Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal staff were left ‘feeling sick’ after the couple carried out loyalty tests on them, a royal author claims in a new book.
According to Times royal correspondent Valentine Low, staff were left ‘shaking’ and some were wracked by nerves before meetings with Meghan.
In his new book ‘Courtiers: the Hidden Power Behind the Crown,’ Mr. Low claimed that a ‘paranoid’ Prince Harry carried out ‘loyalty tests’ on Palace staff to make sure that they were ‘fighting for him.’
In the book, Mr. Low claimed that Harry would also look for signs of what he called ‘the Palace syndrome’ which showed royal staff becoming ‘institutionalized’ within the household.
The author also claims the Duke of Sussex identified one ‘key symptom’ as ‘giving in to the media,’ which he claims Harry had become ‘obsessed with’ even before he met the former actress.
This comes as Mr. Low told the ITV morning show how royal staff started calling themselves the ‘Sussex Survivors’ Club’ after working under the couple.
Meghan’s representatives have repeatedly denied the bullying claims and have previously said that it was the Duchess who was bullied.
They also claimed that the couple have been victims of a ‘calculated smear campaign.’
Appearing on Good Morning Britain, Mr. Low was asked by host Susanna Reid whether palace staff had created a ‘group’ called the ‘Sussex Survivors’ Club,’ to which he responded: “Absolutely, yes.”
“What did they survive?” Ms. Reid asked.
“I think it was a very difficult experience for some of them,” Mr. Low replied.
“As I revealed last year, there were allegations that Meghan bullied staff. People talked to me of people being completely destroyed,” Mr. Low continued.
“I’ve heard people at the time, faced with a possible encounter with Meghan, were saying things like ‘I feel sick’ or ‘I’m shaking’ – extraordinary things for an employee to say about the prospect of seeing their employer in half-an-hour.”
But the author also said that there was a way that the courtiers contributed to the couple’s ‘Megxit’ in 2020.
“There is a way in which the courtiers are to blame. So the people around them were doing their best, these were people who believed in Harry and Meghan and they wanted to help,” he went on.
“But there were signs early on, in the first year or so of their marriage, there were signs of how unhappy Harry and Meghan were.
“And no one really did anything about that. No one picked it up, no one flagged it up and there were no big discussions with the most senior courtiers in the institution.”
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