In arguably one of the biggest stretches to date, the Daily Mail has managed to relate The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s resignation to Meghan Markle. He resigned this week following a report that found the Church of England ‘covered up’ child sex abuse.

An independent Makin review into barrister John Smyth’s abuse of children and young men uncovered that he subjected his victims to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks across five decades in three countries – involving as many as 130 boys and young men.

It’s an abhorrent report to say the least and his crimes are said to have permanently marked the lives of his victims. It went on to conclude that Smyth might have been brought to justice sooner had Welby formally reported him to the police as soon as he became Archbishop in 2013. Instead, in 2018 Smyth died in Cape Town while still under investigation by Hampshire Police.

Most can therefore agree that Welby was right to resign. In his resignation letter he wrote, ‘The Makin Review has exposed the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuse of John Smyth. When I was informed in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrong that an appropriate resolution would follow.

‘It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and re-traumatising period between 2013 and 2024.’

Now, what on earth has any of this got to do with Meghan Markle? The headline of the tabloid story in question reads, ‘How Justin Welby “fell under Harry and Meghan’s spell”: As Archbishop of Canterbury resigns over “ignoring” prolific sex abuser’s crimes, how his friendship with the Sussexes raised questions about his judgement.’ The article is accompanied by photographs of Welby officiating on Prince Harry and Markle’s wedding day.

It’s rage bait at its finest – a baseless, venomous and utterly ludicrous headline that sparks debate and gives the publication the attention it is looking for. To save anyone the trouble of reading it in full, the article goes on to suggest that after officiating at their wedding, Welby befriended the couple and was suspiciously sympathetic towards Markle during her tumultuous final years living in the UK. This, according to the Daily Mail, was an early signifier of Welby’s poor judgement.

It’s not the first time Markle has been subjected to this kind of mistreatment by the media. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons why she and Harry decided to step down as senior working royals and move to the US with their son in 2020. The couple are currently still living in California with the addition of their daughter Lilibet.

In 2016, when the Sussexes first started dating, Markle was accused of ‘wearing the trousers’ in the relationship quite simply because she was photographed wearing trousers to the Endeavour Fund Awards. Once they got engaged in 2017 and news broke that Markle’s father would not be attending the wedding, the Daily Mail took it upon itself to publish the personal and private letters she had sent to her father asking him to stop exploiting their relationship – in fact, the editors put them on the front page. In this instance, Markle successfully won her claim that her privacy case against the paper and was paid £1 million in damages.

Of course, nothing changed once she got pregnant – during this time Markle was criticised for cradling her bump, sitting in the wrong position, wearing the wrong colour of nail polish and the wrong style of dress. She was even accused of ‘fuelling human rights abuses, drought and murder’, again by the Daily Mail, because she eats avocadoes.

The vitriol did not stop once the couple’s first child Archie was born either. Markle was scorned for not posing on the hospital steps immediately after giving birth, as is ‘royal protocol’. She was later blamed for Harry’s hair loss, which apparently seemed ‘a lot thinner’ since their wedding. When the pandemic struck, Markle was accused of not letting Harry visit his father in England when he contracted coronavirus, despite World Health Organisation guidance stating not to travel. And now she’s somehow involved in the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

And people wonder why she doesn’t live in the UK anymore – or why she won’t return to visit without extensive royal security. Earlier this year Harry said the UK was too dangerous for his wife to visit because of the risk of an ‘acid or knife attack’ inspired by negative tabloid stories. When she’s criticised for almost everything she does and blamed for things that have absolutely nothing to do with her, it’s a hard statement to disprove.

Regardless of what anyone thinks about Markle on a personal level, the abhorrent mistreatment she has faced at the hands of the press cannot be understated.

Speaking to Tom Brady in ITV’s documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey back in 2019, Markle recalled her friends telling her not to pursue a relationship with Harry because ‘the British tabloids will destroy your life’. In her interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021, she spoke about the suicidal thoughts she battled with during that period – her friends were nearly right.

It’s been four years since Markle fled the country altogether and she’s only returned a handful of times since, one of which was for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral. When will the British tabloids finally leave her alone?