“We’re nearly there,” Meghan Markle said last month about the arrival of the baby she and her husband, Prince Harry, are expecting in the coming weeks. And, looking back, what a pregnancy it’s been for the Duchess of Sussex. While some mothers-to-be elevate their swollen ankles and read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Meghan has spent most of the last nine months being ruthlessly and relentlessly picked apart by the British press—from the inevitable feud narrative with Kate Middleton to rumors she was “difficult” with her staff, and, of course, the mother of all “scandals”: the breathlessly reported “Showergate”, the outsize outcry over Meghan’s lavish, star-studded New York baby shower in February.

Meghan is hardly the first royal bride to be targeted by the tabloid media: Kate was mocked as “Waity Katie” and a commoner; Sarah Ferguson was skewered over her weight; and the constant paparazzi pursuit of Princess Diana—crowned “England’s rose”—in her later years is known all too well.

But the tone of stories about Meghan, mere months into her royal life, “is much more of an attack,” royal historian Marlene Koenig, author of Queen Victoria’s Descendants, told Vanity Fair. “It’s a pile-on.”

And for some royal-watchers—including Koenig and some of the very few women of color covering the House of Windsor—the level of vitriol lobbed at the biracial duchess during her pregnancy is rooted in the same systemic racism and sexism that has dogged her since she first began dating Harry in 2016. With the arrival of the baby, the natural tabloid life cycle may lead to a swing back to positive coverage for Meghan. But the awkward missteps and outright racism of the overwhelmingly white press corps during her pregnancy—including unsubtle nods to the “angry black woman” stereotype, and a certain discomfort with a woman of color finding a fairy-tale romance—leave much to be desired in the way of more thoughtful coverage of the biracial duchess. The media onslaught may be proof that modernizing the monarchy as an American woman of color could be more of an uphill battle than some fans previously hoped.

“You see it in the reporting about Meghan, but people don’t want to speak honestly about the real issue: they don’t believe a black woman has a place in the royal family,” said Maiysha Kai, managing editor of the Root’s fashion and beauty site, the Glow Up, who writes about Meghan. “There is this sense that she’s never going to be enough.”

It began in November 2016, when infamous headlines, like the MailOnline’s “Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton”, prompted Prince Harry to issue an unprecedented official statement calling out the “racial undertones of comment pieces” and “the outright sexism and racism of social-media trolls.” And it continues, through pieces like this sprawling Tatler retrospective on Meghan’s first year as an official royal, which noted that “staff at Kensington Palace are now calling her ‘Me-Gain,’” and the Mail on Sunday’s demonization of the duchess as “Hurricane Meghan”, a royal bridezilla who made Kate cry. Kai purposefully declined to dignify rumors about Meghan’s treatment of her staff with a response at the Root, because she believed they “fed into the ‘angry black woman’ narrative: Meghan’s a member of the royal family. Since when are any of them not supposed to be demanding?”

Take a simple comparison between Meghan and Kate, another modern royal bride. Kate reportedly burned her favorite Jo Malone Orange Blossom candles in Westminster Abbey before her wedding in 2011, and was celebrated for “a lovely idea” by a Brides editor; the Mail mentioned the choice without comment. But when Meghan reportedly asked for air fresheners at Windsor Castle before her wedding, the Mail quoted “insiders” who claimed royal household staff deemed it “not appropriate.”

The Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey is one journalist who is “adamant that race has not been a factor in press coverage” of Meghan, according to a CBC report published last month. And a representative for the Daily Mail said “There are absolutely no racist overtones to the Daily Mail’s coverage of the Duchess of Sussex.”

But, as Britt Stephens, content director of PopSugar’s celebrity and entertainment division, wrote in an op-ed published in December, African-American women “can read between the lines” of the “difficult” rumors. “Black women are doubly punished for exhibiting the traits that come from having such a relentless work ethic,” Stephens wrote. “Having ambition and drive make us ‘overbearing’; being assertive makes us ‘angry’; showing authority makes us ‘hostile’; and suggesting change makes us ‘rude,’ ‘demanding,’ or, even worse, ‘ungrateful.’”

Both Meghan and Kate are targets of trolls online—Meghan haters lobby for what they call “#Megxit”—so much so that Kensington Palace has instituted new social-media guidelines. But having now covered both Kate and Meghan’s pregnancies, “the level of vitriol Meghan gets is very different,” Stephens told Vanity Fair, noting that “coded words” in anti-Meghan stories— such as “disruptive” or “intimidating”—can amount to racist dog whistles, whether conscious or subconscious.

“Some of these stories come with inherent bias,” she adds, noting the lack of racial diversity in the journalists who cover the British royal family.

The coverage of Meghan can default to “the popular narrative of black women as hyper-sexual, crude, and unlovable,” Alyssa Cole, the award-winning author of the inclusive romance-novel series Reluctant Royals, told Vanity Fair. These stereotypes “hardwired into the societal imagination about black women, about our worth and desirability,” she says, are “what’s driving the daily nonsensical, racist henpecking of Meghan.”

