If it wasn’t obvious that the new report in The Times, featuring information provided by royal aides, was part of a smear campaign against Meghan Markle, the story about the earrings, packaged in along with allegations that she bullied staff members, pretty much drives the point home. It has nothing to do with anything. If you’re team royal, you could argue that the bullying story could serve as a rebuttal against whatever Meghan may say about the royals not welcoming her during her interview with Oprah, so for them, I suppose they could justify it in that context. But the earrings? The earrings are purely for the purpose of character assassination. It’s low.
And it’s also misleading. Meghan wore the earrings in Fiji during the Sussexes’ 2018 tour three weeks after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. According to The Times, they were a gift from Mohammed bin Salman. What The Times doesn’t include in their report though is that the CIA didn’t release the findings from the investigation into the murder, confirming MBS’s ordered it, until after Meghan wore the earrings. Not that most people didn’t already suspect MBS, obviously, but if you’re going to include the three weeks after the murder detail, you may as well complete the information so as to give the full picture of what everyone would and wouldn’t have been aware of at the time. Also not included was an explanation for how jewellery is managed in the British royal family.
Meghan didn’t just have those earrings sitting in a drawer in her closet like a regular person. That’s not how royal jewels and royal gifts work. They’re catalogued. They’re kept in fancy storage. Like the fanciest library ever. PEOPLE has a more detailed explanation of this:
“PEOPLE has learned that the earrings were gifted on March 7, 2018, from the Saudi Arabian royal family. Neither the Duke nor the Duchess of Sussex was present when they were given at Buckingham Palace, and as is protocol for any wedding gift of this nature, they remain property of The Crown.”
So for Meghan to wear the earrings, a few other people would have had to know about it, and consider it. Again, that’s how the royals operate – decisions like this go through multiple levels. She’s not the only person who has to wear this “scandal”. There are advisors in place specifically to address which jewels should be worn and which ones shouldn’t. Remember all that drama about her wedding tiara? The whole point of that dust-up was that Meghan wasn’t allowed to just waltz in there and demand the tiara of her choice. And it’s unlikely that she rocked up to the jewel room and did that with the earrings. With all the gifts that the Sussexes would have received from around the world for their wedding, there’s also the matter of whether or not she was keeping track of all of it, especially when these kinds of gifts are kept somewhere else. So was she not properly briefed about these earrings and their origins? Initially, at the time of the tour, the explanation that the earrings were on loan from a jeweller – the Crown jeweller, as we know now. Did the people who manage the jewels not do their homework and fail to advise her properly? Did she know and just not care and expect to get away with it? That seems to be the suggestion from these royal aides contributing to The Times’ story but, again, if that’s what went down, they’re not filling it in either. And would these vipers miss an opportunity to tell us about the time Meghan wanted to wear these earrings so badly she overlooked a murder?! Like, the way they’re going about this attack on her, if they could make that direct line, they would. And they haven’t here. Which is why this situation is so bizarre. They seem to be setting her up to take the fall on her own for these earrings but it’s really hard to believe that she was the only one involved in this earring mystery.
It is really something though that they decided to dig this up and throw it out there ahead of the Oprah interview. Something really filthy. And if they’re resorting to this kind of filth, they must be panicked as f-ck about what Harry and Meghan might say. Which of course only amplifies interest in the Oprah special. If the royals are this pressed, how bad is it going to be?
