Meghan Markle had one big problem when she was working as a member of the Royal Family, an ex-staffer has claimed.
The Duchess of Sussex married into the Firm in 2018 following her lavish wedding to Prince Harry.
Meghan worked as a royal until early 2020, when she stepped down along with the Duke of Sussex and moved across the pond, where they have now settled.
According to a new royal book, there was one aspect of royal life Meghan struggled to get into – letting staff know of her movements.
Tom Quinn’s Yes Ma’am – set to be released later this month – features quotes from a former staffer at Kensington Palace, who claimed the duchess “hated” that she had to let other people know of her movements.
The Palace insider told Mr Quinn in the book, seen by our sister publication the Mirror: “Meghan quite rightly hated the fact that when she was in Nottingham Cottage, she had to agree well in advance what time she might leave for an appointment or an event and she had to make sure she didn’t leave at the same time as, or clash in any way with, a more senior royal leaving the palace.”
Another royal insider claimed that Meghan’s plan to “do her own thing” was never going to be “accepted” by staff.
They said: “Meghan had plans for her life as a working royal that were not going to be part of a general strategy agreed with the staff – she just wanted to do her own thing.
“Which is fair enough if you’re not a member of a tightly controlled institution, but it was never going to be acceptable that Meghan should outshine Princess Anne, Prince Charles [as he then was] and Elizabeth the Queen.
“She didn’t understand that when you join the Royal Family, you don’t do as you please, you do as you’re told.”
They added: “Quite rightly, Elizabeth always had to be the centre and focus of everything the Royal Family did and I don’t think Meghan understood why that had to make her do things she didn’t want to do.
Elsewhere, the author claimed that the duchess had to allegedly “reassess” her “assumptions” after she found one that Prince Harry wasn’t a billionaire.
In segments serialised in The Times, the author is said to have claimed that when the duchess “discovered” that Harry was “only worth about £20 million, she realised she needed to reassess other assumptions she’d made about this strange new family”.
He wrote: “Harry, it seemed, had spent little time explaining exactly how strange and demanding his family really are.”
The book claimed: “Meghan Markle had a typically American view of the Royal Family before she joined it — for her, life was all about castles, glittering balls and limitless wealth and ease.
“As one royal staff member put it, ‘She expected a billionaire and she got a millionaire.'”
Mr Quinn said that Meghan’s alleged assumption was “perfectly understandable” given her American background.
He wrote: “Above all the modern Royal Family is a celebrity family, albeit one with a strangely 18th-century lifestyle — the palaces and the carriages, the enormous wealth — all underpinned by hierarchies, tradition and vast teams of staff from every social class.”
