The 39-year-old, whose mother is Black and father is white, admitted to being clueless before marrying into royalty in 2018, and that after appealing for help but receiving none, she had suicidal thoughts and considered self-harm.

Meghan claimed that members of the royal family had openly expressed concerns about how dark her son Archie’s skin would be, that they had gone to extraordinary lengths to deny him a royal title, and that they had refused to provide him with security during a two-hour, highly anticipated interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Meghan and Harry both refused to disclose who had expressed such worries, but Harry claimed that his family had cut them off financially and that his father, Prince Charles, the British heir to the throne, had let him down by refusing to answer his phone calls at one time.

Meghan said that the conversations were with Harry, not her, “That was relayed to me from Harry, those were conversations that family had with him.”

Nobody within the royal household had raised a finger to defend Meghan or reconsider the decision on Archie’s protection, she alleged, when tabloid journalists began openly race-baiting her. She said she had felt completely unprotected from the tabloid onslaught and had been undercut by the “firm” – the apparatus that surrounds the royal family – which had repeatedly rejected her requests for assistance and discouraged her from leaving the house for months.

Meghan portrayed the British royal family as callous and deceitful, accusing Kate Middleton, the wife of her husband’s brother Prince William, of making her cry prior to her wedding.

Buckingham Palace was not expected to respond to the interview right away, given it aired in the early hours of Monday morning in the United Kingdom.

Meghan, who broke down in tears at one point and prompted Winfrey to do the same, added, “It was all happening just because I was breathing. I just didn’t want to be alive any more. That was a clear, real, frightening and constant thought.”

The declaration by Harry and Meghan in January 2020 that they would be stepping away from their royal positions threw the family into disarray. Buckingham Palace said the breakup will be permanent this year, as the pair starts a new life in the United States.

Meghan said, “I thought about it because they made me think about it,” when asked if she had thought about  her mixed heritage, American nationality, or the fact that she was divorced before joining the royal family.

Meghan told Oprah Winfrey that members of the royal family not only failed to protect her from false allegations, but also lied to protect others. “It was only once we were married and everything started to really worsen that I came to understand that not only was I not being protected but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family,” Meghan explained.

“There’s the family, and then there’s the people that are running the institution, those are two separate things, and it’s important to be able to compartmentalise that because the queen, for example, has always been wonderful to me.”

Meghan, who said she was not compensated for the interview, claimed she had no idea what she was getting herself into when she married into the British royalty and “went into it naively.”