Picking up where I left off last week, below are some old news articles from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s early years together, which might provide some insight on what Prince Harry relates in Spare. In the words of the late Queen, ‘Recollections may vary’.

However, let’s begin with two book reviews of Spare.

A good ghostwriter’s genius

Tina Brown, the youngest editor of Tatler, the editor who transformed Vanity Fair and the first woman to edit The New Yorker, wrote an excellent review of Spare for The Guardian. Excerpts follow, emphases mine.

She says that JR Moehringer made good use of various literary devices and outstanding writing to bring Harry’s story to life:

One of the few good decisions that Prince Harry has made in the last five turbulent years was to take George Clooney’s advice and hire a ghostwriter as skilled as the novelist JR Moehringer. Spare is gripping in its ability to channel Harry’s unresolved emotional pain, his panicky, blinkered drive, his improbably winning rapscallion voice, and his skewed, conflicted worldview. Best of all, Moehringer knows how to drill down into scattered memories and extract the critical details that make this hyper-personal chronicle an unexpected literary success.

Who will forget the scene of monarch and grandson grasping dead pheasants, “their bodies still warm through my gloves” after a Sandringham shoot, confronting each other as she tries to escape in her Range Rover from what she knows is coming. “I’ve been told that, er, that I have to ask your permission to propose [to Meghan],” Harry mumbles. “Well then,” replies her majesty, “I suppose I have to say yes.” It’s one of the joys of this memoir that Harry is still puzzling over her answer. “Was she being sarcastic? Ironic? Was she indulging in a bit of wordplay?” …

The most powerful character in the story, Diana, never truly appears, other than in radiant glimpses. The unassuageable anguish of the 12-year-old Harry’s loss gives Moehringer a potent, overarching literary device. His mother, Harry heartbreakingly decided, was not really dead at all. She had “disappeared”, found a way to escape her unhappy, haunted life, and make a “fresh start” (perhaps in Paris or a log cabin in the Alps). Expectation of her Second Coming freezes his heart and will not allow him to cry except once, when her coffin is lowered into the ground at Althorp. The din of the world’s mourning and the endless tawdry explorations of what really happened that night in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, place Harry’s own memories in a lock box even he cannot access until a breakthrough in his mid-30s in a therapist’s office. The only aspect of his mother’s death that he finds unforgettable is the identity of those who caused it: the press and the paps, variously referred to as ghouls, pustules, dogs, weasels, idiots and sadists, who after “torturing” his mother “would come for me”. The “red mist” of his rage towards them never lifts. The reader is with him all the way as the hack-pack humiliates the rudderless prince for every adolescent misstep.

Unfortunately for Harry, he disregards or misunderstands what a monarchy and hereditary peers bring to the upper rungs of British society. He also doesn’t appreciate his own privilege:

What Harry does not realise, however, is that his magical thinking about Diana’s “disappearance” extends to multiple other aspects of his life. He writes as if he is the first privileged male to notice the unfairness of primogeniture (the “hierarchy”, as he likes to call it with sinister emphasis). Well, duh. The monarchy invented it. The stately homes of England – belonging to many of the people he was at school with – are all inhabited by winners of the birth lottery while the younger siblings are relegated to some mouldy manor house and a sinecure at a bank (if lucky). Harry, we can all agree, has done better than most. At the age of 30, he inherited many millions from Diana and more from the queen mother when she died in 2002. (The fridge at his modest “Nott Cott” bachelor digs within the hardly shabby environs of Kensington Palace is, he tells us, often “stuffed with vacuum packed meals sent by Pa’s chef”.)

Despite Moehringer‘s talent, the reader eventually turns to Harry’s shortsightedness about how the monarchy actually operates:

Harry’s most extreme misunderstanding in Spare concerns the topic he affects to know most about: how the deep state of the Palace works. Harry prefers to blame sycophantic double-dealing courtiers when the decisions handed down are those he doesn’t like. By his account, the queen’s private secretary Edward Young blocked the meeting at Sandringham that Harry requested in January 2020 to discuss the Sussexes’ plan to become part-time royals. The possibility that the monarch herself was having second thoughts about the wisdom of such a meeting (Granny’s diary was suddenly full) isn’t entertained.

