‘They wanted hero and villain’: Meghan Markle says Kate Middleton made her cry and palace covered it up

Duchess says palace covered story up

Meghan Markle says her sister-in-law the Duchess of Cambridge made her cry, and it was not the other way around despite what was reported in the tabloids.

The Duchess of Sussex addressed the reports that she made Kate cry while speaking with Oprah Winfrey during their highly anticipated two-hour interview aired on Sunday evening in the US.

According to Meghan, the tabloid reports that accused the women of feuding over flower girl dresses before the royal wedding in 2018 were true to an extent, but it was the Duchess of Sussex who was made to cry.

“I don’t say that to be disparaging to anyone because it was a really hard week of the wedding and she was upset about something,” the duchess said. “A few days before the wedding, she was upset about something. Yes, the issue was correct about flower girl dresses.”

She said the timing of the issue was especially upsetting amid the uncertainty over whether her father would attend her wedding. He ultimately didn’t, after claiming to have suffered a heart attack.

Read more: Follow along with all the latest updates from Meghan’s interview with Oprah here

“I thought in the context of everything else going on in the days leading to the wedding, it didn’t make sense to not doing what everyone else was doing, which was being supportive,” Meghan said.

Following the altercation, which Meghan said “made me cry,” she told Winfrey that Kate “owned it and apologised” with a handwritten note and flowers.

“And she did what I would do if I knew that I hurt someone, right, to just take accountability for it,” the duchess said, adding that it isn’t fair to get into the details because Kate apologised.

“It wasn’t a confrontation, and I actually think it’s… I don’t think it’s fair to her to get into the details of that, because she apologised,” she said.

According to the Duchess of Sussex, she didn’t share the story to be “disparaging” to her sister-in-law, but rather because she hoped that “she would have wanted that corrected”.

“But also I think a lot of it that was fed into by the media - and, look, I would hope that she would have wanted that corrected, and maybe in the same way that the palace wouldn’t let anybody else negate it, they wouldn’t let her, because she’s a good person,” she said.

Read more: Trisha Goddard praised for ‘one sentence annihilation’ of Piers Morgan over racism on GMB

The hard part of the public reports of a feud, according to the duchess, was being blamed for “something that not only I didn’t do but what happened to me”.

“What was hard to get over was being blamed for something that not only I didn’t do but what happened to me and the people that were a part of my wedding going to my comms team, saying, I know this didn’t happen,” Meghan added. “Everyone in the institution knew it wasn’t true...”

As for why she seemed to be held to a different standard than Kate in the press, Meghan told Winfrey: “I don’t know why. I can see now what layers were at play there... They really seemed to want a narrative of a hero and a villain.”

The duchess’s admission comes after she and Prince Harry revealed that they were actually married three days before the royal wedding.

The Independent has contacted representatives for The Duchess of Cambridge for comment.