London:
Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, felt “unprotected” in the face of “emotionally distressing” articles written in the British media about her, according to court documents in an ongoing UK High Court battle.
The 38-year-old former American actress wife of Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, had launched legal action over breach of alleged privacy against ‘The Mail on Sunday’ newspaper and its owners Associated Newspaper Limited (ANL) over the reproduction of sections of a handwritten note she sent to her estranged father, 75-year-old Thomas Markle, in August 2018. The publisher denies her claims and no trial date has yet been set but details are continuing to emerge from legal negotiations between the parties in the case.
This week, court documents seen by the BBC reveal that Markle believes the “institution” of the British monarchy failed to protect her after she became “the subject of a large number of false and damaging articles” in the press while she was pregnant with her son Archie, which caused her “tremendous emotional distress and damage to her mental health”. “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 documents note.
Associated Newspapers claims it only included the letter because it had already been referenced by Meghan’s friends in an interview with ‘People’ magazine in the US. The documents also reveal that Markle hit out at claims the article was in the public interest because the British taxpayer helped pay for her wedding to Prince Harry at Windsor Castle in May 2018. Her lawyers claim the wedding generated 1 billion pounds in tourism revenue, which far outweighed the public money spent “solely on security and crowd control” at the request of the police.
Harry and Meghan are now based in the US with their one-year-old son Archie after they stepped back as frontline royals earlier this year.
