Meghan Markle denies claims she leaked own letter for King Charles III to tabloids

Meghan Markle sent a letter to King Charles III expressing concerns over unconscious bias in the royal family according to a new report.

According to The Telegraph's royal editor Victoria Ward, the Duchess of Sussex sent the letter soon after the Oprah interview in March 2021, in which she and Prince Harry alleged that a senior royal had expressed concerns about how dark their son's skin might be before he was born.

Her correspondence was reportedly sent in response to a letter she received from His Majesty in which he expressed his "sadness over the chasm that had emerged between the two sides of the Royal Family."

According to Ward, the monarch was the only royal family member who contacted the duchess after the Oprah interview. She cited a source who claimed that the letters also identified the senior member who made the comment and that "it is understood that both the King and the Duchess acknowledged that the individual's remark was not made with malice."

Meghan Markle reportedly thanked King Charles III "for his words" and she also clarified that she "never intended to specifically accuse the individual involved of being a racist, but was raising concerns about unconscious bias."

According to Ward, the pair had a "warm" exchange but it still did not "ease the tension between the two sides" of the royal family. She added that the Duchess of Sussex felt "that concerns she has raised, which crucially include the way in which bullying complaints against her were handled and the allegation that neglect by the institution led her to feel suicidal, have still not been resolved."

Netizens suspected that the Duchess of Sussex is not attending the coronation on May 6 because she did not receive a satisfactory response from Buckingham Palace over the concerns she raised in her letter.

One wrote on Twitter, "Meghan Markle is claimed to have written a letter to Charles over her concerns of racism within the Royal Family. A source said Meghan felt she hadn't 'received a satisfactory reply' and that's one of the reasons why she's not going to the Coronation. Good on her I'd be the same."

Another accused the Duke and Duchess of Sussex of leaking the letter themselves to the press.

British journalist Valentine Low, author of the book "Courtier: Intrigue, Ambition, and the Power Players Behind the House of Windsor," initially also accused Meghan Markle of leaking her own letter to the British press.

He tweeted, "Fascinating story by@victoria_ward. The question is, why does the Sussex camp want to leak all this? Is it Meghan trying to prevent an outbreak of peace between Harry and his father? And intriguing that they should resort to the sort of briefing that they condemned in others."

However, he backtracked on his assumptions writing, "Given that legal letters have been sent by the Sussexes' lawyers as well as the palace's since the story was published, it seems I was wrong in assuming that it came from the Sussex camp. Sorry to all about that. But even more intriguing!"

Another user also suggested that the Sussexes would never leak the letter given their hatred for the British tabloids.

Meanwhile, Ashley Hansen, global press secretary to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, told Harpers Bazaar in a statement that the "Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago." She added, "Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating."