A royal expert has claimed that a specific four-word phrase that Prince Harry used back in 2017 managed to "doom Meghan's relationship with royals".
Back three years ago when everyone was looking forwards to the Hollywood star joining the Royal Family and for the face of the monarchy to be made up of four 30-somethings, Harry made a comment which got everyone thinking.
Following Christmas at Sandringham that year, Harry guest-edited an episode of the Today show on BBC Radio.
Whilst on there, he spoke about he and new fiancée Meghan's time at Sandringham over Christmas, referring to the royals as the "family she never had".
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Daniela Elser, a royal journalist, wrote for news.com.au that the Prince's comment set "an unfortunate precedent", claiming his "impressive work, including an interview with Barack Obama, was largely overshadowed by a personal revelation".
The comment was met with plenty of social media discussions and wide press coverage, with plenty pointing out that the Prince's comments were insensitive to Meghan's parents, Doria Ragland and Thomas Markle.
In late 2017 Meghan wasn't yet on awful terms with her father as he'd kept himself relatively under the radar.
However the comments were soon forgotten about and seen as nothing but a passing comment.
But more than three years on, the comment has resurfaced with Elser writing that the four simple words "family she never had" can now be seen "in a whole new light".
The journalist said the comment always implied that Meghan was read to fit right in to the house of Windsor, but of course, things haven't gone to plan since.
"Outwardly, it seemed nearly universally expected that she would cheerfully slot into both the family structure and the palace’s working apparatus", she write.
"The collective, prevailing assumption was that Meghan should be grateful to be given entree to such a rarefied world and therefore willing to give up the qualities, values, habits and passions – whatever necessary – that she might hold dear such that she would be seamlessly absorbed into HRH-dom."
Meghan and Harry 'Find Freedom'
The experts puts it down to a lack of foresight, explaining that someone should've noticed at that moment that Meghan wasn't willing to give up her interests and passions for the sake of the Royal Family and that things would've turned out very differently if they'd "taken her career and experience into consideration" in the run-up to the royal wedding in May 2018.
In 2019 Robert Lacey, a veteran royal biographer, said: "There is only one self-made millionaire in the royal family and that is Meghan Markle.
"If they had sat down with her at the start and said, ‘Let’s talk about the things you are interested in’, things might have been different.
“They just sent her off to watch the Queen opening the Mersey Bridge. There is nothing wrong with that, but they made the mistake of dealing with the spare’s wife thinking she was just a routine royal. She was never going to be a routine royal.”
The royal tell-all book Finding Freedom also explains that Meghan "arrived in this job a fully formed adult, having lived already a third of her life. She is a Californian who believes she can change the world".
"She creates her own brand, she creates her own website, she does deals. She talks about life and how we should live.”
Elser concludes that the blame for how the "Sussex dream went off the rails" can't all be placed on one individual or group — but it's worth discussing how things might have gone differently had Meghan been considered as her own person first.
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