The royal drama unfolds just weeks before Charles' coronation ceremony.
The contents of a letter purportedly written by Meghan Markle and sent to King Charles III -- in which she identified a "senior" royal who expressed "concerns" about the color of her son, Archie's, skin -- found their way into a UK newspaper and sent royal correspondents into a frenzy, culminating with accusations Meghan leaked the letter. But a rep for the Duchess of Sussex tells ET that such a suggestion is "false and frankly ridiculous."
The royal drama unfolded after The Telegraph on Friday night posted a story claiming Charles wrote to Meghan following her and Prince Harry's March 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey. The outlet reported that Meghan wrote back to the then-Prince of Wales and raised concerns about "unconscious bias" and racism, after Meghan revealed to Oprah that there were "concerns and conversations about how dark [Archie's] skin might be when he's born."
The Telegraph reported that "it is understood that both the King and the Duchess acknowledged that the individual's remark was not made with malice."
After the report was published, royal reporters and royal fans took to social media and accused Meghan of leaking the letter. Most notably, the royal correspondent for The Sunday Times, Valentine Low, went as far as asking on Twitter, "The question is, why does the Sussex camp want to leak all this? Is it Meghan trying to prevent an outbreak of peace between Harry and his father? And intriguing that they should resort to the sort of briefing that they condemned in others."
Low backtracked those comments and tweeted, "Given that legal letters have been sent by the Sussexes' lawyers as well as the palace's since the story was published, it seems I was wrong in assuming that it came from the Sussex camp. Sorry to all about that. But even more intriguing!"
In a statement to ET, a spokesperson for Meghan says, "The Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago." The spokesperson added, "Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating."
The latest royal upheaval comes just weeks before Charles' coronation ceremony on May 6 in London. Harry will be in attendance without Meghan, who will instead be staying at their home in Montecito, California, with the couple's two children, son Archie, who is turning 4 on the day of the coronation, and daughter Lilibet, 1.
A source close to the family also told ET that Prince William has "no interest" in speaking to the Spare author ahead of the festivities.
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