When Meghan Markle started dating Prince Harry, her future sister-in-law Kate Middleton turned her down and a member of royalty, according to revelations from a new book, disparagingly referred to her as “Harry’s showgirl”.
In “Seeking Freedom,” journalists Carolyn Durand and Omid Scobie paint a sympathetic picture of Markle, who was rejected by palace staff and Harry’s older brother, William, who once advised Harry to take his time. “to meet this girl.”
“In those last two words, ‘this girl,’ Harry heard the snobbish tone that was anathema to his approach to the world,” Duran and Scobie write in the second of three excerpts from the Times of London. “During her 10-year career in the military, outside the real bubble, she learned not to make rude judgments about people based on their accent, education, ethnicity, class, or profession.”
A source told the authors, “Harry was angry. Angry that his brother asked him something like that.
In the months after that conversation, the brothers barely spoke, and Harry’s invitations to visit his niece, Princess Charlotte, and nephew Prince George, began to sell out, according to the book.
Kate Middleton did little to help bridge the gap and rarely approached Markle to help her navigate the experience of being led into the royal fold.
“The flowers for her birthday were nice, but Meghan would have preferred Kate to keep an eye on her during the most difficult times with the press,” the authors say, describing the “awkward moments” between the two women. In one case, after Meghan and Harry started dating, they both went shopping on the same street. But Kate entered her own Land Rover, apparently avoiding Meghan.
“Meghan was disappointed that she and Kate had not linked because of their shared position, but she was not losing sleep over it,” the book says.
The friction between the two continued in the lead up to the May 2018 wedding when Middleton went to a wedding dress fit for the party. There were reports that Meghan had left Kate crying after a suitable bridesmaid for Princess Charlotte.
“Kate had just given birth to Prince Louis and was feeling quite emotional,” a source told the authors. Another source who was in the right place said the stories about tears were “baffling” for those who actually attended. The biggest problem came from the children at the royal wedding party who refused to sit still because of the accessories, the source said.
At the time, an aide to Kensington Palace publicly said that the two women, who were injured by the allegations, were “very different people.”
People close to Harry and Meghan began to wonder if rumors were spreading in the press to make Markle look bad, the authors say.
A story forced her to spray air freshener in the humid San Jorge Chapel before her wedding day. The authors say the truth is that the Chapel regularly used Diptyque air diffusers, which had been approved by everyone involved in the ceremony.
But continued conflict continued between the young men of royalty, and that was the reason why Harry decided to base his family in Windsor, away from his brother and his own family at Kensington Palace, a source told the authors.
“He wanted to get away from the fish tank that was Kensington Palace,” said the source. “Wherever you go, you are surrounded by staff and family. He was at a time in his life where he worked with his brother, made the foundations with his brother and lived with him. It was too much.”
But the change in direction did little to end the “competitive” and “miserable” atmosphere that permeated real households. There was still a deep mistrust of Markle, with a royal member saying to an attendant “she comes with a lot of luggage,” and another high-ranking courtier heard a colleague say, “There is something about her that I don’t trust. “
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