Meghan Markle, the ‘most trolled person in the entire world,’ returns to Instagram

Meghan Markle has returned to Instagram after seven years.

Before Markle married Prince Harry, a large part of her brand involved Instagram. But once she tied the knot and became a duchess, she had to give it up. Royals just don’t use Instagram in that way. (The royal Instagram accounts around at the moment are all for official photos and announcements.) Now, after leaving the royal family along with Harry back in 2020, she’s seen fit to return to the platform. Her first post on her new account, which is simply @meghan, is of her running down a Californian beach and writing “2025” in the sand. And the comments on the post are turned off.

This is significant because Markle once couldn’t appear on social media, or in the news, without a tirade of hate being rained down on her. Because she was Black, and an outspoken feminist, newspapers like the Daily Mail reveled in hurting her reputation more with every passing day. Rumors spread that she was a bully, that she was demanding, and that she’d made future queen Kate Middleton cry. (Markle claimed in her famous interview with Oprah Winfrey that, actually, Kate made her cry.) Markle seemingly couldn’t do a single thing right in the eyes of the British tabloids. Gradually she started to crack.

After giving birth to her and Harry’s first child—a period where the media slammed Markle for the simple action of cradling her baby bump—Markle had had enough. She and Harry upped and left the royal family, and that was that. Freed from a situation where she was expected to maintain stoicism at all times, Meghan started talking about the abuse she’d faced.

In 2020 Markle shared a distressing tidbit with the podcast Teenager Therapy. “I’m told that in 2019 I was the most trolled person in the entire world, male or female,” she said. “Now, eight months of that I wasn’t even visible, I was on maternity leave or with a baby. But what was able to just be manufactured and churned out, it’s almost unsurvivable, that’s so big, you can’t think of what that feels like.”

It clearly took a huge toll on her, and Markle was open about her mental health issues as she settled into life away from the royals. In her 2021 interview with Oprah, she talked about how she “didn’t want to be alive anymore,” while a member of the royal family. “I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help. I said that ‘I’ve never felt this way before, and I need to go somewhere,'” she remembered, “And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the [royal] institution.”

After going through everything she’s gone through, it’s good to see Markle doing well in her Instagram video. She has 850K followers on the platform so far, and hopefully they signal a new and happier chapter in her life.