Prince Harry’s 2016 impassioned statement where he denounced the British press for its treatment of his then-new girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has reportedly been quietly deleted from the Royal Family website.
For more than seven years, the now-famous, lengthy and strongly-worded statement was recorded on the royal. uk site. While it is reportedly traceable through the site’s search engine, the link itself is broken, say multiple sources. (This editor couldn’t find it at all. What is top and centre is the January 2020 statement announcing Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s decision to step back as senior members of the Royal Family.)
“The past week has seen a line crossed,” wrote Kensington communications secretary Jason Knauf at the time. “[Prince Harry’s] girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment.
“Some of this has been very public—the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments.
“Some of it has been hidden from the public—the nightly legal battles to keep defamatory stories out of papers; her mother having to struggle past photographers in order to get to her front door; the attempts of reporters and photographers to gain illegal entry to her home and the calls to police that followed; the substantial bribes offered by papers to her ex-boyfriend; the bombardment of nearly every friend, co-worker, and loved one in her life.”
The decision to remove, or archive, the 2016 statement is a sad one. It was a major moment in the Prince’s life—by defending the racial abuse hurled toward the American actor, he was officially cementing his at-the-time rumoured relationship with her. Its removal/archival also cements the fractured relationship between the Palace and the couple, which seemingly gathered speed after Prince Harry and Markle’s very royal-looking recent tour of Nigeria.
“We needed a statement out there—within a day we had a draft,” Prince Harry recalled in his 2023 memoir Spare. “Strong, precise, angry, honest.”
Prince Harry and Markle married on May 19 2018 at Windsor Castle. They left the Palace for a life in California 18 months later. The couple are in the news at the moment, namely for their decision to move Archie, 5, and Lilibet, 2.
This story first appeared on GRAZIA International.