… There are more ironies. While the recurring plaint of Spare is the power that his father and brother hold over his life, the truth is how circumscribed their power actually is. Charles tells his “darling boy” to put all his proposals for a hybrid royal role in writing not because he’s stalling but because, as he says: “It’s all decided by the government” …

In the end, Tina Brown felt rather sorry for him, but not for the usual reasons everyone else is. It’s for his ‘magical thinking’:

… the nub of his incandescent fury, is how he and Meghan were sold out by the institution. But one senses that his rage has another source: deep marital embarrassment. Harry’s most profound act of magical thinking was the promise of what he could deliver his bride. In the ecstasies of infatuation – and of relief that he’d finally found someone “perfect, perfect perfect” – he boosted his beloved’s fantasy of their life together as world-dominating humanitarian superstars powered by her Hollywood glamour and his royal stature. Sitting on the Ikea sofa of Nott Cott, how could he tell her that, in the grand scheme of the monarchy, he was a penny-ante prince? His great big dreams revealed how small he was: one can’t help but feel that it’s this that he really wants an apology for.

Hugo Vickers, a biographer and ghostwriter himself, wrote a review of Spare for The Oldie:

Apparently this book is ‘full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.’ It purports to be the memoirs of Prince Harry, but it is ghost-written by the Pulitzer-award-winning writer, J.R. Moehringer, a man well-qualified to write about dysfunctional family relationships.

At the end of his own fine memoir, The Tender Bar, Moehringer acknowledged a number of friends who ‘spent hours confirming or correcting my memory, and helping me piece together long-ago conversations’ …

Moehringer also ghosted Open, the immensely popular memoirs of the tennis player, Andre Agassi …

It is the job of the ghost to extract facts from the ‘author’, especially an inarticulate one, and turn his outpourings into a book that justifies the many millions spent on it by the publisher. (I believe the publishers have to sell 1.7 million copies to make Spare commercially viable).

Moehringer clearly had his work cut out with Prince Harry …

If you are not convinced, try this line in which Harry explains a Page Three Girl for the benefit of American readers. Does this sound like him? – ‘That was the accepted, misogynist, objectifying term for young, topless women featured each day on page three of Rupert Murdoch’s the Sun.’ Where did that come from?

I’ve heard on GB News that Meghan helped edit the book and that those words are hers.

Then there is the opening quote:

This book opens with a quote from William Faulkner. On page 13, Prince Harry admits he has no idea who Faulkner was …

Hugo Vickers points out many of the book’s historical inaccuracies:

I mistrust this book. Prince Harry admits to a shaky memory, apparently too traumatised to recall anything much before his mother’s death. He acknowledges the ‘superb fact-checking’ of one Hilary McClellen, but no! she has allowed numerous howlers to slip through, causing me to wonder how much else Prince Harry has got wrong or simply cooked up to sell his book.

The Queen did not consign the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to a remote grave in the Frogmore burial ground (page 2). This trivialises the Queen and misunderstands her sympathy. She even paid the Duchess the signal honour of commanding flags to fly at half-mast on public buildings on the day of her funeral. Prince Harry could not have been offered a place in the Royal Vault in St George’s Chapel (page 5). The Royal Family did not get out of the car on the way back from Crathie Church on the Sunday Diana died to look at flowers (page 20). They did come out on Thursday 5 September.

He seems in a muddle about what flag was on his mother’s coffin (page 23) (well, OK). He does not descend from Henry VI (page 43). He won’t have known about Snowdon’s vile notes to Princess Margaret (page 73) until that was revealed years later by Anne Glenconner. He was not called at school about the Queen Mother’s death (page 75). She died during school holidays on Easter Saturday. He was in Klosters. So that scene was invented. The Queen was not at the pop concert when Brian May played (page 78). May played at the beginning. She arrived just before the end. The Queen did not go to the Guildhall for the Charles/ Camilla civil wedding in 2005, but she was most certainly at the Service of Blessing (page 99). (He talks of standing near the altar. He was sitting next to his brother).

