A royal expert is speaking out this week to claim that Meghan Markle always wanted to leave the royal family because her “heart was never in it.”

Royal author Phil Dampier told The Daily Express that Meghan and her husband Prince Harry made a series of excuses to justify leaving the royal family last year, even though they’d planned to do so all along.

“I don’t buy this that they didn’t help to protect Meghan and I don’t buy she was driven out by racism,” Dampier said. “I don’t think her heart was really in it. When you look at some of the projects she’s got involved with and they were seemingly planning a couple of years ago.”

“I personally think she never intended to stay in the royal family,” he added. “I’m afraid that blaming members of the royal family and courtiers and how they were treated is just an excuse for what they have done and to justify what they’ve done.”

During her bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey back in March, Meghan claimed that she was not given any support by the royal family after marrying Harry.

“There was no guidance,” she said. “Unlike what you see in the movies, there’s no class on how to speak, how to cross your legs, how to be royal. That was not offered to me. Even down to the National Anthem – no one thought to say ‘oh you’re American, you’re not gonna know that.’ So that’s me late at night Googling it.”

Meghan went on to make claims about the royal family and her 2 year-old son Archie.

“They didn’t want him to be a prince or princess, not knowing what the gender would be, which would be different from protocol, and said that he wasn’t going to receive security,” she said. “In those months when I was pregnant we have in tandem the conversation of, you won’t be given security, not gonna be given a title and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”

“The most important title I will ever have is Mom but the idea of our son not being safe and also the idea of the first member of color in this family not being titled in the same way that other grandchildren would be was,” she added.

Buckingham Palace has disputed many of the claims Meghan made.