LONDON — While the world was waiting for Oprah Winfrey’s interview last month with Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, the eyes of many Britons were on someone else: Prince Philip, Harry’s grandfather, who had been hospitalized several weeks earlier with a heart condition.
On the front pages of British newspapers in February, Prince Charles had been pictured leaving the bedside of Philip, his father — the son’s eyes bloodshot as he was driven away. The Daily Mail castigated Harry and Meghan for comments about their departure from their royal roles, which the tabloid cast as disrespectful in light of Philip’s illness. “Have They No Respect?” a headline screamed.
That period of national concern over Philip’s health lent the royal family sympathy during an unusual dust-up within the institution, one that pitted brother against brother as Harry, in the interview with Ms. Winfrey, accused his family of racism and emotional abandonment.
Philip’s death on Friday at age 99 opened a new and uncertain chapter in the turbulent life of the House of Windsor. It has the potential to mend fences, or to sow deeper discord.
private funeral being planned for Philip. Will Harry reunite with his brother, Prince William, after a monthslong feud? Will Meghan attend?
“Harry will come home, and a meeting between the brothers and perhaps, with luck, a reconciliation over their dead grandfather could be a possibility,” said Penny Junor, a royal historian.
Or not.
“It’s going to go one way or the other,” Ms. Junor said. “There’s a sort of war going on within the family, and being played out in public. It’s been everything the family doesn’t want.”
The heating up of those tensions during Philip’s hospitalization created an awkward split screen, which defenders of Buckingham Palace used to attack Harry and Meghan for doing anything that could detract attention from the patriarch’s health.
“the Firm,” the family institution that Philip spent much of his life trying to preserve.
They said members of the family had expressed concern about how dark the skin of the couple’s then-unborn child, Archie, would be. Meghan said her efforts to seek mental health treatment had been rebuffed by palace officials, who worried about potential damage to the monarchy. And Harry said that his own relatives were “trapped,” speculating aloud about whether they, too, were wrestling with painful thoughts.
frank conversations about racism and the country’s colonial legacy. Philip’s own history of bigoted remarks was often cited as an example of anachronistic attitudes that were said to prevail within the family.
So concerned was Harry about how the interview would affect Philip and Queen Elizabeth II that he got in touch with Ms. Winfrey shortly after it aired.
“He wanted to make sure I knew, and if I had an opportunity to share it, that it was not his grandmother or grandfather that were part of those conversations,” she told CBS News, referring to the comments about Archie’s skin color.
Philip stepped back from his busy public schedule in recent years, he continued to play an active role in big issues facing the family, Harry and Meghan’s departure among them.
The queen is Britain’s head of state, but analysts say that Philip long acted as head of the royal household. He was credited with giving television cameras an early peek at the family’s private life in the 1960s and introducing efficiencies at Buckingham Palace.
Yet his stewardship of the royal household was not without difficulties. Known for cracking the whip and delivering confrontational messages, he also wounded Charles, his oldest son, with frequent belittlements.
He was also partly blamed for the family’s seemingly grudging response to the country’s outpouring of grief over the death of Charles’s wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
Britons took a forgiving view of him on Friday, though.
Beverley Pilkington, a self-described royalist from Crystal Palace in south London, traveled to Buckingham Palace to pay her respects — though without her two daughters, who she said had resisted joining her. Palace attendants had placed a notice of Philip’s death on the gates, only to take it away a short time later as a precaution against a crowd forming.
“He’s had a turbulent past,” Ms. Pilkington said of Philip. “But in death, you just have to forgive.”
Geneva Abdul contributed reporting.
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The Mail article, and the various articles in The Sun, appeared in the first week of November, 2016. Days later, Prince Harry’s office issued an extraordinary statement declaring that Ms. Markle had been “subject to a wave of abuse and harassment” and that “nearly every friend, co-worker and loved one in her life” had been pursued, and in some cases offered money for interviews, by members of the British news media.
The couple have been at war with the tabloids ever since. In addition to Harry’s lawsuit, Meghan filed her own suit against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday, accusing it of violating her privacy by publishing an anguished letter she sent to her estranged father. In February, a High Court in London ruled in her favor.
