Royals ‘quietly pleased’ Meghan Markle missed Prince Phillips funeral, says book

Meghan Markle was absent from the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral in April after doctors refused her clearance to fly when she was pregnant with her second child Lilibet.

A paperback edition of Finding Freedom by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, which features a new epilogue, tells how Prince Harry and Meghan had no regrets over quitting their royal roles and that Meghan had found her Oprah interview “liberating”.

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The authors wrote that Meghan had hoped to return to the UK with Harry for the funeral, but wrote: “In truth, several members of the royal family are understood to have been ‘quietly pleased’ that Meghan stayed in California because they ‘didn’t want a circus’ or, commented a senior royal source, ‘the duchess creating a spectacle’.”

Finding Freedom, which is set to be republished on August 31, also suggests Harry and Meghan felt courtiers were still trying to undermine them by leaking information.

It said: “What has continued to be troubling for the couple, more than a year after their decision, is knowing that courtiers inside the institution are still appearing to actively undermine Harry and Meghan by deliberately leaking information to discredit them.”

The book points to allegations from royal aides claiming Meghan had faced a complaint she bullied staff, driving out two personal assistants and undermining the confidence of a third member.

The Duchess denies the claims and Scobie and Durand said the “attempt to discredit” Meghan by those who used to be in the couple’s inner circle “served as a reminder” to the Sussexes that they had made the right decision to leave.

Members of the royal family were reportedly “quietly pleased” the Duchess of Sussex missed Prince Phillip’s funeral, says book

The authors also offered a new take on Harry’s financial situation in the run-up to the so-called Megxit, stating if the couple had not had Harry’s inheritance from his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, they “wouldn’t have survived”.

Before then, the Duke and Duchess’s joint wealth was estimated to be £18 million.

Harry inherited nearly £7 million from Diana, which would have grown with investment over the decades.

Aside from this, he is also thought to have had an inheritance from the Queen Mother, so his total wealth in 2020 was believed to have been around £10 million to £15 million.

The Duchess was then thought to be worth £2 million to £3 million, pocketing a reported £333,000 per season for six runs of the legal drama Suits, as well as earning a past income from feature films and fashion collections.

Harry told Oprah his family “literally cut me off financially” in the first quarter of 2020 and signed the multi-million pound Netflix and Spotify deals to pay for his security.

He said he had what Diana left him and “without that we would not have been able to do this”.

Scobie and Durand wrote of the Oprah interview that the couple shared they had “struggled financially”, saying if Harry “hadn’t had the money” the Princess left him after she died, “they wouldn’t have survived”.

It was later revealed on the publication of the Prince of Wales’s annual accounts that Charles supported the Sussexes with a substantial sum until the summer of 2020.

The book also told how Harry and Meghan were left “furious” in July 2020 after being targeted outside a medical centre in Beverly Hills by a photographer who had received a tip-off.

It was not known at the time, but the Duchess was actually being treated at the clinic after suffering her miscarriage – a loss she wrote about later that year, the authors said.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

Lawyers for Harry and Meghan have distanced themselves from Finding Freedom, describing it as unauthorised, and saying the authors “do not speak for our clients and seem to rely on unnamed sources”.