Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were seen at the polo club in Santa Barbara again on Friday. It’s been a pretty regular occurrence this spring, the most consistently visible the Sussexes have been in a while, though I’m not sure if that will continue since Harry’s team didn’t make the semi-finals. 

 

In other Sussex news though, this was the story on the weekend: 

You will recall, the bullying allegations came to light just days before Harry and Meghan’s Television Event of 2021 with Oprah Winfrey. It was suspect at the time because of the timing. Buckingham Palace, Clarence House, and Kensington Palace had no idea what Harry and Meghan would tell Oprah so the bullying claims seemed like a defense strike. Harry and Meghan vigorously denied the accusations and a few months later, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand reported in their book, Finding Freedom, that those accusations were actually rescinded. Obviously this detail was not given the energy of the initial reporting. 

 

Still, shortly after the bullying reports made headlines, it was announced that there would be an independent investigation conducted by an outside agency, which Meghan welcomed, even though she was not “invited to participate”. But now, apparently, the investigation has concluded and they’re not making it public. Per The Times: 

“An investigation into claims that the Duchess of Sussex bullied members of her staff has led to Buckingham Palace “improving the policies and procedures” in its HR department, according to royal sources. However, the findings from the highly sensitive inquiry, which was paid for privately by the Queen and conducted by an independent law firm, will never be published.

It is understood they will be kept under wraps to protect the privacy of those who took part and to limit tensions between the Sussexes and the palace. Courtiers have insisted the inquiry, which was launched in March last year, should “not be played out in public” to ensure those who took part felt “comfortable”. Some participants are deeply disappointed the report is being “buried”.

It is understood that the inquiry only recently concluded but those who took part have not been informed of its outcome which has caused upset.”

 

What…so NOW they’re trying to “limit tensions” between the Sussexes and the palace? That didn’t seem to be the priority when people deep inside the palace were leaking sh-t to the UK tabloids about Meghan’s alleged bridal dramas which also turned out to be not exactly how the British papers were characterising it. 

And the bullying story actually backfired a few days later when Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview finally aired and we heard Meghan talking about her mental health struggles, how she begged the Human Resources department for help…only to be told that they could do nothing for her, that “there’s nothing we can do to protect you, because you’re not a paid employee of the institution”. Meghan at the time was having suicidal thoughts, she was in distress, the tabloids were attacking her relentlessly and racistly, and she put the Firm’s HR on blast for being useless…

Which might be an experience you share with her if you work for a major corporation – because as we know, corporate HR works for corporate, not for you. It’s the same with the corporation known as the British Royal Family. 

To go back to Meghan, she told Oprah that she had the emails that she sent to HR, not surprisingly she kept the receipts. And they KNOW she has the receipts. So if they were doing some kind of investigation into an HR complaint, they should have expected that she could counter the allegations with evidence in support of her denial. Which she did in her lawsuit against the Daily Mail when the paper was assisted by Jason Knauf, former aide to Prince William and Kate, and she won that case, after providing all kinds of documentation that the court judged to be in direct contradiction to the Daily Mail and Jason Knauf’s claims against her. It's worth noting that Jason Knauf was also involved in this bullying story as he supposedly was the one who reported it. So if we’re talking about receipts and receipts that are related to Jason Knauf’s claims, we’ve seen before that Meghan has been able to answer successfully.

 

It would appear then that the British royals don’t want any receipts out there. More often than not these days, receipts don’t work in their favour. They certainly don’t work for Prince Andrew. So they’re doing as royals do, a familiar place for them – let’s just sweep it under the rug and hope it goes away. They come out wrong and strong against Meghan, without any real specifics about how she actually was a bully, and now they’re all like, never mind, nothing to see here, we’re not talking about this anymore. Whatever, sure, we enabled the character assassination that was attempted on her last year but we’re over it now, no big deal. 

So what exactly are they “burying”? Is it really that they want to mitigate any further attacks on Meghan (as IF) or is it that the evidence has exonerated her and they have to save face? Usually with this family, it’s door number two.