A new book claims that King Charles III didn’t realize that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was biracial when he first met her, the New York Post reports.
Author Christopher Andersen makes the claim in his latest book, The King: The Life of Charles III, published Tuesday by Gallery Books.
Charles first met Meghan in 2016 shortly after his son, Prince Harry, began dating her. Charles, who found Meghan to be “absolutely delightful,” told a friend, “Not that it would have mattered at all, of course, but no, I didn’t realize that until later.” Meghan is the daughter of a Black mother and a White father.
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021, Meghan accused an unnamed member of the royal household of racism, saying the person had expressed concerns about the possible skin tone of Meghan and Harry’s son, Archie.
In his book, Andersen writes that the late Queen Elizabeth II was “utterly devoid of prejudice,” but that her husband, Prince Philip, “had used the N-word with some frequency” up until the 1970s, according to the Post.
Andersen’s book contains some other surprising revelations about Charles. Last week, advance reports on the book revealed Andersen’s claims that Charles travels with a childhood teddy bear and his own private chef, and that he has nursed crushes on singer Barbra Streisand and actor Joan Collins.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
