Meghan Markle will soon be collecting a "significant" sum from Associated Newspapers, publisher to the Daily Mail, after she won her court case against the company in December.
Court documents seen by Harper's Bazaar confirm the news, but don't go into detail about the specific amount of damages the Duchess of Sussex can expect to receive. These damages are meant to imdemnify Markle for copyright infringement after the Mail published excerpts of private letters between her and her father.
We do, however, know that the duchess will also receive a symbolic amount of £1 for invasion of privacy.
As for this large, unspecified sum of money, a spokesperson for the royal told Bazaar that it "will be donated to an anti-bullying charity."
This choice of cause is a significant one, as the subject of bullying has come up again and again throughout Markle's handful of years as a duchess. When the Sussexes began legal proceedings against Associated Newspapers, Prince Harry released an open letter in which he accused the British media of bullying his wife in the same way they had done his late mother Princess Diana.
"There comes a point when the only thing to do is to stand up to this behaviour, because it destroys people and destroys lives," the duke wrote at the time. "Put simply, it is bullying, which scares and silences people. We all know this isn’t acceptable, at any level. We won’t and can’t believe in a world where there is no accountability for this."
Soon after, Markle herself told a journalist, "I really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a 'stiff upper lip.' I really tried, but I think that what that does internally is probably really damaging."
There has also been talk of Prince William allegedly bullying the Sussexes, thereby "driving them out"—and Markle has also been accused of bullying, though she has always denied the allegations.
In response to her court win, the duchess wrote in a statement, "From day one, I have treated this lawsuit as an important measure of right versus wrong. The defendant has treated it as a game with no rules. The longer they dragged it out, the more they could twist facts and manipulate the public (even during the appeal itself), making a straightforward case extraordinarily convoluted in order to generate more headlines and sell more newspapers—a model that rewards chaos above truth. In the nearly three years since this began, I have been patient in the face of deception, intimidating, and calculated attacks."
She continued, "Today, the courts ruled in my favor—again—cementing that The Mail on Sunday, owned by Lord Jonathan Rothermere, has broken the law. The courts have held the defendant to account, and my hope is that we all begin to do the same. Because as far removed as it may seem from your personal life, it's not. Tomorrow it could be you. These harmful practices don't happen once in a blue moon—they are a daily fail that divide us, and we all deserve better."
