Last month, Buckingham Palace confirmed the split would be permanent, as the couple looks to forge an independent life in the United States.
Harry, 36, said they had stepped back from royal duties because of a lack of understanding, and he was worried about history repeating itself – a reference to the death of his mother Diana who was killed in a 1997 crash as her car sped away from chasing photographers.
Harry denied blindsiding Queen Elizabeth, his grandmother, with his decision to shun life within the monarchy.
Prince Harry also revealed that his father, Prince Charles, stopped taking his calls when he wanted to step back.
“I had three conversations with my grandmother, and two conversations with my father before he stopped taking my calls. And then he said, can you put this all in writing?”
Meghan, the wife of Prince Harry, accused Britain’s royal family of raising concerns about how dark their son’s skin might be and pushing her to the brink of suicide, in a tell-all television interview that will send shockwaves through the monarchy.
‘I was not being protected’
Meghan said that she started to feel lonely when limits were placed on what she could do, revealing that at one point she did not leave the house for months.
At one point she thought she “could not feel lonelier”, she told Oprah.
Asked by Oprah if she was thinking of self-harm and having suicidal thoughts at some stage, Meghan replied: “Yes. This was very, very clear. Very clear and very scary. I didn’t know who to turn to in that.”
She said a low point was when Harry was asked by one member of his family “how dark” their son’s skin might be.
Meghan said that her son Archie, now aged one, had been denied the title of prince because there were concerns within the royal family about “about how dark his skin might be when he’s born”.
“That was relayed to me from Harry, those were conversations that family had with him,” Meghan recounted in an interview with Oprah Winfrey aired on CBS late on Sunday.
“The monarchy has just been hit by its worst crisis since the abdication” of Edward VIII in 1936, said Republic, a campaign group that wants to abolish the monarchy. “This rotten institution needs to go.”
Nearly three years since her star-studded wedding in Windsor Castle, Meghan described some unidentified members of the royal household as brutal, mendacious and guilty of racist remarks.
She also accused Kate, the wife of her husband’s elder brother Prince William, of making her cry before her wedding.
While the family came in for open criticism, neither Harry nor Meghan attacked Queen Elizabeth directly.
Still, Meghan said she had been silenced by “the Firm” – which Elizabeth heads – and that her pleas for help while in distress at racist reporting and her predicament had fallen on deaf ears.
“I just didn’t want to be alive any more. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. And I remember how he (Harry) just cradled me,” Meghan said, wiping away tears.
They also announced their baby, which is due in the summer, is a girl.
The couple moved to California after formally stepping down from royal duties in March 2020, and it was announced last month that they would not be returning as working members of the Royal Family.
