Camilla’s ‘fury’ at Meghan for releasing pictures on same day of her speech

The Duchess of Cornwall has been left furious after Meghan Markle broke a pledge not to overshadow her speech on domestic violence today, it has been reported.

Pictures of Meghan Markle at the National Theatre were released as Camilla launched the Women of the World Festival at the Southbank Centre in London.

Buckingham Palace had urged royal correspondents to focus on the Duchess of Cornwall’s engagement on Friday which had been long-planned and came on a day when there were no other major Royal engagements.  

But after images of Meghan’s secret visit to the National Theatre on Thursday were released – Camilla’s speech was quickly overshadowed. 

On top of this, Meghan was filmed visiting a comprehensive school in east London this afternoon on her second day back in the UK. 

Camilla was said to be ‘very upset’ at the release of the images, insiders told the Mirror.

Pictures showed her visiting a virtual reality technology at the theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio that aims to help people ‘better connect and empathise with each other as people, regardless of race, age or nationality.’

Hours after they were taken Meghan joined her husband Prince Harry at the Endeavour Fund Awards at Mansion House on their first joint royal engagement since the Megxit crisis began.

One well-placed insider said: ‘Camilla’s work is very important to her and her decision to highlight the scourge of domestic violence at the 10th ­anniversary of Women of the World was a carefully thought-out plan.

‘Of course it was known Harry and Meghan would be doing engagements this week, some privately, but everyone was in agreement that Camilla’s speech should take p­recedence. ­Unfortunately some people had other ideas.’ 

The move sparked anger within the palace after Meghan ‘refused to listen’ to the pleas of staff and not issue the images.

A Buckingham Palace email to new organisations had said: ‘Please note that media arrangements have been designed ­specifically with a view to allowing royal correspondents to focus on the Duchess of Cornwall’s engagement on Friday.’

Meghan’s photographs, taken by the Sussex’s wedding photographer Chris Allerton, were revealed in a post on the official Sussex Royal Instagram on Friday.  Meghan had delayed releasing them until after her appearance with Harry at the Endeavour Fund Awards.

The post said: ‘Yesterday, The Duchess of Sussex, Royal patron of the National Theatre, visited the Immersive Storytelling Studio in London, where emerging technology like Virtual Reality is being used to develop new forms of emotive storytelling.

‘Recently, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex also visited Stanford University where part of their learning journey included a virtual reality presentation that allows the user to experience life through another person’s point of view.

‘The goal of this method of virtual reality is to enable us to better connect and empathise with each other as people, regardless of race, age or nationality.’

‘The Duchess is pictured here with Nubiya Brandon and her hologram, featured in the National’s exhibition ‘All Kinds of Limbo’, which is currently being presented at the Tate Modern.’

In her speech today the Duchess of Cornwall spoke out against the ‘heinous’ problem of domestic abuse as she launched this year’s Women of the World Festival.

Camilla, who is president of the organisation, addressed the opening session of the three-day event at the Southbank Centre in London.

She called for men to join the conversation and use their voices alongside women to raise awareness of the issue.

The duchess said the ‘taboo’ subject must become part of the national conversation, quoting the hashtag #everyonesproblem.

She said: ‘The campaign to end domestic violence needs the voices of men as well as women, challenging the cultural, economic and political context in which we all experience the world.

‘We will all benefit from building a society which will simply not tolerate this heinous crime any longer.’

Camilla joked that, as someone in her 70s, she is ‘a somewhat ancient technophobe’ but said she does know about hashtags.

She added: ‘And I’m now using my very first one – #everyonesproblem. Domestic abuse is everyone’s problem and the solution must be, too.’

Encouraging survivors not to feel shame or blame, she praised the bravery of people she has met who have emerged as ‘the victors not the victims’ of such experiences.

She described domestic abuse as a complicated issue, being perpetrated and experienced by both genders, and urged society to look at education from a young age.

She said: ‘Young people don’t set out to become abusers. We need to teach our young men and women what healthy and loving relationships are, and that it is never OK to treat anyone with less than respect.’

