Meghan and Harry: Will the real couple please stand up?

Amid the ongoing row between Britain’s tabloid newspapers and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the BBC’s royal correspondent asks: what do the latest developments say about the couple, and their fight to protect their privacy?

Lawyers for the Duchess of Sussex have painted a picture of a woman sorely wronged, as part of a privacy case she is bringing against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday.

Meghan brought the legal action after a handwritten letter she sent to her father, Thomas Markle, was published in the newspaper.

In the court papers filed on her behalf – in which Prince Harry has a walk-on part – the couple respond to Associated Newspapers’ defence of The Mail on Sunday’s publication of the letter.

Associated Newspapers suggested previously that Meghan had effectively given up her right to privacy by authorising her friends to talk to People magazine, and that when one of them mentioned the letter, that gave the Mail on Sunday the right to publish it.

But Meghan says straight out that she didn’t authorise her friends to speak to the magazine and would never have wanted news about the letter to be released.

And she points to the lack of any evidence that she authorised her friends to speak.

The text messages she and Harry sent her father Thomas in the days leading up to their wedding in May 2018 make clear the level of concern the couple had for a man who was clearly out of his depth as Fleet Street’s finest circled.

The UK tabloid media, particularly Associated Newspapers, are accused by Meghan of harassing, humiliating and manipulating a vulnerable Thomas Markle, causing “substantial damage” to the relationship between him and Meghan.

And at no point was Meghan approached for comment prior to publication, she says.

Whatever the legal rights and wrongs, it is hard at this point not to have sympathy with Meghan and Harry.

He, who sees his mother’s tortured relationship with the media being played out again. She, who sees her relationship with her father being shredded to sell papers. All on the eve of their wedding.

But on the same day as these court papers were published came the announcement from the couple that they will no longer deal with Britain’s bestselling newspapers. – even to the extent of refusing to confirm or deny their stories.

“No corroboration,” they say, with the Sun, the Mirror, the Express and the Mail, “and zero engagement”.

This isn’t, they say, about avoiding criticism. The media have every right to report and to comment. But it can’t, they say, be based on a lie. Which lie, or lies, they do not specify.

The couple made clear when they declared independence from the Royal Family in January that they wanted nothing more to do with the obligations of the “Royal rota” – the way that the Royal Family and the media organise coverage.

That was part of the deal – no more public money, no more royal duties, and in exchange the couple would no longer have to tell the press and cameras what they were up to.

There has still been no official confirmation that the couple are living in Los Angeles. On-the-record information about the couple from their spokespeople has been thin on the ground for months.

So how much changes for the papers affected?

Asked what difference the new policy would make to coverage, a senior source at one of Britain’s most popular papers said, curtly, “zero”.

The couple say they are not trying to avoid criticism. But by picking and choosing those outlets that they will talk to they inevitably open themselves up to that charge.

Will outlets now think twice about what they write or say, for fear that they will be next to be cut off? Is that what the couple want?

That’s why the Society of Editors condemned the move as “censorship”.

So will the real Duke and Duchess of Sussex please stand up?

There is the couple who provoke such sympathy in the court papers published today.

And there’s the couple who think now is the right time to exercise their quarrels with the bestselling papers of the nation that they have departed from.