On Thursday, Harry and Meghan, who are also known as the duke and duchess of Sussex, said in a statement that Mr. Portley-Hanks’ claims showed “that the predatory practices of days past are still ongoing, reaping irreversible damage for families and relationships.”
Harry has often blamed the tabloids for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 after a high-speed pursuit by paparazzi. He even attributed his and Meghan’s decision to withdraw from royal duties and leave Britain in part to the unrelenting scrutiny of the news media.
“We all know what the British press can be like, and it was destroying my mental health,” Harry said to the British talk-show host, James Corden, last month. “I was, like, this is toxic. So, I did what any husband and what any father would do — I need to get my family out of here.”
He and Meghan made similar claims in their explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this month. Mr. Portley-Hanks, who said he had already come to regret his actions, said those comments deepened his sense of remorse for his role in helping to steer the tabloids to Ms. Markle and members of her family.
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None of the information supplied by him raised concerns about illegal practices, the company said, adding that it did not request Ms. Markle’s Social Security number — which is more restricted information — and did not use it for any purpose.
In Britain, legal experts said, the tabloids have moved carefully since the 2011 scandal, which forced Mr. Murdoch to shut down another of his tabloids, The News of the World, and torpedoed his takeover of a satellite broadcaster, BSkyB.
“There is, at present, no evidence that has come to light that they continued any illegal activities since 2011,” said Daniel Taylor, an expert in privacy law.
But Mr. Taylor added, speaking of the tabloids, “There would have been enormous interest in Harry and Meghan, and there is no doubt they would have turned over every stone to make sure they got a competitive edge on their rivals.”
Even as The Sun was printing its early articles about the Harry and Meghan romance, the Sunday Express and other competitors were getting scoops of their own, fanning out across America to talk to anyone remotely connected to Ms. Markle. They staked out houses; they bombarded distant relatives with phone calls; they talked to neighbors; they quoted unnamed “friends” and “pals” of the couple.
Typical of the coverage was an article in The Daily Mail that, loaded with racist innuendo, said that the biracial Ms. Markle was “(Almost) Straight Outta Compton,” and described the L.A. neighborhood where her Black mother lived as full of “tatty one-story homes” and riddled with drugs, guns, gangs and violence.
The Mail article, and the various articles in The Sun, appeared in the first week of November, 2016. Days later, Prince Harry’s office issued an extraordinary statement declaring that Ms. Markle had been “subject to a wave of abuse and harassment” and that “nearly every friend, co-worker and loved one in her life” had been pursued, and in some cases offered money for interviews, by members of the British news media.
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Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan and Harry has clearly become a spark for international discussions about racism and the state of Britain’s royal family. And it has brought new attention to another issue as well.
Meghan’s revelation of her mental anguish during and after her first pregnancy, including thoughts of suicide so significant that she feared being left alone — and that the palace had been a barrier to the help she needed — sounded painfully familiar for many.
The experience of life-threatening pregnancy complications, mental as well as physical, is strikingly common. If it has not happened to you, it has almost certainly happened to someone you care about, though you may not know it.
Twitter was soon filled with people sharing their own stories of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts during and after pregnancy.
2017 survey of 1,000 British women, nearly 50 percent of respondents reported experiencing a mental or emotional problem, but half of these had not had this problem identified by a health professional.
Meghan did not say whether she had been diagnosed with peripartum depression or any other condition. But experts increasingly advocate extending specialist care to women who experience serious distress during or after pregnancy, whether or not they fit a specific diagnosis.
“Some researchers have suggested that we should, rather than looking at particular diagnostic categories, refer instead to ‘perinatal distress’ to encompass the complexity of the difficulties experienced at this time,” Dr. Svanberg said.
The stakes, after all, are extremely high. Pregnant people risk stroke, hemorrhage, infection and other complications that can be deadly for parent and baby. But mental distress is one of the most serious risks of all. In developed countries, suicide “is a leading cause of death in the perinatal period (The leading cause of death in 2003),” Dr. Svanberg wrote.
Discussions of pregnancy and mental health often focus on pregnancy hormones’ effect on mood. But while that is a factor, there is substantial evidence that other stressors play a role as well — so much so that approximately 10 percent of fathers also experience postpartum depression.
four times higher than for white women, and studies have shown that medical workers tend to underestimate Black women’s pain during birth, which can deprive them of the medication and care they need.