Need I go on? Yes – a lie on page 337 or another muddle: Meghan could not have bought her father a first-class Air New Zealand ticket. They do not run first-class seats from Mexico.

People will read this, as they watched Netflix – to salivate over the bile he pours out against his family. Enough has been written about that. I took additional exception to his unforgivable description of dumping lovely Cressida Bonas (page 240), but then who will not be moved reading of his burgeoning love for Meghan Markle (page 265 – passim)?

Whether Harry realised it or not, there is an irony about the book:

There is a line which shows just how hypocritical this whole exercise is. Harry is in therapy (page 310). He writes, ‘I vented about my family. Pa and Willy. Camilla.’ He stops when he thinks passers-by can over hear the conversation. ‘If they ever knew. Prince Harry in there yapping about his family. His problems. Oh, the papers would have a field day.’ I rest my case.

Vickers concludes, wondering about JR Moehringer’s ultimate goal in ghost-writing Spare:

One further point. Prince Harry bases a large part of his premise on the idea that the only thing the Royal Family care about is being on the front page of newspapers. The enormous success of the Queen and Prince Philip (and the quiet success of Princess Anne) is that they did not care a jot what people thought. They got on with the job.

No doubt J.R. Moehringer and his team of shades were well-paid for their ghosting. But, given he comes from a considerably less privileged background than Harry’s, I wonder where his sympathies ultimately lie, and whether he is proud to have played a part in such an unpleasant exercise.

Now let’s move on to older news items about the Sussexes.

Fact-checking Meghan’s Babe statistics profile

Shortly before Meghan and Harry married, I saw an online posting about Meghan. This is a screenshot of it:

I am grateful to my reader Katherine who sent me a Newsweek article about the profile, which says that Meghan did not write or post it herself. An excerpt follows:

Several other tweets have also shared the same screenshot.

While the profile image of Meghan Markle was posted recently, it appears to have been circulated online for a few years. The earliest example Newsweek could find was in 2019, posted on Twitter, alongside similar disparaging claims about Markle and her race.

However, the biography was not authored by Meghan Markle, and instead appears to be a user-submitted biography from a mostly pornographic website called freeones.com.

The website was found by searching for images similar to the profile of Markle posted on Twitter. Markle is still listed on the site as “Caucasian”, although her details can be edited by anyone.

While an exact copy of her profile on freeones.com as shared on Twitter has not been archived, other profiles from 2013—when Markle’s details were reportedly added to the website—show the same format and presentation as the entry posted on social media (such as the header “Babe Statistics”.)

That same year, Markle told the South China Morning Post that she was “bi-racial”.

“Specifically for me, because I’m bi-racial, I can go in for so many parts,” she said.

“If you’re blond and blue-eyed, you may have 10 auditions but, because I could look what they call ‘exotic Caucasian’, instead of having 10 auditions I would have 40. You hear ‘no’ a lot more.

“It hurts a lot because you feel like all you hear is ‘no’. It’s really just about powering through. At a certain point, people just give up and once they’ve dropped out of the pool your chances of making it are so much better. It’s a numbers game.”

Markle’s representatives told Newsweek she had not uploaded any information to the site, and that third parties without any relationship to her or the authority to act on her behalf to do so were responsible …

Mentoring Meghan and managing Harry’s insecurities

When Lady Diana Spencer was engaged to Prince Charles, I remember reading at the time that the Queen Mother took her under her wing to prepare her for life as the future Princess of Wales.

This is normal procedure and includes etiquette, protocol and more.

