Meghan Markle's Lawsuit Hangs Over Royal Racist Debate

The identity of the royal said by Meghan Markle to have expressed "concerns" about how dark her unborn child's skin might be is currently blocked from publication by the same law the duchess herself used against a tabloid newspaper.

Meghan told Oprah Winfrey her children were going to be denied police protection and linked it to discussions about their skin color, in what became the biggest bombshell of the biggest royal interview since Princess Diana's with BBC Panorama in 1995.

In the aftermath, King Charles III and Meghan exchanged letters discussing the issue in which, according to Endgame, by Omid Scobie, two royals are named.

However, Scobie says in the book that U.K. law prohibits him from revealing the identities of the pair, even though he knows who they are.

He wrote: "In the pages of these private letters, two identities were revealed. Laws in the United Kingdom prevent me from reporting who they were.

"The King, said sources, wanted his response to make clear to Meghan that he felt there was no ill will or casual prejudice present when the two people had spoken about his future grandson."

To complicate matters further, two names appeared in the Dutch translation of Scobie's book, which had to be pulled from sale as a result.

Scobie said it was a translation error and no English language version has been produced containing the names.

The underlying issue is, however, not so much defamation as privacy law, which dictates that material contained in private correspondence cannot be published.

And there is a very recent example of just how seriously British judges take that principal—Meghan's own lawsuit against The Mail on Sunday over a letter she sent her father Thomas Markle, begging him to stop talking to the media.

"I think the judge in this case would see it as private," Mark Stephens, of U.K. law firm Howard Kennedy, told Newsweek.

And he added that privacy rights exist whether the names in the Dutch version of the book are accurate or not: "We have privacy but we also have a concept called false privacy. You can say something false about somebody and it can still be private because it was a private family conversation.

"And even the royals are entitled to private family conversations. And so it doesn't matter whether it was true or false, it was captured by the law of privacy."

Meghan won her case against the Mail by summary judgement, meaning it was so strong there was no need for a trial, despite the newspaper arguing that publication of the letter was in the public interest.

The Mail's side argued it had the right to set the record straight after inaccurate references to the letter's contents were detailed in People.

The judgement at the Court of Appeal did not actually rule out the possibility publication of a small portion of the letter would have been lawful: "Essentially, whilst it might have been proportionate to disclose and publish a very small part of the Letter to rebut inaccuracies in the People Article, it was not necessary to deploy half the contents of the Letter as Associated Newspapers did."

So the fact the publisher Dey Street, an imprint of HarperCollins, appears to consider it unsafe even to publish the names alone demonstrates how seriously it is taking the legal backdrop.

In relation to the royal racism saga, a number of contradictory versions of events now exist, published in an array of books, and there has been much speculation on social media about the identity of the royal in question, meaning an accurate version would set the record straight.

However, Scobie and the publisher clearly felt British courts would consider such a move unlawful and they no doubt will have had the Mail's failure to make just such an argument against Meghan in their minds as they did.

"There is also an issue whether it was in fact racist," Stephens continued. "If you've got a situation where your grandparents are not used to discussing cultural, interracial issues you may be ham-fisted.

"But as a person who married a Jamaican woman I can say quite definitively that we were interested in just the same way as someone who married a redhead would be interested as to whether or not it would come out as a ginger.

"You are interested in those kinds of things, not in a one would be worse than the other kind of way. You're just curious."

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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.