Prince Harry has compared wife Meghan Markle to his late mother Princess Diana on a number of occasions. And he was left ‘disappointed’ when his own family failed to see any similarities between the pair, according to a royal author.
Harry and Meghan started dating in 2016 – and the following year, she famously appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, along with the headline ‘Wild About Harry’. It raised eyebrows amongst Harry’s inner circle, including Prince William and Princess Kate.
Writing in his book, ‘Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors’, Tom Bower explained: “Since the Vanity Fair article had increased the Cambridges’ suspicion of Meghan, the actress discovered that her neighbours in Kensington Palace had even less time for her.
“By then, Harry had introduced Meghan to Diana’s two sisters, Jane and Sarah, and her best friend Julia Samuel. Harry assumed that Diana’s family and friends would see a similarity between Diana and his fiancee. Both, he said, shared the same problems. He was disappointed. No one agreed that his vulnerable mother had anything in common with his girlfriend. More discomforting for him, they thought Meghan would not fit in with the Royal Family.”
The author continued: “Their unease was voiced by Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother. At William’s request, Spencer weighed in. Three times married, Spencer cautioned his nephew to reconsider his haste towards marriage. His advice provoked a bitter reaction. “‘This was going to be really hard,’ Harry would later reflect on establishing Meghan’s place in the family.” While he is all but estranged from the royal family, Harry does seem to have resolved any issues with his uncle.
Charles and his sister Lady Jane turned up to support Harry when he returned to the UK to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Invictus Games. All members of the Royal Family decided to stay away.
Meanwhile, Harry also spoke about the ‘similarities’ between his wife and his late mother in the couple’s Netflix docuseries. Facing the camera, the Duke remarked: “So much of what Meghan is and how she is, is so similar to my mum. She has the same compassion, the same empathy, the same confidence. She has this warmth about her.”
He continued: “I accept that there will be people around the world who fundamentally disagree with what I’ve done [breaking away from the Royal Family] and how I’ve done it, but I knew I had to do everything I could to protect my family, I didn’t want history to repeat itself.”
He later drew further parallels between the two women. “First time that the penny dropped for her, M and I spent the night in a room in Buckingham Palace after an event where every single member of the family had been, including the Queen,” Harry said.
“The next morning, while eating breakfast together, the couple spotted a UK newspaper. And on the front page of The Telegraph, Meghan.”
“I went, ‘Oh, my god,’” Meghan recalled. “She was like, ‘But it’s not my fault,’ And I said, ‘I know. And my mum felt the same way,’” Harry stated.