Meghan Markle, the wife of British Royal Prince Harry, is again embroiled in controversy and scandal.

The Duchess of Sussex stands accused of plagiarizing the idea of a British children's book author for a proposed animated series on Netflix that never came to fruition, Breitbart reported.

The British author, who got lawyers involved and contemplated a lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement, is now speaking publicly about her deep disappointment with the American actress turned British Royal Family member.

Did Meghan Markle steal her idea?

In July 2021, Netflix announced plans for an animated children's series titled "Pearl" that the streaming service was involved in with Markle as part of its $100 million deal with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's company, Archewell Productions.

That news came as a shock to British author Mel Elliot, who at the time had already written three children's books in a series titled "Pearl Power" and had been working for a few years prior on her own idea of an animated TV series about her title character.

At first privately and now publicly, Elliot felt compelled to call out Markle over the "striking" similarities between the two ideas, including through letters sent by her attorneys, which appear to have prompted Netflix and Archewell Productions to quietly shelve their plans.

"The similarities were too great for me to ignore"

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Elliot said of Markle, "Meghan is a feminist who sticks up for other women, so I was disappointed and confused to see how similar Netflix's proposed show 'Pearl' was to my own Pearl Power who had been created seven years earlier."

"Of course, I can't know if anyone on her team had seen it and been inspired by it, but the similarities were too great for me to ignore," the author continued. "The world of arts and media are very competitive and I'm afraid it's quite common for powerful people to rip off the work of less well-known creatives -- although I'm not saying that's what happened here."

"What saddened me most is that, having brought the similarities between my Pearl and Meghan's Pearl to the attention of Netflix and Archewell, my objection was never acknowledged -- neither Netflix nor Archewell responded to me when I would have loved to have contributed and collaborated," Elliot added.

Netflix dropped planned series after lawyers warned of copyright infringement

Elliot began publishing in 2014 her "Pearl Power" books, which feature a young feminist girl discovering her way in the world, and in 2018 began working on adapting her character into an animated TV series that would have Pearl meet and go on adventures with famous feminist icons throughout modern history, according to the Daily Mail.

Remarkably, Netflix promoted in 2021 the planned "Pearl" series with Markle as executive producer as being about a little girl who "learns to step into her power and finds inspiration from influential women throughout history."

The author quickly alerted Netflix and Archewell to the stunning similarities in a personal letter but, after receiving no response, sent additional letters from her attorneys that raised the possibility of a copyright infringement lawsuit.

"The similarities between your proposed animation series and my client's work appear to be too many and too striking to be mere coincidence," one letter from the attorneys stated. "It also appears that there is a risk that your proposed series may infringe intellectual property rights belonging to my client and/or may give rise to a claim in passing off (or in the US, some form of unfair competition.)"

Elliot still heard nothing back, but notably, Netflix canceled the project less than a year after it was first announced. "I am glad that Meghan's 'Pearl' show was dropped, and I hope that I had something to do with it," she told the Daily Mail. "But what I really wanted was for it to have gone ahead, and for me to have been acknowledged or invited to work as a collaborator on the series. Pearl was my dream project and now, annoyingly, if I reprise my own creation, it's going to look like I have copied the idea from someone else."