Duchess of Sussex's court case 'will not target Royal Family' - but could expose inner workings of palace
The Duchess of Sussex's privacy case could see the palace's inner workings laid out before the courts, as sources say it will not target members of the Royal Family but the institution that left her feeling "undefended".
Documents filed this week place the behind-the-scenes mechanisms of Kensington Palace at the centre of the Duchess’s claim against the Mail on Sunday, as her legal team say her friends spoke out only to protect her after she felt “prohibited from defending herself”.
They raise the prospect that former or current staff could be called as witnesses for the High Court case, along with friends of the Duchess.
The Duchess herself will prepare a witness statement laying bare yet further details of a letter she wrote to her father, the arrangements she made for him to travel to Britain for her wedding, and the lengths she went to in attempts to stop the media from speaking to him.
Insiders fear the case will expose previously unknown details of her life in the Royal Family.
It will not, a source insisted, target individual members of the Royal Family or their relationship with the Sussexes, but the "institutional processes" friends feel "let her down".
The latest revelations, detailed in written answers provided to the Mail on Sunday’s legal team by the Duchess’s lawyers, continue the ongoing and very public fall-out of the Sussexes’ departure from the UK.
Next month, a biography of the Duke and Duchess promises to tell the “epic and true” story of the couple, “finally revealing why they chose to pursue a more independent path and the reasons behind their unprecedented decision to step away from their royal lives”.
Entitled Finding Freedom, it has been predicted to make uncomfortable reading inside the palace in parts, published in mid-August when the Royal Family are traditionally on a summer break and the Queen at Balmoral.
The Duchess is suing the Mail on Sunday on the grounds of breach of privacy, data protection and copyright, over the publication of parts of a handwritten letter to her father.
The newspaper has argued that the Duchess’s friends first brought the letter to public attention with an anonymous interview given to People magazine, in which it was raised for the first time.
On the question of why the five friends spoke, papers state the Duchess had been distressed by media reports, as well as an alleged Kensington Palace policy of responding "no comment" to stories about her.
That left her friends “rightly concerned for her welfare, specifically as she was pregnant, unprotected by the Institution, and prohibited from defending herself", it said.
Royal commentators yesterday speculated that the latest revelations would leave the family distressed, particularly by claims the Duchess felt unprotected during her pregnancy.
But a source said yesterday that the Duchess’s case would not target the Royal Family itself, but focus in part on the institution around them.
"It was the institutional process and culture, the operational behaviour, that let her down," the source said. "It is not targeted at individuals in the family at all.
"People are missing the fact that at its heart, this is a case against a newspaper for breaching the privacy of a woman writing to her father.
"This is not a case about the wider Royal Family or their relationships at all."
No decision has yet been made on who to call as witnesses, but it is understood palace staff familiar with its communications policy could be central to the Duchess's case.
The Duchess's team has already promised further details about her relationship with her father to come.
"The intention of the Letter was to make him stop his actions; it was not an attempt at reconciliation," they noted in one section.
"This will be amplified in the Claimant’s witness statement."
In further sections outlining how the then-Meghan Markle took steps to make sure her father could safely attend her wedding, and tried to "protect him from media intrusion", they say: "The claimant will explain in further detail in her witness statement".
Associated Newspapers have wholly denied all claims against them, particularly the suggestion that the letter was edited in any meaningful way.
A date for the court case against the Mail on Sunday has not yet been set but is unlikely to be before next year, with further written exchanges between legal teams still to come.
