Just before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Oprah interview aired in March 2021, Kensington Palace dropped their huge smear package on Meghan specifically. This was the birth of the “bullying investigation” and all of the stories of how Meghan made KP employees sob constantly because she assigned them tasks to complete in a timely manner.
There was another, more disturbing and carefully worded smear within the oppo dump though: that in 2018, Meghan had purposefully worn diamond earrings gifted to her by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman when she knew that MBS had likely ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.
It was a pretty bold smear, and it came from not just KP, it came from Angela Kelly, the Queen’s dresser and keeper of the Royal Collection jewelry. Because… those Saudi earrings were a wedding gift, and as such, they belong to the Royal Collection, not Meghan personally.
The only way Meghan would have gotten those earrings was if they were given to her by Angela Kelly. Meghan and Harry also didn’t receive the earrings directly – it’s likely that Mohammed bin Salman gave the earrings to Charles and William, especially given that Charles and William met MBS in early 2018.
It’s also likely that Meghan was told that the earrings were a gift from the Saudi royal family in general, not MBS specifically. I bring all of this up because the story/smear about the earrings is also included in Valentine Low’s book, Courtiers.
Again, this is not hard: either the earrings belong to Meghan personally or they belong to the Royal Collection. Does Meghan still have the earrings? It is doubtful because Angela Kelly would have leaked that Meghan ran off with Royal Collection jewelry.
So, you have Meghan being given the earrings by Angela Kelly, who told her they were a wedding gift from the Saudi royal family. The MBS issue looks bad… because William and Charles had literally met with MBS in person just months before MBS ordered the assassination of Khashoggi.
All that being said, I’m completely open to having a conversation about the provenance of royal jewelry. Surely, if the Windsor’s are so concerned with Saudi blood diamonds, they’ll return those earrings Meghan wore?
They’ll probably need to return all of the other blood diamonds given to Camilla and the rest of the Windsor clan too. I mean, if Meghan’s earrings are so problematic, surely the rest of the Saudi gifts are too?
Perhaps there could be some kind of public audit of Royal Collection jewelry, specifically for gifts from Saudi Arabia that now need to be returned to the kingdom.