One in four British women will suffer domestic violence in their lifetime and two women a week were killed by a current or former partner in England and Wales last year, Camilla said.

Ahead of the event, the duchess met domestic abuse survivors and campaigners, as well as Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, who was attending to support the event.

After her speech, Camilla listened to a panel discussion, in the name of the #everyonesproblem hashtag.

The conversation, chaired by WOW Foundation founder Jude Kelly, featured businesswoman, campaigner and domestic abuse survivor Gina Miller; chief executive of SafeLives charity Suzanne Jacob; Celia Peachey, whose mother was murdered by an ex-partner with a history of violence and domestic abuse; and Naomi Donald, who suffered abuse as a teenager and young woman.

Raising awareness of and tackling domestic abuse is an issue Camilla has spoken about in recent years.

At an engagement last month she said her first encounter with survivors at SafeLives in 2016 had sparked her interest in the problem, and had left her ‘both shocked and horrified by just how many thousands of people across the world live with it’.

From sparkling welcome to stormy goodbye: JAN MOIR was there cheering at Meghan’s first ever walkabout, and now, as the couple quit Britain, she gives her take on their troubled three-year journey 

By Jan Moir for the Daily Mail 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex returned to the UK this week, for a last waltz of official engagements before slipping their bonds as royals and starting a new life in the wild.

On Thursday night they clung together under an umbrella outside London’s Mansion House, an enraptured couple dappled with camera flashlights, looking utterly radiant in the rain.

Attending the Endeavour Fund Awards, Harry and Meghan seemed anointed with a faraway glamour, effortlessly exuding the kind of starpower that exceeds anything the House of Windsor could ever provide.

It became clear that they have already crossed the great divide, mutating before our eyes into molten celebrities instead of dusty old royals; no longer that lowly couple from Frogmore Cottage, forever constrained by protocol and stricture.

It was this boundary — the once impregnable chasm between celebrity and monarchy — that was the cause of so much friction between the Sussexes and their staff, between them and the Queen, and particularly between them and us, the bemused public.

If we wondered why their wedding pews were filled with VIPs and stars they barely knew instead of family and friends; if we bristled at being lectured on climate change and feminism by a pair of high-rolling hypocrites; if we pondered the wisdom of writing empowering messages on bananas to give to sex workers, or dared to comment on a Duchess’s lust for excess, we were labelled as racists and worse.

And as we rattled unhappily together along the zip wire of their short-term membership of the Firm, it wasn’t long before hostilities clouded the air like a swarm of angry bees.

Prince Harry, a man who is easily stung and forever on a fuming quest for respect and veneration, demanded a change in attitudes while refusing to accept that his own behaviour might be flawed. He fails to understand that respect is something to be earned, not insisted upon by royal command.

Amid all this tumult, no wonder the couple wanted to bolt, to be done with it all. To swap the sackcloth, the ashes and the tattered, battered Windsor ermine for the heady rush of spangles and liberty. Suddenly it all makes perfect sense.

Before reaching their decision in January to step back as senior royals, the Sussexes were doomed to a second-tier life of ribbon-cutting, bouquet-accepting and hand-shaking with minor dignitaries from Dullsville — and relegated to doing so forever in the shadow of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Now they are centre stage in their own production, the authors of a dazzling dramaturgy, the starring attraction, not the supporting players. It is no exaggeration to say that, in one bound, they have gone from Duke and Duchess Do-Good to perhaps the most famous couple in the world, which is no small feat and one to be admired.

The superb choreography of Megxit is a credit to their mutual zeal and organisational skills, give or take the occasional petulance over the use of the word ‘royal.’

For even as they made their daring escape from the sour scrutiny of courtiers and columnists, the Queen stepped in to make them aware of the constitutional limits of their act of usurpation.

Yet despite the rancour of the past year, one wishes them nothing but the best. How could we not? It was noticeable this week that Harry and Meghan haven’t looked so riotously happy since their engagement in November 2017, and the fairytale wedding that followed six months later.

