A year after Meghan Markle married Prince Harry in a fairy-tale wedding, she said in an interview broadcast on Sunday night, her life as a member of the British royal family had become so emotionally unbearable that she contemplated suicide.

At another point, members of the family told Meghan, a biracial former American actress, and Harry that they did not want the couple’s unborn child to be a prince or princess and expressed concerns about how dark the color of the baby’s skin would be.

The disclosures, made in an eagerly anticipated interview on CBS with Oprah Winfrey, were the most incendiary by Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, 39, who married into the House of Windsor and discovered less of a fairy tale than what she described as the cruel loss of her freedom and identity.

“I was ashamed to have to admit it to Harry,” Meghan said of her suicidal thoughts. “I knew that if I didn’t say it, I would do it. I just didn’t want to be alive anymore.”

the wounds from that rupture have yet to heal.

On both sides of the Atlantic, it was the most eagerly anticipated royal interview since Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, told the BBC in 1995 that “there were three of us in this marriage,” referring to her husband, Prince Charles, and his extramarital relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, whom he later married.

Martin Bashir, she said the palace viewed her as a “threat of some kind.”

A vivid bookend to her turbulent years in the royal family, Diana’s interview was a pop-cultural moment that drew one of the largest British television audiences in history, lived on in parodies on “Saturday Night Live,” and deepened the media’s fathomless hunger for all things Diana. Two years later, she was dead in Paris, the victim of a car crash after a high-speed chase with photographers.

a ravenous tabloid press fed a diet of falsehoods by jealous palace courtiers.

Even Meghan’s choice of wardrobe seemed calculated to telegraph the message of a new start. Her elegant black dress, designed by Giorgio Armani, featured a striking lotus flower design that her staff said symbolized revival and a will to live. She also wore a diamond tennis bracelet that once belonged to Diana.

But the couple’s effort to relaunch their public image did not go unchallenged back home. In the days leading up to the broadcast, new allegations surfaced that Meghan had bullied members of her staff, reducing junior aides to tears and driving two personal assistants out of the palace. Meghan dismissed the claims as character assassination, while Buckingham Palace said it would look into them.

“What is going on is a significant struggle for the control of the narrative,” said Peter Hunt, a former BBC royal correspondent. “What is our settled judgment for why Harry and Meghan left the royal family? Do we accept two hours of Oprah or do we believe those charges of bullying?”

Meghan has no shortage of defenders. Patrick J. Adams, an actor who worked with her on the television series, “Suits,” described her on Twitter last week as having “a deep sense of morality and a fierce work ethic.” The royal family, Mr. Adams said, was “obscene” to promote accusations of bullying against her.