Meghan Calls Out 'Hysterical' Slur—Decades After It Was Thrown at Diana

Meghan Markle and the late Princess Diana had both been previously subjected to a trope that the Duchess of Sussex took aim at in her Spotify podcast.

The latest episode of Archetypes, which dropped on Tuesday, was titled "The Decoding of Crazy" and saw Meghan suggest that she has been smeared based on comments on her mental health.

Among the words she called out was "hysterical," a label variously pinned to both herself and Diana around three decades apart.

What Meghan Markle Said About the "Crazy" Trope

Meghan called out a series of words that she suggested were used to undermine women during her latest episode of Archetypes.

She said: "Raise your hand if you've ever been called 'crazy' or 'hysterical,' or what about 'nuts,' 'insane,' 'out of your mind,' 'completely irrational'? Okay, you get the point.

"Now, if we were all in the same room and could see each other, I think it would be pretty easy to see just how many of us have our hands up? By the way, me too."

And she took time out to focus on the word hysterical specifically, citing the fact the etymological root is the Greek word for womb and that it was a medical diagnosis up until 1980.

Meghan said: "Calling someone crazy or hysterical completely dismisses their experience.

"It minimizes what they're feeling and, you know, it doesn't stop there. It keeps going to the point where anyone who's been labeled it enough times can be gas-lit into thinking that they're actually unwell. Or sometimes worse. To the point where real issues of all kinds get ignored."

How Princess Diana's Mental Health Struggles Were Framed

In a now-famous 1995 interview, Princess Diana told the BBC about the impact of her depression on her marriage.

She said: "Well maybe I was the first person ever to be in this family who ever had a depression or was ever openly tearful. And obviously, that was daunting, because if you've never seen it before how do you support it?"

She added: "Well, it gave everybody a wonderful new label—'Diana's unstable' and 'Diana's mentally unbalanced.' And unfortunately, that seems to have stuck on and off over the years."

Andrew Morton described in his 1992 biography Diana: Her True Story how the princess was painted as "irrational, unreasonable and hysterical"—while newspapers quoted King Charles III's friends saying she was a "megalomaniac who wants to be at the top of the pile. She wants to be seen as the greatest woman in the world. Her behaviour is endangering the future of her marriage, the country and the monarchy itself."

More recently, biographer Tom Bower wrote in his 2018 book Rebel Prince that Queen Camilla had described Diana as a "mad cow."

He wrote: "In the guest's lavatory of Camilla's house, Ray Mill, were unflattering cartoons of Diana.

"'That mad cow,' said Camilla, echoing the view held by her and Charles's friends."

In another section, he suggested Charles, Camilla and assistant private secretary Mark Bolland had met to discuss depicting Diana as a hysteric.

Bower wrote: "Disregarding the resentment towards them, Charles, Camilla and Bolland met at Highgrove to construct another campaign. The first hurdle was to demythologize Diana by radically changing her image and portraying her as a manipulative hysteric."

How Meghan Has Been Described as 'Hysterical'

Meghan has herself been described as hysterical before, including in another of Bower's biographies.

In Revenge, the author said Meghan and Buckingham Palace had reacted negatively to a Vanity Fair cover story and interview with her, which was published in September 2017 and carried the headline: "She's Just Wild About Harry."

Bower wrote that the duchess contacted her PR representatives at agency Sunshine Sachs: "Within hours, Meghan called Ken Sunshine and Keleigh Thomas Morgan. Hysterically, she described Buckingham Palace's fury at 'Wild About Harry.'

"Sunshine Sachs, said Meghan, should have ensured that her comments about Harry were removed. Why wasn't the focus on her philanthropy and activism?"

Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.