What do the Palace concern revealing about 'Duchess Difficult'? Staff say they have been 'traumatised' by Meghan's behaviour. But her defenders say she simply had excessive standards.
Five o’clock in the morning is an unusual time for a member of the Royal Family to be issuing directions for staff. It smacks of panic and suggests an overly controlling nature. It is simply anti-social.
But in the summer time of 2018 junior personnel at Kensington Palace were becoming wearily familiar with these sunrise emails and texts from the newly married Duchess of Sussex.
Palace officers had been at first quick to provide reassurance: phase of Meghan’s working day intended connecting with contacts in the U.S., they said, when she had to be at her desk because of the time difference, therefore the early messages to staff. They also talked of ‘cultural differences’ in administration style. Americans, they suggested, were more direct.
Meanwhile, friends of the former actress have been gushing to People magazine that Meghan had continually prided herself on being a accurate boss. On one occasion, they related, she had paid for an ice cream stand to come to provide free treats for the staff. But over time these explanations appeared an increasing number of threadbare.



By October the glow of her and Prince Harry’s May wedding had long in view that faded and insiders had been overtly describing Meghan as ‘Duchess Difficult’.
This had nothing to do with American-style straight-talking, but as a substitute with what one figure advised was her sharp, adversarial manner. Stories began to flow into of secretaries being decreased to tears and the word ‘bully’, fairly or unfairly, was once being murmured about the duchess’s behaviour.
Just months in the past Buckingham Palace promised it would post its report into how the historical allegations of bullying were dealt with through officials. But how hole those pledges sound today. Instead of disclosing the steps taken to shield victims of the allegations, a curtain has been drawn over them.
The record is buried, the adjustments to Palace protocols unexplained. As the Mail suggested yesterday, the suspicion is that the promise of transparency has been sacrificed in order to placate the couple at the coronary heart of the sorry saga — Harry and Meghan.



Working for the royals has never been for the faint-hearted. The hours are long, the pay poor and the necessities of the job have put many a domestic relationship under pressure. At the equal time, one person’s bully is some other person’s annoying boss.
There is, however, a world of difference between the variety of exacting requirements Prince Charles is, for example, regarded to expect from his team and those rumours that started out circulating from within the Sussex household of youthful aides being humiliated.



It emerged that the duchess had faced bullying complaints from members of her staff. She used to be accused of using two aides out of the family and of undermining the self assurance of a 1/3 employee.
Almost 4 years ago, in the autumn of 2018, the developments took a sensational turn when Jason Knauf, the couple’s communications secretary at the time, submitted a formal criticism about the claims in an obvious bid to protect his staff. As the man in charge of the couple’s public image, Jason Knauf used to be so alarmed by means of what he had heard that he set it down in an email, writing: ‘I am very concerned that the duchess used to be able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. The treatment of (X) used to be totally unacceptable. The duchess seems intent on constantly having anyone in her sights. She is bullying (Y) and searching for to undermine her confidence. We have had report after record from people who have witnessed unacceptable behaviour in the direction of (Y).’



In the identical message, Mr Knauf expressed subject about the stress skilled by Samantha Cohen, the couple’s private secretary, a veteran of the Queen’s workplace and a notably regarded palace operator.
But for two-and-a-half years the bullying small print remained secret. It used to be solely after Harry and Meghan had end royal lifestyles and moved to California that the allegations had been made public. They have been posted in The Times simply days earlier than the couple sat down for their tell-all interview with America’s TV queen, Oprah Winfrey. In response, representatives for the duchess stated that it was once ‘being used with the aid of Buckingham Palace to peddle a absolutely false narrative based totally on misleading and hazardous misinformation’.









One former employee instructed the newspaper that they had been for my part ‘humiliated’ via the duchess. It used to be claimed that workforce would be reduced to tears with one aide telling a colleague in anticipation of a disagreement with the duchess: ‘I can’t give up shaking.’
An aide used to be stated announcing it felt ‘more like emotional cruelty and manipulation, which I guess should also be called bullying’.

Tags: Queen, Prince Charles, Camilla, Prince Louis, Prince William and Kate Middleton, Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Meghan, Lilibet


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