Meghan Markle’s claim that the royals are not huggers has been proven wrong in new pictures. The Duchess of Sussex made the claim during the Harry and Meghan docuseries in December 2022 when speaking about the first time she met Prince William and Kate Middleton, saying hugs were “really jarring for a lot of Brits”.
But festive pictures of the Royal Family at Sandringham seem to have disproved her claims with one image showing Prince George being hugged by former World Cup-winning England rugby player Mike Tindall.
It came as Tindall, who is married Zara, a granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II via Princess Anne, joined the Prince and Princess of Wales as well as their children on the walk to St Mary Magdalene Church at Sandringham.
The picture of Tindall with his arm around George went viral on Twitter after it was liked more than 3,000 times and viewed more than 118,000 times, prompted Meghan’s comments to resurface.
The post was accompanied by a quote from the Duchess of Sussex, which read: “Like I was a hugger, always been a hugger, I didn’t realize that that is really jarring for the Brits.”
Her full comment from the Netflix series, which discusses the moment she met the Prince and Princess of Wales was: “When Will and Kate came over and I was meeting her for the first time I remember, I was in ripped jeans, I was barefoot.
“Like, I was a hugger, I have always been a hugger. I didn’t realize that is really jarring for a lot of Brits. I started to understand that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside.”
But Richard Jackson, Bishop of Hereford, gave a different impression of the royals during the BBC’s King Charles III: The Coronation Year documentary.
He said: “I think what struck me particularly is how extraordinarily affectionate they are.”
In his book Spare, Harry revealed that his brother also found Meghan’s hug uncomfortable.
He wrote: “I introduced Meg, who leaned in and gave him a hug, which completely freaked him out.
“He recoiled. Willy didn’t hug many strangers. Whereas Meg hugged most strangers. The moment was a classic collision of cultures, like flashlight-torch, which felt to me both funny and charming.
“Later, however, looking back, I wondered if it was more than that. Maybe Willy expected Meg to curtsy?”