That was back when everything seemed so hopeful, when the future brimmed with promise and good intent, when Meghan during her TV engagement interview was all ‘boots on the ground in the UK’ and ‘excited to just really get to know more about the different communities here’.

Sadly, that excitement was not to last. It was over quicker than you could say: ‘I’m ready for my close up, Mr Disney Executive.’

Indeed, the Sussexes’ tenure as a fully operational royal couple lasted less than a thousand days.

History will view this brief moment as perhaps not much more than a wrong stitch in the regal tapestry, a scratch on the imperial crown — while only time will tell if their reign in Hollywood lasts much longer.

Sometimes it is hard not to look at the dust and gas in the blaze of their comet tail and wonder: What the hell just happened?

Consider that they moved into Frogmore Cottage only at the beginning of April last year, after the property was upgraded by a series of taxpayer-funded refurbishments that cost £2.4 million. By the end of November they were gone, no doubt never to return in any meaningful way. The vegan paint in Archie’s new nursery barely had time to dry.

There are probably still some of Meghan’s fro-yos in the fridge. I imagine pristine hats left behind in their boxes to gather dust — she won’t be needing them any more — and wardrobes rustling with a forest of coathangers, each one mourning the delicious Ralph & Russo gowns and the excellent collection of coats that once hung there.

If the Sussexes leaving was a surprise, what they have left behind is even more shocking. In their wake an entire nation, a media industry and even the Royal Family themselves have been accused of institutionalised racism — mostly for having the temerity to criticise some of the more questionable decisions the couple has made.

This week, Wolf Hall author Hilary Mantel has claimed that the Duchess of Sussex is the victim of ‘abominable racism’ and anyone who thinks otherwise should ‘check their privilege’.

Hillary Clinton joined the party by stating that the UK’s treatment of Meghan has been ‘heartbreaking and wrong’.

These women are not alone in their views. Yesterday I watched a preview of a new documentary about the Duchess of Sussex with mounting horror. Escaping The Crown has been made by American cable channel Vice and premieres in the U.S. on March 10, before being shown on a Virgin channel here.

During the 60-minute special, ‘palace insiders’ — including Left- wing commentators such as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Ash Sarkar — fall over themselves to tell of the ‘tsunami of hate’ and ‘widespread abuse’ that have apparently dogged the Duchess since she first set a dainty foot on British soil.

‘I don’t know how you stay mentally resilient in the face of that onslaught, knowing that your in-laws are unsupportive,’ said Sarkar, while Miss Alibhai-Brown ventured the following: ‘I don’t think Meghan could have known she was entering a country which wasn’t necessarily going to accept her, and a family that is so dysfunctional. I think Britain thought it was ready to embrace a mixed race duchess — but it wasn’t.’

Of course, that is simply not true — but it is now the victim narrative Harry and Meghan will seed into their new lives in America, the tale they will spin into solid gold in interviews, in print and on coast-to-coast television shows fronted by new friends such as Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey.

Brace yourselves for repeat performances of this tale of woe, featuring an embattled Cinderella and her noble prince, heroically escaping the wickedness of an Old World apparently entrenched in prejudice and flecked with spite, as they strike out for the sunlit uplands and a ravishing waterside mansion in Canada.

However, one can wish them the happiest of endings, but still dispute this version of events.

For the truth is that, in the beginning, the UK welcomed Meghan with open arms and a big heart. I should know. I was there on that frosty morning in Nottingham in the winter of 2017, when she made her debut as a working royal.

I remember that giddy day like it was yesterday, which it almost is, to be fair. I was standing on the High Pavement in the city’s historic Lace Market, among the thousands of cheering fans who were chanting her name.

‘Hi, I’m Meghan,’ was how she introduced herself to everyone. She told one woman in the crowd: ‘I’ve been made so welcome and I can’t believe it.’ It was her first taste of the eccentricities of British royal life, as fans handed her endearingly absurd gifts including fridge magnets, garage flowers and Haribo sweets. Everyone adored her.

