Buckingham Palace he remained silent Tuesday morning as the world reacted to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s bomb interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Prince Charles was asked about his thoughts during a visit to an emerging COVID-19 vaccination site in London, but did not answer the question as criticism of family management and the family’s mental health royal exploded after the accusations of Prince Harry and Meghan.
As for the queen, the monarch would have been in crisis meetings on how to approach the interview.
“There will be no outrageous reaction from Buckingham Palace to this,” said Roya Nikkhah, a royal correspondent for The Sunday Times. “The Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, other members of the royal family are now ambushed, they are discussing with the helpers the best way to respond. They want to take their time.”
Nikkhah, who has covered the royal family for more than a decade, told CBS This Morning on Tuesday that the interview was “certainly a crisis” for the British monarchy.
“This interview, and I’ve seen it twice now, has thrown in a lot more questions than answers,” he said.
Condemning the interview’s allegations include the then pregnant Duchess of Sussex. baby Archie, reportedly approached the palace’s HR department with suicidal thoughts calling for mental health treatment, only to deviate for fear of the image he would project.
“I said I had never felt this way before and I need to go somewhere,” Meghan told Winfrey. “And they told me I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.”
The couple said a member of the royal family commented on the race of their then unborn son, holding “concerns and conversations about the darkness his skin could have when he was born”.
They also said the race played a factor in Meghan’s treatment by the Palace institution and the British press.
“I think the allegations, claims and statements that Harry and Meghan have painted a picture of a royal family with some difficult areas, things that are very difficult to deal with,” Nikkhah said.
When asked who had the conversation about their son’s skin color, both Harry and Meghan refused to name names. However, the prince told Winfrey yes she has not been the queen or Prince Philip, who is currently hospitalized at age 99.
Nikkhah said the palace would also not provide details on the matter.
“I don’t think that’s part of Buckingham Palace’s response,” he said. “I think it will be broader topics that have emerged from this interview … and possibly set the record on several things.”
He added, however, that it was a significant accusation that the palace “wanted to be taken very seriously”.
Harry’s father, who only looked at the reporter who asked him about the interview before he left, is “devastated” by his son’s statements to Winfrey, Nikkhah said.
“These comments will certainly change the nature of Harry’s relationship with the Prince of Wales, his father and the rest of the family,” he said.
And while Harry and Meghan seemed careful to talk only positively about Queen Elizabeth during the two-hour show, Nikkhah said Harry’s comments to previously unused clips shown on “CBS This Morning” on Monday put her “also on the shooting range.”
In the clip, Harry explains to Winfrey that he and Meghan had been invited to stay with the Queen on their Sandringham estate. However, when they arrived in London, her secretary informed Harry that the queen’s schedule was complete, according to her own personal assistant.
On the other hand, Nikkhah said that criticism of the royal family in general would also have been badly reflected in the monarch.
“When you make these kinds of statements about the royal family, the queen is the head of that family, you also make throws at the queen,” he said.
Despite the palace’s current silence, viewers in the UK have not been shy in forming opinions about the interview and, according to Nikkhah, “it is extremely divisive”.
“I just saw the results of a survey that just came out here, which shows that a lot of young people here really support Harry and Meghan in doing this interview,” he said. “And the old people are now firmly, behind the monarchy.”