When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry announced their engagement in 2017 they looked every inch a couple utterly in love. More than a year earlier they had met on a blind date and fallen in love in Botswana before Harry got down on one knee on a “cosy night” in their Kensington Palace cottage.
Meghan praised Harry’s family for being so welcoming and told of her incredible experience meeting his grandmother, the Queen. And in the couple’s engagement interview with the BBC’s Mishal Husain, Meghan also described her first meeting with future sister-in-law Kate Middleton and simply said it was “wonderful”.
Harry revealed how Kate and William had been longing to meet Meghan before he officially introduced her. Recalling the introduction he said: “It was exciting I mean I’ve — you know I’d been seeing her for a period of time when I literally didn’t tell anybody at all.
“And then William was longing to meet her and so was Catherine, so you know, being our neighbours, we managed to get that in a couple of — well quite a few times now and Catherine has been absolutely …”
Meghan interrupted: “Wonderful.”
Harry continued: “Amazing, as has William as well, and then my father as well. “A handful of teas and meetings and all sorts of gatherings over at his place as well.” Meghan added that she had met the Queen a “couple of times”.
She explained: “It’s incredible.
“I think, you know, to be able to meet her through his lens, not just with his honour and respect for her as the monarch, but the love that he has for her as his grandmother, all of those layers have been so important for me so that when I met her I had such a deep understanding and of course incredible respect for being able to have that time with her.
“And we’ve had a really — she’s — she’s an incredible woman.”
The couple went on to have a fairytale wedding at Windsor Castle in 2018, and William, Kate, Meghan and Harry were also dubbed the ‘Fab Four’. However, rumours of a rift have cast a shadow over the brothers in recent months.
In an ITV documentary in 2019 he said him and William have “good days” and “bad days”. Asked about media reports of a rift between the brothers, the Duke of Sussex said that “inevitably, stuff happens” as a result of “this family being under the pressure that it’s under”.
Meanwhile, a new book based on Meghan and Harry could brand Prince William “unsympathetic and unfeeling”, it has been claimed. The book, Finding Freedom, is due for release in August following Harry and Meghan’s dramatic decision to step down as senior royals. It will be written with the “participation of those closest to the couple”.
At the weekend, it was reported that royal aides were fearful the book would “paint him as the bad guy” over their exit. And Russell Myers, the Daily Mirror’s royal editor, warned of the damage it could cause.
He told ITV’s Lorraine: “This book is coming out, it’s called Finding Freedom. “It’s the unofficial biography of Harry and Meghan and royal aides are apparently quite worried about what sort of light it’s going to paint Prince William in. “He’s been called unsympathetic and unfeeling potentially in the book. “Royal aides have been meeting behind the scenes preparing for the worst.”