Since the Oprah interview with Meghan and Harry has cropped up again, here is several questionable claims they made to Oprah that clearly aren't true.
Claim: "I guess the highlight for me is sticking him on the back of a bicycle in his little baby seat and taking him on bike rides which is something I was never able to do when I was young. I can sit him on the back and he’s got his arms out and he’s like ‘whoah’.” - Prince Harry
Truth: Harry did go on bike rides with his father at various ages. Photos available online.
Claim: Meghan: “[But] you know, three days before our wedding, we got married. No-one knows that.
“We called the Archbishop and we just said, ‘Look, this thing, this spectacle is for the world but we want our union between us.’ So, the vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
Harry added: “Just the three of us.”
Truth: Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby: “The legal wedding was on the Saturday. I signed the wedding certificate, which is a legal document, and I would have committed a serious criminal offence if I signed it knowing it was false.”
Claim: Oprah: "After their move, Harry and Meghan say security normally provided by the royal family was cut off.”
Harry: “I never thought that I would have my security removed, because I was born into this position. I inherited the risk. So that was a shock to me. That was what completely changed the whole plan.”
Truth: Only a strict few members of the Royal Family were entitled to 24/7 protection at the time of the Oprah interview. These are:
the Queen and Prince Philip
Charles and wife Camilla Duchess of Cornwall
William and Kate and their kids
Working Royals are entitled to protection ONLY when undertaking official Royal duties. Princess Anne and Prince Edward are two examples.
Non-working members of the Royal Family are NOT entitled to official protection. Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice as well as the Queen's eldest grandchild, Zara Tindal are examples.
"Once Harry and Meghan step down as working royals, they become high net worth individuals/A-list celebrities but that doesn’t entitle them to taxpayer-funded security. Elton John has to pay for his own security and so do Harry and Meghan.” - Simon Morgan, a former royal protection officer.
Royal Protection officers are funded by the British Taxpayer.
Both Harry and Oprah clearly pointed the finger at the Royal Family regarding the loss of Royal Protection officers for Harry and Meghan.
In truth, London Metropolitan Police’s Royal and VIP Executive Committee make the decisions over who is entitled to Protection.
And who isn't.
Harry knew very well that ceasing to be a working Royal would absolutely mean losing the elite protection. After all, it was never a secret that various non-working Royals do NOT get armed protection.
So, why would he and his wife?
The truth was clearly distorted by Oprah, Meghan and Harry.
Claim: Meghan: "You couldn’t just go. You couldn’t. I mean, you have to understand, as well, when I joined that family, that was the last time, until we came here, that I saw my passport, my driver’s licence, my keys. All that gets turned over. I didn’t see any of that any more."
Truth: For security reasons, the passports of each member of the Royal Family is looked after until they require them for international travel. That's just commonsense.
To Oprah, Meghan claimed she never saw her passport again until "we came here" which would be California. However, this is clearly a lie as she required her passport for travelling to Canada upon leaving the UK.
And, in 2019, required her passport for travel to the USA for a rather extravagant baby shower which was attended by many of her friends.
All members of the Royal Family require a passport for ALL travel where its required.
Except for the Queen since it's issued in her name.
As proven here: www.royal.uk/passports
Meghan Markle also claimed:
"....the first member of color in this family isn't being titled in the same way as other grandchildren would be."
On the contrary, Archie is really treated no differently to the Queen's grandchildren who aren't entitled to the Prince and Princess style.
Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips, for example, don't have this style. Zara is the Queen's eldest grandchild, by the way.
Furthermore, Prince Edward's children are NOT styled as Prince and Princess despite the Letters Patent of 1917. They are styled as children of the Earl - not HRH Prince and Princess.
Edward's children are the first to have the double barrelled Mountbatten-Windsor name.
Harry and Meghan's son, Archie, is treated in the exact same way as Edward's children AND he carries the same double barrelled surname as they do.
Here again, Meghan's implied claim of racism doesn't stand up. And that does cast enough doubt on their other claim of racism regarding a senior Royal whose identity they say they have no intention of disclosing.
Of course, Meghan incorrectly referred to Archie as one of the Queen's grandchildren. He was a great-grandson of the late Queen since his father, Harry was her grandson. Archie was treated NO differently to any great-grandchildren who WEREN'T entitled to Prince and Princess titles during the late Queen's reign.