Royal family in crisis after explosive interview

London (CNN)Britain's royal family was facing a once-in-a-generation crisis on Monday after Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, rocked the institution with a litany of devastating allegations in their eagerly awaited interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Over the course of the two-hour special, the couple -- who despite their royal split still sit five relatives away from the throne -- painted a picture of a family so stubbornly rooted in its ways that it left a young, bi-racial couple alone to fend off racist abuse and their own troubled mental health, forcing them into silence and ultimately leaving them with no option but to flee the palace's clutches.

Meghan said she was so isolated and lonely while working as a royal that she contemplated suicide, telling Winfrey she "just didn't want to be alive anymore." The couple were intensely critical of the way the institution treated them, and Meghan revealed a staggering allegation of racism from a member of the clan that threatens to throw its reputation into crisis.

Harry meanwhile admitted his relationships with his father and heir to the throne, Prince Charles, and his brother, Prince William, have come under severe strain in recent years, and suggested the institution may have planted stories in the media that cast him and Meghan in a negative light.