Prince Harry has told Oprah Winfrey that his wife Meghan Markle was only prevented from killing herself by concern over him ‘losing another woman in my life’.
In his new docuseries, The Me You Can’t See, Harry opens up about the night Markle told him she was suicidal.
The pair had been married for less than a year and she was pregnant with their son Archie when, in January 2019, she told him she was deeply depressed.
Markle first revealed the trauma of that night in her March interview with Winfrey.
‘The thing that stopped her from seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that had happened to my mum and to now to be put in a position of losing another woman in my life — with a baby inside of her, our baby,’ he said.
‘The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought.
‘She hadn’t ‘lost it.’ She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or through alcohol.
‘She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane. Yet in the quiet of night, these thoughts woke her up.’
Harry said that he did not know how to handle her confession.
‘I’m somewhat ashamed of the way that I dealt with them,’ he said.
‘And of course, because of the system that we were in and the responsibilities and the duties that we had, we had a quick cuddle and then we had to get changed to jump in a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event. Then step out into a wall of cameras and pretend as though everything’s okay.
‘There wasn’t an option to say, ‘you know what, tonight, we’re not going to go’ because just imagine the stories that come from that.’
He said that the night was, for him, a revelation. He realized that they could not continue the way they were.
‘While my wife and I were in those chairs, gripping each other’s hand, the moment the lights go down, Meghan starts crying. I’m feeling sorry for her, but I’m also really angry with myself that we’re stuck in this situation,’ Harry said.
‘I was ashamed that it got this bad. I was ashamed to go to my family.
‘Because to be honest with you, like a lot of other people my age could probably relate to, I know that I’m not gonna get from my family what I need.
‘I then had a son who I’d far rather be solely focused on, rather than every time I look into his eyes, wondering whether my wife is going to end up like my mother and I’m going to have to look after him myself.’
The prince, whose new series airs on Apple TV+ from May 20, told Winfrey he feared ‘history repeating itself’ after he began dating Markle , and was reminded of his mother being pursued to her death while she was dating ‘someone who wasn’t white’.
Diana, the princess of Wales, died in 1997 alongside Egyptian film producer Dodi Al Fayed, who she had been dating for several months.
Harry said he felt there were parallels in their stories when he followed in his mother’s footsteps and began dating a person of color.
‘My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white,’ he said.
‘And now look what’s happened.
‘It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life. Like, the list is growing.
‘And it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry.’
