BREAKING NEWS: Meghan Markle’s royal struggles laid bare – ‘egos in the way’
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex quit royal life in 2020.
Meghan Markle has not been a working royal since 2020 (Image: Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images)
Meghan Markle quit royal life with Prince Harry over six years ago, taking people across the world by surprise. While she had only been a working royal for less than two years, it is believed that the Duchess of Sussex struggled to adapt to royal life.
This is believed to be down to many different factors, with the main one being the fact she did not seem to understand how royal life truly worked. One veteran royal correspondent who covered her time as a working royal believes that there was also a “culture clash”, with Meghan used to being in the spotlight previously as an actress. Simon Vigar, one of Britain’s longest-serving royal correspondents, discussed this in his book The Four Wives of Windsor, looking at the reasons why Meghan’s time as a working royal was so short-lived.
He told Fox News Digital: “There was a culture clash there. I think it’s a crying shame. It was avoidable, and egos got in the way on both sides.
“I think she thought that there would be more control over events, public events, than there was. … The narrative now is that the British media was always against Harry and Meghan.
“That is not how I remember it, and many of my colleagues remember it.”
Meghan and Harry have said in the past they were ‘sad’ when leaving royal life (Image: Vito Amati/The David Foster Foundation via Getty Images)
The author then went on to call Harry and Meghan “great”, referring to the duchess as “an absolute natural” with the public.
However, the author said that he does not think the 45-year-old duchess understood how little control she would have in royal duty.
While this may have been the case, Harry and Meghan – who quit their royal duties in 2020 – did say in their 2022 Netflix docuseries “Harry and Meghan” that they would have done royal duty forever if they could have done without scrutiny, with Harry arguing that leaving royal life was the only way to keep his family safe.
Speaking about what it was like fulfilling their final royal engagements in the docuseries, Harry said: “We weren’t with the family. It was our opportunity to go out with a bang, to be honest.
“It never needed to be this way. We talked about this over and over again, sitting up late after these late-night engagements, saying ‘We would have carried on doing this for the rest of our lives’.”