After she and Harry announced their engagement in November 2017, Meghan went on to enjoy a wave of relatively positive press. Being biracial—and divorced and American—made Meghan a “breath of fresh air” in the overwhelmingly white monarchy. She was praised as an avowed, lifelong feminist—outlets shared the video of 11-year-old Meghan on Nick News, having successfully lobbied Procter & Gamble to change a sexist Ivory soap commercial, and her powerful speech at the 2015 U.N. Women conference in Beijing. On the eve of the royal wedding, her explosive popularity had sparked a “Meghan Effect,” with the dresses or jeans she wore swiftly selling out. Many reputable media outlets, especially in her native America, continue to cover Meghan as a progressive heroine and a budding style icon.

But when she announced her pregnancy in October 2018, the British tabloid claws came back out. While Kate’s first pregnancy was covered in a largely glowing fashion, from well-deserved sympathy for her chronic hyperemesis gravidarum to the frenzy of “royal baby mania”, Meghan’s has been dominated by negative narratives that drown out the excitement. After she attended the British Fashion Awards in December of last year, the Mail claimed that “Meghan’s appearances seem more flashy than other members of [the] royal family”—never mind that Kate and Prince William regularly attend the BAFTAs in full black tie. Running multiple photos of Meghan cupping her pregnant belly at an event, one Express headline claimed, “Meghan CAN’T STOP showing off,” adding that the duchess uses “SNEAKY tricks to flaunt her baby bump.”

The hubbub reminded Cole of what happened when another world-famous African-American woman—Beyoncé—was branded a “show-off,” as Cole put it, when she unveiled her second pregnancy beneath an instantly iconic flower arch on Instagram in 2017. “[The backlash was] basically white journalists mad that she dare appear to be happy and glowing,” Cole said. “Meanwhile, any pregnant white celebrity can hop on the cover of a magazine naked and cupping her belly.”

Whether some critics realize it or not, Cole believes the nitpicking at Meghan’s very happy, very public pregnancy is “what happens when society implicitly and explicitly tells us—through film, television, and literature—that ‘happily ever afters’ are only for certain people.”

The biggest media hubbub of all appeared to be “Showergate,” a celebrity-filled $200,000 baby shower at the Mark Hotel in Manhattan, hosted (and reportedly paid for) by her friend Serena Williams. The cost of the affair, and the media attention that swirled around it, led to some serious performative pearl-clutching, with critics, including The View co-host Abby Huntsman, calling the shower “tacky” and “Kardashian-style”; Meghan, an ambassador for U.N. Women and former global ambassador for World Vision who donated her baby-shower flowers to cancer patients around the city, was maligned as “thirsty” on Twitter.

Kai concedes the shower was “over the top” by royal standards, and that anti-Americanism also reared its head in the coverage, as baby showers are not de rigueur across the pond. But the outsize backlash also “comes back to this sense that black women aren’t supposed to function on this level,” Kai said.

A certain discomfort with people of color in lavish, traditionally white spaces has been well documented—look no further than a salesperson at Hermès in Paris profiling Oprah Winfrey herself, or balking at the Obamas’ luxe post-presidential vacations.

“We all want Meghan Markle to be some sort of timid woman. Well, she isn’t,” Kai said. “She’s outspoken. She’s a feminist. She’s a humanitarian. She’s very much in ownership of herself, but she happened to meet a royal man. And this requirement that she all of a sudden diminish herself is really telling, in terms of how we treat women and women of color.”

The same press corps that has stumbled through Meghan’s entrance into royalty will soon be covering the perhaps first person of color to be heir to the throne—Baby Sussex will be seventh in line, though unlikely to ever rule. More journalists of color covering Meghan would be a step toward progress, as the largely white press pool covering the first biracial duchess in modern British royal family history has, inevitably, led to blind spots, including overlooking her racial identity entirely.

“Color blindness serves no one,” Kai said. “Those in the media who are tasked with providing a critical lens have to be willing to turn that same critical lens on ourselves. If we are not honest about our biases, we are not able to report honestly.”

Even if the makeup of the royal press remains unchanged, the narrative around Meghan may soon shift, thanks to the natural life cycle of the British tabloids. Glimmers of positivity have already emerged with the #GlobalSussexBabyShower and excitement surrounding Meghan and Harry’s new Instagram feed.

“They build someone up and put them on a pedestal, and when they can’t find anything more to say, they start knocking them down,” said royal historian Coryne Hall, author of a forthcoming book on Queen Victoria. “Once the baby is born, the coverage of Meghan, “will go the other way again. She won’t do any wrong.”

Just imagine the photo of Harry, who has long gushed about his desire to be a father, holding his and Meghan’s bundle of joy, a full-circle moment for the global audience that has adored him since he was born, and rooted for him after the tragic loss of his mother. “We’ll have this lovely baby,” Hall said, a reminder that as much as the press has picked her apart, “[Meghan] makes Harry happy.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been updated and now includes comment from the Daily Mail.