Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is shutting down rumors ahead of King Charles III‘s coronation.
A spokesperson for the former Meghan Markle recently responded to a Telegraph report alleging that the duchess expressed concerns about unconscious bias within the royal family in a 2021 letter to the now-monarch.
The report insinuated that Meghan opted out of the king’s upcoming coronation possibly because she “feels she has not received a satisfactory response to her concerns.”
“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,” a rep for the duchess said Sunday in a statement provided to the Los Angeles Times.
“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.”
According to the Telegraph report, Meghan wrote to Charles about unconscious bias shortly after telling Oprah Winfrey in a TV interview that the royal family had “concerns and conversations” about the skin color of her and Prince Harry‘s eldest child, Prince Archie, before he was born.
Charles reportedly reached out to Meghan in the wake of the interview and said he was disappointed that the duke and duchess felt the need to publicly level such damaging allegations against the Crown. She reportedly replied and said that she wasn’t trying to accuse anyone in the family of being a racist by raising awareness about unconscious bias.
The letters reportedly identify the senior member of the family who remarked on Archie’s skin color, while both Charles and Meghan reportedly agreed that the person did not act with malice.
Following the Winfrey interview, Buckingham Palace said in a public statement that the “whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan.”
“The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning,” the statement continued. “While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”
Earlier this month, the palace confirmed that Harry will attend the coronation of his father, Charles, without Meghan — who will remain in California with the couple’s two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. The date of the coronation coincides with Archie’s fourth birthday.
The coronation is set to take place at Westminster Abbey on May 6.