Valentine Low, the former investigative-turned-royal reporter for The Times, wrote 2022’s best seller, Courtiers. On September 23, the paper published an extract from the book which is full of detail about the turmoil going on between Harry, Meghan and the Palace:

Even before Meghan came on the scene, Harry’s grievances with the media, especially the tabloid press, could lead to tensions with his staff. One insider recalls: “He was always messaging, making phone calls. It was nonstop. There were constant battles with the media and expecting the team to be on your side.… He was always on Twitter. You then had to be on everything too. Every minor infraction was a big deal.”

Harry’s enemies were not just in the media. “He definitely had mistrust of the courtiers at Buckingham Palace and his father’s palace,” said one source. This could lead to tensions within his own team who were based at Kensington Palace …

Compounding Harry’s frustration was a long-held fear that his time was running out and that once Prince George turned 18 he would become irrelevant. “He had this thing that he had a shelf life. He was fixated [on] this. He would compare himself with his uncle [Prince Andrew]. He would say, ‘I have this time to make this impact. Because I can.’ Until George turns 18, was the way he was thinking about it. ‘Then I will be the also-ran.’ He was genuinely thinking of it as, ‘I have this platform now, for a limited amount of time. I want to move forward, move forward.’ ” …

Harry’s obsession with the media, his sense of frustration, mistrust of palace courtiers and the constant loyalty tests of his own staff were all there before Meghan. But after Meghan turned up, it got significantly worse.

Once their relationship became public in October 2016, Meghan became insecure about it, which, in turn, disturbed Harry. The tension revolved around getting her a security detail:

Faced with hordes of journalists intent on trawling through every aspect of Meghan’s life, Harry became determined to protect his girlfriend. Meghan, meanwhile, told him that if he did not do something about it, she would break off the relationship. A source said: “She was saying, ‘If you don’t put out a statement confirming I’m your girlfriend, I’m going to break up with you.’ ” Harry was in a panic. Another source said: “He was freaking out, saying, ‘She’s going to dump me.’ ”

Harry turned to Jason Knauf, the bright young American who was recruited by Kensington Palace in 2015 to be the communications secretary for the Cambridges and Prince Harry. His previous role had been running the communications for the crisis-hit Royal Bank of Scotland. He loved working for William and Kate and Harry.

Harry phoned Knauf, demanding that he put out a statement confirming that Meghan was his girlfriend and condemning the racist and sexist undertones of some of the media coverage. Meghan wanted public validation that this was a serious relationship. She was convinced that the palace was unwilling to protect her from media intrusion. She told Harry’s staff: “I know how the palace works. I know how this is going to play out. You don’t care about the girlfriend.”

It’s odd, but I don’t remember any negative coverage of Meghan at all at that time. The media were overjoyed that Harry had another girlfriend, one whose intentions seemed serious.

Valentine Low says that the courtiers sensed the American was different from Harry’s previous girlfriends:

Harry’s staff knew that Meghan was different from other royal girlfriends. She had her own opinions and would let people know what they were. In the spring of 2017, more than six months before the couple were engaged, she told one of Harry’s advisers: “I think we both know I’m going to be one of your bosses soon.”

There was also a lot riding on Meghan. The palace knew it could not afford to repeat the mistakes that were made with Princess Diana. Before the wedding, Meghan had a meeting with Miguel Head, William’s private secretary, who told her that the palace would do everything they could to help. There was no need to think that she had to take on her new role in a particular way.

Meghan thanked Head and said she wanted to concentrate on her humanitarian and philanthropic work and to support Harry as a member of the royal family. As one source said, “The entire place, because of everything about her and because of what Harry’s previous girlfriends had been through, was bending over backwards to make sure that every option was open.”

Sir David Manning, former ambassador to the US who was William and Harry’s foreign affairs adviser, also put his mind to thinking about how Meghan might fit in to the royal family and what married life could look like for them. However, the couple’s sense of frustration and their suspicion of the palace establishment was already causing problems. An early issue was security. In the immediate period after her arrival in London there was no straightforward mechanism for providing Meghan with full-time police protection, especially at a time when the palace was trying to slim down the level of security provided to members of the royal family.

