Toronto Star Referrer

Did she or didn’t she? Royals are mum

ROSIE DIMANNO TWITTER: @RDIMANNO

LONDON Oh, Meghan, you bossy-bully American parvenu prat, you!

Sources say.

But wait, that’s only an allegation, unconfirmed.

Rather like the claim the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made in their highly choreographed bombshell interview with Oprah, that a member of the Royal Family had made a racist remark about the potential skin colour of their pending child whilst in utero.

Not Queen Elizabeth II, they hastened to assure. Someone else whom they declined to identify. So just go ahead and slag ’em all anonymously and indiscriminately.

There have been rumours since the former Ms. Markle jumped the broom with Prince Harry in 2018, in a stupendous achievement of social climbing, from cable TV actress to genuine tiara, that all was not peachy in the upstairs-downstairs dynamics of the couple’s household — a household they abandoned when ditching their tedious lives as working members of the Firm, moving lock, stock and barrel to Meghan’s native California, Frogmore Cottage on the Queen’s Windsor estate relegated to a 10-bedroom piedà-terre for the rare occasions when they’re in England.

Like Her Majesty’s recent platinum jubilee celebrations, where the sovereign for the first time met her namesake greatgranddaughter Lilibet, cute-asa-button baby sister to Archie.

In fact, such was the stress the jacked-up Duchess purportedly caused her staff — servants — that the palace announced a year ago a formal probe would be conducted into claims Meghan’s “belittling” behaviour had driven two female personal assistants out of the domicile and “undermined” the confidence of a third.

At the time, Palace officials indicated that if the inquiry’s findings were to be made public, they would be included in this year’s Sovereign Grant report, an official annual review into the Queen’s public finances and the running of her vast household, which includes all the properties therein. That Sovereign’s Grant has now been published, and, nope, not a whisper of the interviews or a hint to whether the allegations had been substantiated.

“Buried!,” screamed the media, and not just the redtops.

Cushioning the duchess with silence, it can be deduced, by prioritizing peace in the family over placating an aggrieved workforce — just after Harry and his bro, Prince William, seem to have, at least superficially, bridged the schism caused by Meghan and a hubby being led around by his willy, the other one.

No member of the Royal Family had ever before been the subject of a formal complaint by staff, not even the flighty and emotionally scattered Princess of Wales, Diana. Yet this downstairs whinge was made to senior Palace management, with the discovery that, whoops, there was no HR policy for dealing with such a thing. Because either nobody had dared to grouse or there was nothing to gripe about in jobs that really don’t pay that well but pack considerable perq. and prestige.

Thus, casting about for a way to approach this predicament, it’s taken three years to arrive at a hush-hush denouement, except the public isn’t to know the what’s-it-all-about of it. Apparently because it’s more important to calm the waters and pull up the gate betwixt battling Houses of Windsorlite than risk the fragile armistice between the Sussexes and the Cambridges.

The upshot is that the focus of the inquiry was not on the substance of the claims made but rather on how those allegations were handled — blurring culpability with systemic failings. Which is how so many pacifying probes play out: Nobody is assigned blame for anything.

Just a procedural matter, move along, nothing to see. Ever.

Royal aides admitted on Wednesday that the finds will never be made public. Palace officials would confirm only that their investigation was over and “recommendations on our policy and procedures’ had been put forward.”

A bland statement, indeed, for conduct by the Duchess, which, according to reports back at the dawn of this scandal, had caused staff to bottle it “in tears,” with some likening their condition to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Which, of course, is bollocks, although there does seem to be a PTSD pandemic out there, with countless numbers — from (maybe) royal scullery maids to newspaper court reporters attesting mental health damaged by their experiences.

In any event, the Royal Household hired a third-party law firm, paid privately by the family — read the Queen — to investigate the matter. The Sussexes, to be clear, have always adamantly denied the allegations, denounced by the Duchess’s lawyers as “a calculated smear campaign.” Well, Meghan and Harry would know from a calculated smear campaign.

A year ago, a palace spokesperson made it abundantly clear that the specifics of the allegations would not be put under the microscope, so this doesn’t come as a surprise. But apparently even the complainants have not be told about the investigation’s conclusions and what, or if, corrective steps will be taken.

Its contents can be kept private because no taxpayer funds were used. “There is nothing on this in the report,” said Sir Michael Stevens, master of the Privy Purse. “As we said last year, this work was undertaken privately and had not Sovereign Grant money spent on it.”

Very clever workaround. The Duchess should be grateful. And, we can give thanks, the Queen is running out of greatgrand-spawn (or creepy aging sons, for that matter) to screw up.

When the claims of Meghan witchiness first arose, just before the couple, expecting Child No. 2, sat down for their tête-à-tête-à-tête with Oprah, blindsiding their blue-blood relations with tales of the Duchess’s suffering in the bell jar of royalty, her thoughts of suicide and blah-blah-blah, the palace said it took such claims seriously and vowed to investigate vigorously.

Yet only a tiny number of royal employees, former and present, were interviewed, including two of Meghan’s former personal assistants, another senior female member of staff and cabinet secretary Simon Case, who was then working as Prince William’s private secretary, after a concerned Jason Knauf, press secretary to Harry and Meghan, brought the allegations to the attention of senior household staff.

Sources say. OK, The Daily Mail says.

The same Daily Mail — love it or loathe it (I do both) — which, this week, broke a front-page story about Prince Charles accepting bags that contained million of euros in cash during meeting with a Qatari sheikh, former prime minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani. Makes the heir to the British throne sound like a bagman for the Mafia or a narco-delivery service.

Actually, handed over in a suitcase on one occasion, in a holdall on another, and in Fortum & Mason carrier bags, the upmarket department store that holds a royal warrant to supply the Prince’s household with groceries, when Charlies isn’t picking his own garden-plot veggies at Highgrove.

The meetings are said to have taken place in 2015, and the cash, about $3.15 million in U.S. dollars, was reportedly passed on to two of the prince’s private advisers, who hand-counted the money.

Nothing illegal about the transaction, just unsavoury. Although a Clarence House spokesperson has rushed in to reverse-spin, explaining the moolah was “passed over immediately one of the Prince’s charities who carried out the appropriate covenants and assured us that all the corrected processes were followed.”

The Prince said, privately: “Bugger the press!” Sources say.

Nah, I just made that up.

‘‘ There is nothing on this in the report. As we said last year, this work was undertaken privately and had not Sovereign Grant money spent on it.

MICHAEL STEVENS MASTER OF THE PRIVY PURSE

NEWS

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2022-07-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-07-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://thestarepaper.pressreader.com/article/281496459977984

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