A splashy new book that quotes palace staffers on their insights into the British royal family reveals that Kate Middleton actually found Meghan Markle “delightful” when the American TV actor first began dating Prince Harry. Both Kate and Prince William thought Harry’s intended wife “was a breath of fresh air,” with her friendly, affectionate nature and her confident, modernizing, can-do American attitudes on using a royal platform to do good in the world.
But tensions quickly emerged among everyone involved after Meghan realized that royal life wasn’t “all about castles, glittering balls and limitless wealth and ease,” writes Tom Quinn, in his book, “Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants,” a chapter of which is excerpted in the Times UK.
As one royal staff member told Quinn, “She expected a billionaire and she got a millionaire,” referring to Meghan having to reassess her assumptions “about this strange new family” when she learned that her new husband was only worth about $24 million.
Meghan also soon found herself in conflict with Kate and William’s more reserved nature, condescending senior aides and the entrenched palace hierarchy and its “pointless rules,” which meant she and Harry wouldn’t be “as central to things” as Kate and William, the future queen and king, Quinn reported. The new Duchess of Sussex also had to do what she was told and couldn’t realize her desire to follow in the late Princess Diana’s footsteps and become “the best-known and most loved member of the royal family,” Quinn wrote.
“She really did have a Messiah complex,” one of her former Kensington Palace staffers told Quinn.
LONDON, ENGLAND – MARCH 5: Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend a reception to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the investiture of the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace on March 5, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Dominic Lipinski – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
“I don’t mean that in a critical way because all her big ideas were about doing good,” the staffer continued. “She once said, ‘What Diana started, I want to finish,’ and we took that to mean she wanted to become a sort of globetrotting champion of the poor and the marginalized. She has managed to do this to some extent, but she really wanted to do it as a princess and with the full backing of the royal family, but on a part-time basis.”
But to be fair to Meghan, Quinn’s excerpt also offers a sympathetic view of the former TV actor’s challenges before and after she married Harry in May 2018, especially with the “snobbish” palace “old guard” allied against her. “They really had it in for Meghan and, to be fair to her, she really stood up to them,” one Kensington Palace source told Quinn.
The excerpt also complicates the idea of her being the “Duchess of Difficult,” one of the nicknames she was given. The “difficult” moniker also has come up in multiple reports on allegations that she bullied staff, both when she was a working member of the royal family and after she and Harry relocated to the United States in 2020 and started a private charitable foundation and signed multimillion-dollar deals with Spotify and Netflix to produce podcasts, movies and documentaries.
Among other things, Quinn quotes Harry’s former staffers who described King Charles III’s younger son as amiable but a bit “muddled” in life and clueless in how to prepare his wife for life inside the royal bubble. For another, Meghan had to deal with new royal relatives who could “be a sensitive bunch” and prone to acts of “ill temper,” including William, who had “his needier side” that his middle-class-born wife had to coddle.
Meghan “thought they behaved like babies,” especially when one saw another get a new perk.
With regard to how Meghan behaved with staff, Quinn reported that they were split into “for Meghan” and “against Meghan” camps, in an atmosphere “swirling with rumor, gossip and backbiting.” Ordinary staff liked that the Los Angeles-born duchess was feisty and wanted to change things for the better, one former member of the Kensington Palace communications team told Quinn.
But Meghan had her issues with servants, Quinn reported. She both loved having everything done for her by the domestic staff and also hated it, he said.
“Through absolutely no fault of her own, Meghan wasn’t always great with her staff — she just wasn’t used to it as Harry was,” one former staffer told Quinn. “So, one minute she would be really friendly, perhaps overfriendly, hugging staff and trying to make friends with them, and the next she would be irritated by the fact they wouldn’t respond instantly at all times of the day and night. At times it got so bad that I heard one of the senior staff mumble that Meghan should really have been employed in the palace kitchens.”
Quinn’s book shares a common observation: That Meghan and Kate could have been allies in that both women were outsiders who both came from non-aristocratic backgrounds. But the British Kate was soon put off by the native Californian’s “hug-everyone” approach and may have become aware of gossip that Meghan was “flirting” with William because she always gave him hugs and kissed his cheek when she bumped into him.
(L-R front row) Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Britain’s Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Britain’s Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Britain’s Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, with (L-R second row) Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain’s Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Britain’s Prince Andrew, Duke of York, are seated as they attend the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey in London on March 11, 2019. (Kirsty Wigglesworth / POOL / AFP)
Meghan also didn’t share Kate’s patience or desire to bide her time in adapting to royal life. As Quinn points out, Kate had to deal with snobbish senior courtiers and “backbiting gossipy criticism” when she first married William in 2011. Quinn quotes sources who said that Meghan thought Kate was “just too eager to please, too much a goody-two-shoes girl,” while Kate is someone “who slowly and carefully absorbs the atmosphere of a place, the relationship between people and the rules.”
“She doesn’t jump in straight away and try to change everything to suit her way of thinking,” a former Kensington Palace staffer said. “She bides her time and is very intelligent and intuitive about other people, what they do and how they behave.” Quinn’s sources said that William worked to help Kate avoid the problems his mother had in adapting to royal life, while Kate was “always happy” to accept advice from both lower staff and senior courtiers, “even though some of them were initially very snooty about her.”
“What Meghan saw as Kate being pushed around, Kate saw as an essential part of being a member of the royal family,” Quinn wrote.
