Meghan Markle has found herself back at the center of unflattering allegations this month, after The Hollywood Reporter claimed unnamed staff members of the royal's U.S. based organization have described her as "a dictator in high heels."
Former and current staff members went on the record this week with tabloid magazine US Weekly to counter the narrative, describing the duchess as "positive and supportive" while providing a number of personal examples to support their view.
Meghan was first accused of being a difficult boss in a Sunday Times article from December 2018. Then still a working royal and just returned from a highly successful first overseas tour with Prince Harry, the story is one that the couple later suggested was a turning point in how the British media treated them and public viewed them.
Two months later, five of the duchess' friends spoke anonymously to People magazine supporting her and countering the narrative that was developing in Britain.
More serious allegations against Meghan were published by the Sunday Times in March 2021.
Just days before the release of the royal's bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey, the first since she split from the monarchy with Harry and moved to the U.S., the paper reproduced an internal email sent by former Kensington Palace press secretary Jason Knauf to Prince William's private secretary in 2018, expressing concern over the duchess' treatment of staff.
"I am very concerned that the duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. The treatment of X [name removed] was totally unacceptable," it said.
After the publication of the report, Buckingham Palace said it was "very concerned" about the allegations and opened an investigation which they invited past and present staff to contribute to. The findings of the investigation were not made public.
The story, and its release ahead of the Oprah interview, was described at the time by Meghan's legal representative as a "calculated smear campaign based on misleading and harmful information."
Despite this, the story has not gone away, instead being regularly cited and repeated over the intervening years.
Prince Harry referenced the bullying allegations made towards his wife in his 2023 memoir, Spare. In it, he described the 2018 stories of unhappy staff "a work of fiction" and the 2021 Sunday Times bombshell as "egregious."
Here, Newsweek looks at what Prince Harry said about Meghan Markle's "bully" allegations, in his memoir:
'Work of Fiction'
In Spare, Harry recounted for readers the events which unfolded in Britain after he and Meghan returned from their celebrated tour of Australia and the South Pacific at the end of 2018.
The couple had drawn large crowds with excitement remaining high after the royal wedding and the announcement that Meghan was expecting the couple's first child.
After the couple's return to Britain, the prince said that their popularity on the tour had concerned members of the royal household and potentially the royal family. It was then that negative stories about Meghan appeared in the tabloids, including reports of her being "Duchess Difficult" and having made Princess Kate cry.
"Then a work of fiction about Meg making her staff miserable," he said about the stories. "Driving them too hard, committing the unpardonable sin of emailing people early in the morning. (She just happened to be up at that hour, trying to stay in touch with night-owl friends back in America—she didn't expect an instant reply.)
"She was also said to have driven our assistant to quit; in fact that assistant was asked to resign by Palace HR after we showed them evidence she'd traded on her position with Meg to get freebies. But because we couldn't speak publicly about the reasons for the assistant's departure, rumors filled the void. In many ways that was the true start of all the troubles.
"Shortly thereafter, the 'Duchess Difficult' narrative began appearing in all the papers."
'Vicious Campaign'
In a section of the book which discussed a conversation had between Harry, Prince William and the then-Prince Charles after the funeral of Prince Philip in April 2021, Harry told readers that he raised the bullying allegations that had been published before the interview with Oprah Winfrey. He suggested that the royal household had played some role in its release.
"Meg was apparently a bully—that was the latest vicious campaign they'd helped orchestrate," he told readers, before explaining that he and Meghan had formally refuted the claims to Buckingham Palace HR.
"It was so shocking, so egregious, that even after Meg and I demolished their lie with a twenty-five-page, evidence-filled report to Human Resources, I was going to have trouble simply shrugging that one off," he said.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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