“I never thought that this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair,” the duchess, fighting back tears, said in the ITV special. “And that’s the part that’s really hard to reconcile.”
Though she and Harry said back when they got engaged in 2017 that he had warned her that the scrutiny would be a lot, and it already had reached a level that neither had foreseen, Meghan said in October, “In all fairness, I had no idea, which probably sounds difficult to understand and hear. But when I first met my now-husband, my friends were really happy because I was so happy, but my British friends said to me, ‘I’m sure he’s great but you shouldn’t do it because the British tabloids will destroy your life.'”
In the wake of both his brother and sister-in-law’s revelations, a Kensington Palace source told the BBC that William was “worried” about the both of them—rather than “furious” that they divulged so much, as it was also speculated (shades of the reaction that met Princess Diana’s unprecedentedly candid sit-down with Panorama in 1995 that even Diana herself is said to have regretted).
But while the release of Finding Freedom may inflame tensions once again, once the extent of the story goes public (Meghan and Harry have stated that they did not participate or assist the authors in any way), there’s a bond that cannot be broken, no matter how many rumors, hard feelings or miles come between them.
“We are certainly on different paths at the moment,” Harry also told ITV about William, “but I will always be there for him as I know he will always be there for me. We don’t see each other as much as we used to because we are so busy, but I love him dearly.”
(Originally published June 21, 2019, at 3 a.m. PT; updated Oct. 21, 2019, at 11:15 a.m. PT)