The Government needed to get involved, which was par for the course and nothing against Meghan. Edward Lane Fox — often called ELF because of his initials — took the lead:

Such matters were decided by a Home Office committee called Ravec (the executive committee for the protection of royalty and public figures). Harry’s private secretary at the time, Ed Lane Fox, a former captain in the Blues and Royals who’d joined Harry’s close-knit team in 2013, argued Meghan needed to be protected immediately.

“Ed had to wage a huge battle to get them to understand that she would not be able to live her life without police protection. Meghan had no idea that this was even happening, because we did not want her to have another reason to think that she wasn’t going to be welcomed. Ed did amazing things for her behind the scenes, but none of them was really appreciated.”

To Harry and Meghan, the two months that it took to get a decision about her security seemed like an age. They felt as if the powers that be were simply unwilling to provide her with the security she needed.

Meanwhile, the interpersonals between Meghan and Palace staff received mixed reviews:

At this time, at the Queen’s request, the Lord Chamberlain, Earl Peel – the most senior figure in the household – went to see the couple to explain to Meghan how the palace worked. He recalled, “I liked her, actually. She was very forthright. Very, very polite. Very understanding. She wanted to learn.”

However, relations between Meghan and the team at Kensington Palace were fraying fast. In late 2017, after the couple’s engagement was announced, a senior aide discreetly raised with the couple the difficulties caused by their treatment of staff. People needed to be treated well and with some understanding, even when they were not performing to Harry and Meghan’s standards, they suggested. Meghan was said to have replied, “It’s not my job to coddle people.”

Meanwhile, she wasn’t dealing with the more junior staff, even people whom William and Kate – and Harry, before Meghan came along – had been quite happy to engage with. It seemed that she wanted respect and having to talk to someone a bit further down the pecking order – in a small office, where there wasn’t much of a pecking order – wasn’t treating her with respect. “She would take it as an insult,” believes one source.

On April 29, 2018, shortly before the wedding, Yahoo!News posted an article from London’s Evening Standard on Meghan’s touchy-feeliness, stating that the Palace wanted to mentor her for her new role:

Meghan Markle is likely to turn to the Duchess of Cambridge for tips on getting to grips with Royal etiquette before her wedding to Prince Harry, an expert has claimed.

The former Suits actress, 36, may be encouraged to reign in her “touchy-feeliness” ahead of the big day but is unlikely to be given formal lessons, says royal etiquette expert William Hanson.

Those who have been there, done that and got the tiara including Kate and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall will help coach Ms Markle ahead of her wedding at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle on May 19 .

Mr Hanson said: “Meghan won’t have a specific tutor, but the royal household and other members of the royal family who have ‘married in’ will be passing on their knowledge to the newest addition.

“Meghan will also be observing others, too, watching and copying certain mannerisms or tricks that they do to cope and successfully navigate the pitfalls of court life.

“Her fiancé will, of course, also be sharing his considerable knowledge too.”

Hanson also:

revealed that Prince Harry’s bride-to-be might struggle with to reign in her tactile nature …

“This may well be a conscious choice on her part and may be one of the ways that she plays her part in evolving the monarchy, but this touchy-feelyness cannot happen everywhere that she will go and so she may well struggle with having to learn when to be informal and when to be slightly more reserved.”

Ms Markle has previously broken royal protocol by hugging members of the public …

Mr Hanson said he would advise Ms Markle to take her time when getting used to Royal etiquette in a bid to succeed.

“Meghan is clearly going to shake things up a bit for the royal family, but I hope not everything gets changed overnight,” he added.

Based on what happened during the wedding preparations, it seemed that the Duchess of Cambridge was not the one to mentor her future sister-in-law. More on that below.

Over a year later and after the birth of Archie, the new Duchess of Sussex’s lack of mentoring was still on the Queen’s mind.