The popular image of pregnancy as something happy and straightforward, troubled only by cute problems like wanting to put pickles on ice cream, or brief ones like a painful natural delivery, can mean that those who have more difficult pregnancies can face stigma and dismissal if they ask for help.
“At the root of barriers to maternal mental health care are gender stereotypes that promote the idea that women should be ‘self-sacrificing mothers,’ who ought to prioritize the purported needs of their families and children even over their own survival and well-being,” said Ms. Shah, who has worked on reproductive and maternity rights issues around the globe. “These stereotypes lead to stigmatization of health care for pregnant women or mothers who experience depression or anxiety, rather than only joy or contentment.”
“There is also an assignation of blame, that there must be something wrong in what we are doing if we are not feeling 100 percent,” Dr. Agarwal said. “Women are also made to feel guilty about being frail, overemotional and nervy.”
Although some in the British news media have criticized Meghan for claiming victimhood despite her wealth and privilege, many of those with more firsthand experience saw her story as a sign that these problems could happen to anyone, no matter the circumstances.
Ms. Molyneux said that she was moved to hear Meghan speak so frankly during the interview. “I felt a big wave of relief wash over me to see this incredibly accomplished person admit she’d had mental health struggles,” she said.
“For people who are less privileged than me, women in jobs where it’s less safe to admit you are struggling, they can point to this person who has wealth and privilege — a literal duchess — and say, ‘This isn’t my fault, it can happen to anyone, and I need help.’”
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LONDON — She was married to the spirited strains of a gospel choir, her veil embroidered with the flowers of Britain’s former colonies, a rare image among rows of white princes and princesses of the post-racial, immigrant society that some imagined Britain to be.
And then that vision came apart at the seams.
Meghan’s account of racism in the royal family, delivered last week from a wicker chair outside a California mansion, did more than open new wounds at Buckingham Palace. It also called into question whether the family or, indeed, the country were as embracing of Black people as her 2018 wedding had signaled they could be.
The revelations have rippled across the so-called Commonwealth family, a group of largely nonwhite ex-colonies headed by Queen Elizabeth II, prompting calls for a re-evaluation of royal ties and, in Australia, for casting off the British crown entirely.
At home, among Britons who identified with Meghan and her son, Archie, biracial newcomers in a very white family, the interview has had a different resonance, spotlighting the hard limits of the country’s racial progress.
novelist from London, recalled his white mother being disowned by her family for marrying his father, a Black man.
the largely white, royal-obsessed British tabloid press, and for its potential to undo much of the monarchy’s work of rebuilding from the fallout of Princess Diana’s death in 1997.
But among other things, the controversy over the interview has been a particularly trans-Atlantic tug of war — between an American habit of talking bluntly about race and a British one of papering over it, historians said.
Held in an American backyard, with one of the country’s most powerful Black celebrities, the interview exposed British dealings with race to an American glare — one that historians say has been honed by decades of segregation and racial violence to detect the less overt racist acts that Britons sometimes pretend are not there.
“There is, in Britain, a very big silence around race that, in fact, there isn’t in the United States,” said Priyamvada Gopal, a professor of postcolonial studies at the University of Cambridge. “You could not have had a comparable conversation on prime-time U.K. television. There is no one with Oprah’s profile. And the idea that a talk-show host would sit down with a royal couple or anyone and discuss race at length — that’s not actually imaginable in the U.K.”
When Meghan married Harry, some Black and biracial Britons saw versions of themselves, outsiders climbing the country’s most elite institution.
“do you still throw spears at each other,” and some years before that cautioned a British student in China that he would “go home with slitty eyes” if he stayed too long. Harry himself, as a young cadet at the Sandhurst military academy, used an ethnic slur for a Pakistani fellow cadet.
Far from washing that history from Britons’ memories, Meghan has splashed it on the front pages.
“Black Britain probably feels a lot more connected to Meghan Markle today than it did three years ago,” said Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University.
Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, who has written about modernizing the institution.
Far from the royal palaces, Britain is nevertheless reinventing itself. As of 2011, nearly one in 10 people living in a couple in England and Wales was part of an interethnic relationship. London neighborhoods are less segregated than many cities in the United States. Elements of other cultures are slowly being absorbed into the British identity.
