Meghan Markle said in her bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 that she entered the Royal Family “naively” as her knowledge of monarchy and royal life had been limited before meeting Prince Harry. She also suggested little help was provided to her and the Duke of Sussex when they complained about their struggles with handling public pressure. But royal author Valentine Low claimed efforts had been made to provide the Duchess of Sussex with the information she needed, with Prince William even offering up his own private secretary to teach her about royal life.
However, speaking to Good Morning Britain, Mr Low claimed Meghan Markle “said no” when approached with the proposal to work with Miguel Head.
Discussing the role of courtiers in welcoming the new Duchess, he said: “They tried really hard to help Meghan, right from the beginning.
“One of them, called Miguel Head, who was William’s private secretary, had a meeting with Meghan.
“And in that meeting, he said, ‘listen, you’re coming to the Royal Family from a different place. You’re an actress, you’re a grown-up woman, we can do things differently. Let’s talk about how we do this. You might want to carry on acting, you might want to work somehow in the industry. Let’s have a dialogue.’ “And Meghan said no, ‘I want to support my husband,’ so on and so forth.”
He added: “There’s another guy, Sir David Manning, ex-ambassador, he cooked up this plan ages ago, before he even met Meghan, but Meghan was on the scenes, which suggested they could go and live in South Africa for a while, just like the Queen and Prince Philip lived in Malta, like William and Kate lived in Anglesey.”
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex however opted out of the offer, choosing instead to join the working royal fold within days of tying the knot.
The pair appeared alongside the then-Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall at a garden party at Buckingham Palace marking Charles’s 70th birthday. In his new book Courtiers, Valentine Low details the behind-the-scenes moments in the build-up to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s departure from the Royal Family.
The author highlights a growing sense of “paranoia” within the Sussex camp as time progresses, claiming the Duke of Sussex went as far as refusing to meet with his brother Prince William out of concern their conversation would get leaked.
Mr Low argued William reached out to his younger brother following the broadcast of an ITV documentary on his and Meghan Markle’s tour of South Africa in 2019 in which the couple lamented the lack of support and help received by the Royal Family.
He wrote: “He [Prince Harry] was so concerned that William’s team would leak the visit to the Press that he would rather not see his brother than risk it getting into the papers.
“To everyone who knew what was going on, this was heartbreaking.” Mr Low added: “It highlighted the dysfunction at the heart of so many royal relationships, and how members of the Royal Family so rarely pick up the phone to speak to each other directly.
“Instead, they communicate via the apparatus around them. And the result is mistrust and division.”
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex took a six-week break from duties upon their return from South Africa and Meghan did not return until March 2020, when they conducted their last public outing before moving to the United States with their son Archie.
The couple did not return to the UK together until June 2022, when they joined the Royal Family to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
Meghan and Harry later came back to undergo a series of official visits and remained through the mourning period after Her late Majesty suddenly died on September 8.
