritten note she had sent to her father Thomas Markle in August 2018. She claims publication was a breach of her privacy; the newspaper denies the claim.

An insider told the Times how references to the ‘institution’ relate to the palace machinery, likely her former media team, rather than members of the royal family. 

‘No one thinks this is going to end well,’ a source said. ‘For anyone.’ 

The documents outline Meghan’s frustration with the Kensington Palace communications team and its ‘no comment’ policy on press reports.

The 38-year-old was reportedly most upset with stories regarding her relationships with staff members and criticism of her family, particularly her half-sister Samatha Grant. 

‘The stories were a drop in the ocean compared to what was going on,’ another source added.

The Duchess of Sussex yesterday identified the five close friends who gave an interview to People magazine criticising her father – but denies she authorised them to do it.

Meghan is suing ANL over an article in The Mail On Sunday which shared parts of a handwritten note she had sent to her father Thomas Markle in August 2018. 

ANL has said Mr Markle shared the letter only after Meghan’s friends – who could be called to give evidence at a possible trial in late 2020 or early 2021 – gave an interview about it to the US magazine People, which he felt vilified him, and he wanted to show it was not the tender message they had suggested.   

New legal documents showed that Meghan has now identified the five friends – who spoke anonymously – with the papers just referring to them as A, B, C, D and E, although she named them in a confidential section.

The friends have never been named, with People magazine previously referring to them as ‘Meghan’s inner circle – a longtime friend, a former co-star, a friend from LA, a one-time colleague and a close confidante’. 

The five close friends could be called to testify at a trial and be asked if Meghan knew they were speaking to the magazine, something she firmly denies in the documents, which are a response to questions raised by ANL. 

Any court trial is expected to focus on whether Meghan had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of the letter to her father, given that her friends had already briefed People magazine about its contents, and whether publishing parts of the letter was in the public interest and allowed under freedom of expression laws. 

Meghan’s legal team said that ‘Friend A’ spoke anonymously to People and made a ‘passing reference to the letter’, adding that the Duchess did not know Friend A gave the interview because she was not involved with it.

Her lawyers add in the new court filing that Meghan ‘discussed with Friend A that she was writing a letter to her father at the time of penning it’, which was seven months before the article was published in People in February 2019. 

The submissions added that the Duchess and Friend A talked about the existence of the letter, but not its contents, again in September and December 2018, as Mr Markle ‘continued to give interviews to UK media falsely claiming he had not heard from his daughter’. 

Meghan added that she ‘did not know about the interview having been given, and only found out about it, and any reference to the Letter, after the People magazine article was published’.

The Duchess also said that she found out that an article about her was due to appear just before it was published, but she did not know it would be in People or anything about its contents.