Not everyone is pleased with that transition; one of the appeals of Brexit was the promise of limiting immigration.
two-thirds of its deaths during the pandemic.
Senior leaders are overwhelmingly white, a phenomenon once described as the “snowy white peaks of the N.H.S.,” and nonwhite staff members are likelier to enter disciplinary proceedings.
Like the royal family, the British media, too, has often seemed to many Black Britons like it was made for a white audience. This week, television hosts have wondered aloud why asking about Archie’s skin was any different from speculating about a white baby’s hair.
Izabelle Lee, 23, said the coverage had an effect. An actress born to a white British mother and a Black Trinidadian father, she said that articles stoking fear of illegal migrants preoccupied her white grandparents.
golliwog, a racist caricature, enraging her mother. Watching Meghan speak this week, Ms. Lee said she recognized the look in her mother’s eyes when she spoke of how relatives reacted to her marrying a Black man.
“I think she felt an unfairness, and a tension,” Ms. Lee said of her mother, “that if she had a child with a white man, she wouldn’t have felt.”
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LONDON — In the wake of Harry and Meghan’s explosive interview, an influential professional society speaking for the British news media issued a defiant response, rejecting the idea of racism and intolerance in British coverage of the couple.
On Wednesday the group, the Society of Editors, was forced into an embarrassing about-face after objections from more than 160 journalists of color as well as the editors of both The Guardian and The Financial Times.
On Monday, the society stated flatly that “The U.K. media is not bigoted,” and accused Meghan and Harry of an unfounded attack on the profession. Less than 48 hours later, it issued what it called a clarification, acknowledging that its initial statement “did not reflect what we all know: there is a lot of work to be done in the media to improve diversity and inclusion.”
The fallout from the interview has not just divided Britons and shaken the foundations of the royal family. It has also created schisms in the British news media, an industry that rarely outwardly break ranks, and raised broader questions about racism in British society.
Piers Morgan, a co-host of the ITV news show “Good Morning Britain,” who resigned on Tuesday in the wake of his on-air attack on her, saying he didn’t believe that she really entertained thoughts of suicide.
a direct complaint to ITV from Meghan herself, CNN reported.
2019 report from the University of Leeds found that, while ethnic minorities received very little general news coverage they figured prominently in stories about “specific news agendas, notably immigration, terrorism, and crime.”
Research compiled by Women in Journalism, an advocacy group, paints a stark picture of the British media industry: one that is white and predominantly male.
Over the course of a week in the summer of 2020, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, not a single Black reporter was featured on the front page of any major publications, the report found.
And out of the 111 people quoted on the front pages, just one was a Black woman: Jen Reid, who took part in a protest in Bristol, England, at which people toppled a statue of a slave trader, Edward Colston. Ms Reid was quoted by The Guardian after a statue of her was erected in its place.
The report validates earlier data suggesting the British media industry had a stark racial imbalance. In 2016, City, University of London surveyed 700 British journalists and found that only 0.4 percent of the profession were Muslim and only 0.2 percent were Black, compared to 5 percent and 3 percent of the British population, respectively.
According to Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University London, the accusations of bigoted coverage come at a moment of some vulnerability for Britain’s feared tabloids.
Like traditional print news media globally, Britain’s popular press is suffering a decline in circulation and advertising. It has suffered a proportional decline in influence, analysts say, although it retains significant power to set the agenda for the broadcast media.
Analysts play down the prospect of new media laws, saying Prime Minister Boris Johnson has dropped the idea of new regulation.
Yet the buccaneering swagger with which the tabloids once operated seems to have been much reduced.
“They are very upset at losing the legal case to Meghan and Harry, they were very upset because they were humiliated,” Mr. Cathcart said. “They are also worried that Harry and Meghan said that Buckingham Palace is in the pocket of the tabloids.”
Their response, he said, was to play the story relatively straight, and to concentrate on the elements of it that do not focus on the media’s coverage of the royal family.
“They are not sorry, they are not embarrassed, and they are going to brazen this out,” he said. “They are going to hope this dies down.”
Anna Joyce contributed reporting.
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