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For Reuters 
1 hour ago
By Michael Holden
LONDON – Queen Elizabeth said on Tuesday that British royalty were saddened by the challenging experiences of her grandson, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, and vowed to privately address revelations about a racist comment about their son.
Meghan and Harry’s revealing television interview with Oprah Winfrey aired on American television on Sunday has plunged the monarchy into its greatest crisis since the 1997 death of Harry’s mother, Diana.
On the two-hour show, Meghan accused the British royal family of expressing concern about how dark her son Archie’s skin might be and ignoring his pleas for help while feeling suicidal.
Harry also said that his father, heir to the throne, Prince Charles, had let him down and that he had felt trapped in his real life.
“The whole family is saddened to learn the extent of how challenging the past few years have been for Harry and Meghan,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement issued on behalf of Elizabeth.
Earlier Tuesday, Prince Charles made no comment when asked by a journalist what he thought of the interview while visiting a pop-up Covid-19 vaccination clinic in London.
A royal source had said that the 94-year-old Elizabeth, who has been on the throne for 69 years, wanted to take some time before the Palace issued a response, saying she needed careful consideration.
A former high-level royal aide said the three most important royals – the Queen, Charles, and Prince William, second in line to the throne and Harry’s older brother – were likely to have held meetings with their private secretaries. and communications chiefs to decide on your response.
“This is very important and they have to judge it well,” said the former assistant, adding that the queen would have had the last word.
TABLOID TORTURE?
In the interview, nearly three years after her wedding at Windsor Castle, Meghan gained sympathy in the United States by calling some unidentified members of the royal family indifferent, mendacious or guilty of racist remarks.
Meghan and Harry have also had a torrid relationship with the British press, successfully taking documents to court at times, and have repeatedly questioned what they say are reports tainted by racist overtones.
Harry said in the interview that he did not know where to turn when faced with such disturbing media coverage and was hurt when his family failed to report the racist reports.
He said the royal family had an unhealthy silent deal with the British tabloids and that the family was paranoid about the media turning against them.
“There is a level of fear control that has been around for generations,” Harry said.
For the monarchy, which traces its history through 1000 years of British and English history to William the Conqueror, the Meghan bombing has been likened to the crises over the death of Diana and the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936.
Opponents of the monarchy said the allegations made by Meghan and Harry showed how rotten the institution was and that the Palace’s public relations machinery had created a distorted image of royalty.
“Now people are getting a much clearer picture of what the monarchy really is like. And it doesn’t look good,” said Graham Smith, director of Republic, a campaign group that seeks to abolish the monarchy.
Royal supporters cast 39-year-old Meghan, a former American actor, as a publicity seeker with an eye on Hollywood stardom.
A YouGov poll found that the majority of young people thought the royal family’s treatment of the couple was unfair, while half of older people said otherwise.
The gravity of the claims has raised questions about how the British monarchy, which survived centuries of revolution that toppled its cousins across Europe, could function in a meritocratic world.
Meghan, whose mother is black and her father is white, said her son Archie, who will turn two in May, had been denied the title of prince because there were concerns within the royal family “about how dark his skin might be. when he is born “.
She declined to say who had expressed such concerns, as did Harry. Winfrey later told CBS that Harry had said it was not the queen or her 99-year-old husband Philip, who has been in the hospital for three weeks as the crisis unfolds.
Meghan’s estranged father, Thomas Markle, with whom she has not spoken since her wedding, said he did not believe the British royal family was racist.
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