On Thursday, August 1, 2019, The Express reported, ‘Queen sees Sophie Wessex as Meghan Markle’s “unofficial mentor”‘:

Queen Elizabeth II is trying to ease Meghan into her new royal life after the Duchess of Sussex has come under fire multiple times in the past months. The monarch believes the 37-year-old former actress could find a friend and ally in Sophie, Countess of Wessex, as the pair share the desire of a normal life within the Royal Family, according to a close friend … 

The Queen’s suggestion doesn’t come out of the blue, as Meghan and Sophie are believed to have bonded after spending time together at Royal Ascot last year …

Just like Meghan, Sophie had a career of her own for years before marrying Edward, and has worked in public relations for a variety of firms.

The Wessexes want their children to grow up away from the spotlight – similarly to what Prince Harry and Meghan are trying to do with their son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten Windsor.

I have no idea how that worked out.

Wedding stress

I was going to call this section ‘Tantrums and tiaras’ but that seemed too clichéd.

The weeks running up to the wedding were reportedly highly tense. It must have been hell.

Valentine Low writes that the tiara kicked everything off:

Organising the wedding was particularly stressful. There were rows about scheduling, the wedding announcements, the gospel choir and, most famously, the tiara. In the months before the wedding, Meghan was told that the Queen would lend her a tiara for the big day, just as she had done for Kate Middleton seven years earlier. An appointment was made in February for Meghan to look at a shortlist of appropriate tiaras at Buckingham Palace. Accompanied by Harry, and under the watchful eye of Angela Kelly, the Queen’s dresser, who is also curator of the Queen’s jewellery, Meghan opted for Queen Mary’s diamond bandeau tiara.

Meghan then needed to make sure her hairdresser had an opportunity to rehearse with it before the day itself. Unfortunately, on the day her hairdresser, Serge Normant, was in town, Angela Kelly was not available, so neither was the tiara. In Harry’s view, this was Kelly being obstructive. According to the book Finding Freedom, Kelly had ignored repeated requests from Kensington Palace to set up a date for a hair trial. And Harry was furious. “Nothing could convince Harry that some of the old guard at the palace simply didn’t like Meghan and would stop at nothing to make her life difficult,” wrote the book’s authors.

But there is another version: that Harry and Meghan were naive at best, entitled at worst, to expect others to jump to their command when they had not even bothered to make an appointment. As a source told The Mail on Sunday: “Meghan demanded access to the tiara. She didn’t make an appointment with Angela but said, ‘We’re at Buckingham Palace. We want the tiara. Can we have it now please?’ Angela essentially said, ‘I’m very sorry, that’s not how it works. There’s protocol in place over these jewels. They’re kept under very tight lock and key. You can’t turn up and demand to have the tiara just because your hairdresser happens to be in town.’ ”

Harry then began ringing others to put pressure on Kelly to bend the rules and in the course of his less than diplomatic efforts is said to have used some fairly fruity language. Whether Harry swore at his grandmother’s aide, or about her, is not clear. But she wasn’t impressed. She reported all this to the Queen, who summoned Harry to a private meeting. “He was firmly put in his place,” a source said. “He had been downright rude.”

On Friday, January 13, 2023, The Telegraph‘s Camilla Tominey wrote about the wedding stress and how it affected Meghan’s relationship with Catherine, starting in 2017:

… as with the family hierarchy – there was a pecking order: and the problem for Meghan was that Kate always appeared to get first dibs on designers.

Erdem Moralıoğlu was one of Meghan’s absolute favourites, but even after Harry had put a ring on it, Kate, who was already a client, continued to get priority …

Suffice to say the notion of her soon-to-be sister-in-law receiving preferential treatment did not, it is claimed, go down well with Meghan, especially as she “wasn’t even Queen”. (Meghan always pointedly insisted on calling the Princess of Wales “Kate” even though the rest of the family referred to her as “Catherine”. Harry reveals in Spare that when he first introduced Meghan to his brother Kate remained in the garden, playing with the children – hardly the welcome they both wanted.) …

In Spare, Harry confirms an argument with Angela Kelly, the late Queen’s closest aide, over Queen Mary’s diamond bandeau tiara she borrowed for the big day. Although he denies saying: “What Meghan wants, Meghan gets”, there is a sense that this was the unofficial slogan of the nuptials. Air freshener was indeed requested to improve the aroma of “musty” St George’s Chapel.

