The young Meghan Markle, she said, “attended elite and expensive private schools, and dance and acting classes in Los Angeles paid for by her father”, as well as her college education “including tuition, rent and living expenses”.

After the Duchess graduated, papers claimed, Mr Markle paid for her apartment and other expenses “until she could afford to take care of herself” and arranged for her speaking part on General Hospital, the US soap opera, so she could apply for a union card.

The court papers said: “Defendant drove a perfectly operational Ford Explorer with functioning doors. Mr Markle regularly took Defendant to the finest and most expensive restaurants in Los Angeles.

“Mr Markle’s six-figure salary at ABC Television afforded Defendant an upper-middle class lifestyle, although it may now seem like a pittance to a ‘Duchess’ living in a $21 million Santa Barbara mansion with neighbors [sic.] like Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Rob Lowe and Ariana Grande.”

Ms Markle claimed that the Duchess’s statements and briefing note about her led to her receiving “hateful emails and messages on a regular basis”, with one injunction against a stalker from “one of the defendant’s zealous fans”. 

Her reputation is “so damaged that she has been unable to work in her chosen profession”, she claimed.

“Plaintiff has suffered actual damages in the form of lost employment, lost income from sales of her autobiography, emotional and mental distress, including anxiety and fear due to the threatening and violent emails and messages she receives regularly, and harm to her reputation and credibility,” papers filed on Thursday stated.