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The rift between Prince Harry and his family has been a heated topic over the last few years. But one dynamic that has also garnered a lot of attention has been the one between Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton.
Despite being the same age and in the same position, the two never seemed to strike a friendship. And, after a news report broke that the two had gotten into a fight before Markle’s wedding to Prince Harry over Princess Charlotte’s flower girl dress, the narrative of a feud quickly became a focus of tabloids.
The rumours came to a head upon Markle’s explosive interview with Oprah, where she accused the Princess of Wales of making her cry, despite the headlines reporting the opposite. In that same interview, Markle revealed that her sister-in-law apologised and sent flowers to remedy the issue.
However, royal reporter Omid Scobie claims that tensions went far back.
In his new book, Endgame, Scobie writes that the two women had little in common and, despite working together, never quite took a liking to each other.
“For Meghan, who found much of her time as a working royal a lonely and isolated experience, there was a hope that Kate would be someone she could at least turn to for an encouraging word during her lowest points,” writes Scobie, chronicling the breakdown of the royal family.
“They were once both outsiders, middle-class women brought into the house of Windsor for unimaginably different lives. Kate, however, was uninterested in forming this kind of bond with Meghan,” he alleges.
Scobie, who has covered the royal family for over a decade and has been rumoured to be an insider for Markle and Prince Harry, writes that a source said Kate “can be cold” if she does not like someone and “wasn’t a fan” of Markle from the beginning, in his book.
“She spent more time talking about Meghan than talking to her,” another source added.
While he writes of an unsalvagable rift, Scobie also touches on Middleton and Prince Harry’s once-affectionate bond.
“She was closet to Harry, and she will always look back fondling on those moments…and the relationship he had with their children,” a source allegedly close to the family told the author. “But to her, there is no way she could ever trust them after all their interviews.”
With Markle and Prince Harry stepping back from working royal life and moving to California in 2020, the strain on Prince William and Princess Kate to “fill the working void left behind” exacerbated tensions, Scobie notes.
In Harry & Meghan, the Netflix series documenting the couple’s love story, Markle spoke candidly about how she wasn’t prepared for the realities of royal life.
“When Will and Kate came over, and I had met her for the first time, they came over for dinner. I remember I was in ripped jeans and barefoot. Like I was a hugger, always been a hugger,” she described. “I didn’t realise that that is really jarring for many Brits.”
From there, she explained how she came to clock on to the unique dynamic of the royal family.
“I’d start to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside,” she said, referring to the strict etiquette rules adhered to by the family, which she initially believed were only observed in public.
“There is a forward-facing way of being, and then you close the door, and you relax now,” Markle said of her thoughts at the time. “But that formality carries over on both sides. And that was surprising to me.”