He also confirms a row between Kate and Meghan over bridesmaids’ dresses, despite describing it as a “sci-fi fantasy”.

The French couture dresses did not fit any of the bridesmaids properly and, contrary to Harry’s suggestion that Kate was the only one who made a fuss, Meghan told staff at the time she had complained to the designer and that several of the mothers were angry. The row didn’t actually happen at a fitting but when Kate went round to Meghan’s to discuss it. (At this point both women lived at Kensington Palace: Meghan at Nottingham Cottage and Kate at Apartment 1A).

Ironically, it was Meghan herself who acknowledged to the then Cambridges’ staff that Kate “had left in tears” – in a bid for help to smooth it over. That’s why the palace couldn’t demand a retraction.

Contrary to Harry’s claim in Spare that the original story claimed “Meghan had reduced Kate to tears about the bridesmaids’ dresses”, actually the rather more balanced 1,200-word feature read: “The Telegraph has spoken to two separate sources who claim Kate was left in tears following a bridesmaids’ dress fitting for Princess Charlotte.

“‘Kate had only just given birth to Prince Louis and was feeling quite emotional,’ said one insider.” (It was the Sun who splashed the headline: “Meghan Made Kate Cry” the following day, with a piece written by Jack Royston, now Newsweek’s chief royal correspondent and one of the Sussexes’ cheerleaders). 

Here is The Sun‘s article.

Moving on:

It is true that Kate went round again the next day with a bunch of flowers and a card to apologise (another bid to keep the peace) …

Harry insists the bridesmaids’ dress story was briefed by the palace, claiming Kate told Charles and Camilla about the altercation over dinner. But more negative headlines started appearing after the wedding precisely because the histrionics staff had grown well used to were now being witnessed by all and sundry. The palace could no longer keep a lid on it.

Even the Prince of Wales had witnessed the aftermath of Meghan’s “bridezilla” behaviour.

The Duchess is alleged to have spoken particularly harshly to a young member of the team in front of her colleagues after criticising a wedding plan she had drawn up, saying: “If there was literally anyone else I could ask to do this, I would be asking them instead of you.” When William heard of the incident, he took the woman aside and said: “I hope you’re okay. You’re doing a really good job,” prompting her to burst into tears.

On January 10, 2023, the Mail interviewed Royal tailor Ajay Mirpuri, who finally broke his silence about the wedding:

Luxury suit and dressmaker Ajay Mirpuri has broken four years of silence on the now infamous affair – claimed to have led to tears from the Duchesses of Sussex and Cambridge – after being tracked down by the Daily Mail.

He revealed that he saw nothing of what is said to have gone on but he and three staff had to work round the clock at Kensington Palace and Windsor Castle for four days before the 2018 nuptials after finding that none of the six bridesmaids’ dresses made by French fashion house Givenchy fitted.

Mr Mirpuri, 45, who has a showroom in London‘s West End, said he felt it was a shame that how the young bridesmaids, including Princess Charlotte, looked on the day had been overshadowed by reports of the fall-out between Meghan and Kate …

‘All six bridesmaids’ dresses had to be fixed, and we did it.

‘I’m a royalist and I wanted to do whatever I could with my small business to serve the Royal Family.

‘We just got our heads down and said “Now we’re here, we’ve got to fix it so that on the day Britain comes off well.”

‘Had this book not come out, no-one would have known it was us. But if it saved the day, it saved the day, and good luck to them.

‘I won’t say it upsets me, but in that whole big event, this [the row] is what’s spoken about the most – it should be the fact that they [the bridesmaids] looked fabulous.’