‘This seems to signal the launch of a new royal team of true equals, the like of which we have never seen before,’ I wrote in my report for the Daily Mail the next day, noting her ‘dazzling and confident debut’ and how it was a ‘pleasure to see a royal partner already so at ease with herself and her role’.

Other newspapers, broadcasters and magazines reported positively on what we were already calling the Markle Sparkle.

It was thrilling to see Harry, this poor, motherless son who had sometimes lost his way rather spectacularly, whose need for love and family was almost an open wound, finally settling down with the woman he loved.

Then there was the wedding and a beautiful honeymoon period for us all, in which we basked in their virtuous deeds and highly curated grab-bag of good causes.

However, the honeymoon ended rather sooner that anyone could have imagined, leading to the abdication in all but name which we now face today.

I would venture that the relationship between the Sussexes and the country soured not because of intolerance and bigotry, but more that people just grew tired of their increasingly woke sensibilities and brittle lectures about global warming, while taking private jets when no one was looking.

The hysterical subterfuge around the birth of Archie didn’t help, but it was their prerogative, as new parents and privacy-mad royals, to behave exactly as they pleased.

Yet the turning point for many — certainly for me — came in October last year, when the couple were interviewed by ITV’s Tom Bradby for a documentary called Harry & Meghan: An African Journey. It was filmed during their official visit to the continent.

Jaws dropped during the broadcast when the couple set out to prove that no one, not even those poor misfortunates living in dirt and poverty in Africa, had a monopoly on suffering.

They used the backdrop of some of the world’s poorest countries to complain about their own problems and first-world grievances, illustrating both the depth of their hurt and their lack of empathy.

Harry revealed he was still not over the death of his mother, while Meghan had a mantra.

‘It’s not enough to just survive something, right? That is not the point of life. You’ve got to thrive,’ she said. Indeed you do, but if you can bear witness to all of that misery and still stand in front of a camera, biting your lip or with a tear in your eye, as you complain that behind the ramparts your life is tough, then you are blind as to how you are perceived and tone deaf to the needs of others.

I can’t forget the appalled reader who emailed me saying that she had thrown a champagne-drenched garden party when the couple got married, but now ‘wouldn’t walk to the end of the street to see them’.

There are a few more engagements over the coming days before the curtain comes down for ever on their lives as royals. They will return to North America, to begin selling, not the monarchy any more, but themselves.

Is Harry really prepared to commercialise his family and his background in a world where every public appearance is harshly transactional?

He has already made a speech to bankers in a five-star Florida hotel, where he told guests he had been in therapy for seven years in a bid to deal with the trauma of losing his mother.

What else is he going to talk about, on his one-note samba never-ending tour? He’s a lovely guy, but he is not known for his intellect or oratorical skills.

Meanwhile, how soon can it be before there are magazine spreads featuring multiple photographs of baby Archie? It can’t have escaped the Sussexes’ attention that Brad and Angelina got more than £3 million for pictures of their children. And that images of their son, a symbol of love in a time of trouble, will be worth an awful lot more.

Yet I’ll say it again, I wish them nothing but the best. I have never bought into the myth that wicked Meghan stole our Harry away, and this was her plan all along. Instead she has merely provided him with an escape route to happiness, the prism through which his life can be reset and refracted.

Clearly, Harry felt compressed by the meat-and-potatoes drudge of royal life, compressed by the machinations of a system which demanded more of him than he was willing to give. Now he leaves all that to the Cambridges, whose load is heavier as a result.

Does he care? Obviously not. After fulfilling their final royal duties, Harry and Meghan will head West into the sunset, to take their place among the celebrity wranglers and powermongers of Hollywood, where they will hope to thrive. They are just two drifters, off to see the world — and there is such a lot of world to see.

All I hope for the future is that they are honest about the scope of their ambition and intent — and desist from blaming Britain for the bruising separation that has set them free.