It’s been reported that royal staff once gossiped about Meghan Markle ‘flirting’ with Prince William.
A new book by royal author Tom Quinn claims that Meghan’s laid back attitude caused issues in the household and made the future King ‘uncomfortable’.
William and brother Harry have a famously tumultuous relationship these days following the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s move to the US in 2020.
This was made worse by a raft of public allegations made by the pair after moving across the pond, in Harry’s memoir spare, the couple’s Netflix documentary and their 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Harry has claimed that his brother called Meghan “difficult and “rude”, which led to a “physical confrontation” between the brothers, according to Harry’s 2023 tell-all memoir.
But now there’s been further claims that William’s less than warm attitude to his now sister-in-law also came from Meghan’s tactile manner – which led palace staff to gossip she’d been “flirting” with the future monarch.
Writing in his new book, Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, excerpted in the Times, Quinn writes: “This tactile manner made William uncomfortable because Meghan hugged him virtually every time they bumped into each other; the hugging and cheek-kissing fuelled gossip among the staff that Meghan was flirting with William, which she was obviously not, but the tense atmosphere caused by all the touchy-feeliness (and the resultant gossip) deepened the rift between the brothers.”
Meghan’s tendency to offer a warm hug when meeting new people was discussed in the pair’s 2022 Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, reports the Mirror. Meghan claimed she didn’t realise the ‘formality’ of the royals would translate to behind closed doors as she proudly branded herself a “hugger”. She then added she was not aware that this was “jarring for some Brits”.
She said: “Even 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 realise that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.
“I started to understand that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside, that there is a forward facing way of being and then you close the door and think, ‘OK we can relax now’. But that formality carries over on both sides and that was surprising to me.'”
Harry also remembered an awkward encounter Meghan had when she first met William and Kate.
He said in Spare about Meghan hugging his brother: “[It] completely freaked him out.
“He recoiled. Willy didn’t hug many strangers. Whereas Meg hugged most strangers.
“Will had hoped that she would greet him with standard reverence per the protocol,
“[but] she didn’t know it and I hadn’t told her.”
Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants by Tom Quinn is out on February 18.