Prince Harry “lost” his father, Prince Charles, after his departure from the royal family, Meghan Markle said in a new interview.
The Duchess of Sussex, 41, brought up her husband’s strained relationship with his father when asked if she was arguing with her own father, Thomas Markle.
“Harry said to me, ‘I lost my father in this process.’ It doesn’t have to be the same for them as it is for me, but that’s his decision,” she told The Cut in New York magazine The Cut in an extensive profile published Monday.
When asked if there was room to heal the rifts with their families, Markle replied, “I think forgiveness is very important. It takes a lot more energy to not forgive. But it takes a lot of effort to forgive. I really tried my best, especially knowing that I can say anything.”
A source tells Vidak For Congress exclusively that Markle actually wanted to say she didn’t want Harry, 37, to lose his father.
A senior royal insider added: “I am not aware that Harry is breaking up with his father. Charles gave Harry and Meghan millions when they left the UK.
“Right now the family is all at Balmoral and I’m sure they are stunned by this interview.”
During the couple’s March 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Harry said that Charles, 73, “stopped taking [his] calls” regarding talks about leaving his role as a working member of the Royal Family.
He also claimed that the royals “literally cut me off financially” after Megxit in January 2020, claiming that his father and brother, Prince William, were “trapped” in their roles. (It is believed that he still has a stilted relationship with William.)
However, in June 2021, a senior Clarence House spokesperson said Charles had allocated a “significant amount of money in support” of the Sussexes during the couple’s transition to becoming financially independent. The spokesperson said the funding stopped in the summer of 2020.
The interview comes the week that Harry and William, 40, will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the death of their mother, Princess Diana.
We’re told Harry’s highly anticipated memoir will be pushed back to 2023, as he debates whether to include a series of “truth bombs” about his family in the book.
Speaking to The Cut about how he and Markle run Archewell together from a shared home office, Harry said: “Most of the people I know and many of my family cannot work and live together. It’s actually really weird because it seems a lot crowded. But it just feels natural and normal.”
The Sussexes will return to the UK next week for a series of charity events. They will also travel to Germany to kick off next year’s Invictus Games in Düsseldorf.
As we’ve revealed, they won’t be visiting Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral – despite reports that they were invited.