Mr Mirpuri was speaking for the first time about his role, after Prince Harry detailed in his book Spare, officially published today, his and Meghan’s version of the row with the Duchess of Cambridge about the dresses.

The Prince remains angry that initial reports of the argument focused on Kate being left in tears. There have been several different versions over the years of who made who cry.

Now, Harry has said it was Meghan who he found ‘on the floor sobbing’.

According to his account, four days before the May 2018 wedding, Kate sent Meghan a text about her daughter Princess Charlotte crying because her dress was ‘too big, too long, too baggy’.

A terse exchange ensued in which Meghan said a tailor – named by Harry only as Ajay – had been ‘waiting all day’ at Kensington Palace to make alterations …

The gowns were created – as was the wedding dress – by British designer Clare Waight Keller, artistic director of Givenchy. But they were made, it seems, from measurements only, and without repeated fittings.

The other bridesmaids were Harry’s goddaughter Florence van Cutsem, Rylan and Remi Litt, the daughters of close friends of Meghan, Ivy Mulroney, daughter of Canadian stylist Jessica Mulroney, the unofficial maid of honour and Zalie Warren, another of Harry’s goddaughters and the youngest of the troop, aged just two at the time.

‘I’ve no idea what measurements Givenchy had received, but with our experience and knowledge we could see straight away that all six bridesmaids’ dresses had to be fixed, as they weren’t going to fit,’ Mr Mirpuri said.

‘We had to work tooth and nail for four days, four of us working until 4am three nights in a row, to make them fit.

‘We left Windsor Castle at 10pm the night before the wedding. Did anyone on the day complain about the bridesmaids’ dresses and how they looked? The answer is no.’

Mr Mirpuri has worked for Meghan several times, plus others in the royal household, as well as A-listers Elton John, Michael Caine and Mariah Carey.

When asked what he charged, he replied: ‘I won’t divulge that – or who paid the bill. I can’t say it was four figures or five figures. But whoever’s mistake it was paid the bill.’

Givenchy did not respond to a request for comment.

Then there was Meghan’s father’s illness. Camilla Tominey tells us that, as Harry:

concedes, her father Thomas Markle’s heart attack had just thrown the wedding into chaos. 

Mr Markle went on Good Morning Britain in June 2018 and revealed he had never actually met Harry despite talking to him about “Donald Trump” and “Brexit” over the telephone. Then his daughter Samantha Markle took to the airwaves, publicly questioning Harry and Meghan’s treatment of the gravely ill former lighting director. That was the moment the Sussexes’ staff felt they “lost control of the narrative”.

Early misgivings proven correct

The then-Cambridges were concerned about Harry’s relationship with Meghan, and the way she treated staff confirmed their fears.

Camilla Tominey says:

the Cambridges, as they were then known, had their reservations from the start.

Harry’s insistence that their joint communications secretary Jason Knauf put out a statement in November 2016, claiming his “girlfriend” had been “subject to a wave of abuse and harassment” at the hands of the media created early unease between the brothers. Harry feared he would be “dumped” if he didn’t “protect” the American actress. Yet having already warned him to “take as much time as you need to get to know this girl” (a description that apparently offended Meghan), the rashness of the statement rang alarm bells with William. 

… William, who along with equally introverted Kate has never craved the limelight, felt it was too much of a “celebrity” approach. Being of a more “never complain, never explain” persuasion, William questioned the wisdom of Harry going to war with the newspapers so early on in the relationship. It was risky, for a woman he had only been with for a matter of months … 

Contrary to Harry’s suggestion he was unsupportive, it was the Prince of Wales “in fix it mode” who agreed that experienced and highly professional Amy Pickerill be moved from the press office to become Meghan’s deputy private secretary following her engagement to Harry.

Returning to the tearful staffer whom William comforted, Valentine Low tells us:

On another occasion, when Meghan felt she had been let down over an issue