One of the central themes of Prince Harry’s Spare is of neglect. Physical neglect, emotional neglect, financial neglect, all of it starting when he was just a child. He was always treated differently than his brother, and the entire royal institution reinforced it at every step of Harry’s life, that he was unworthy of care. That Harry had to be convinced that he was less than his brother so that William would feel more important. Why else would a 32-year-old prince be housed in a tiny little rundown cottage adjacent to Kensington Palace, where his brother had a 20-room mansion-within-a-palace? The point of how Harry was treated was always to reinforce his neglect, his fundamental spare-ness. And when Harry began dating then-Meghan Markle, Meghan noticed how he was treated differently. And yes, we’re still talking about all of this because of The Mail Remembers series, where they recycle through years-old stories in a failed attempt to explain why Meghan and Harry said sayonara five and a half years ago.
A royal insider has claimed that Meghan’s dislike for her living arrangements at Kensington Palace were the start of her troubles with royal life and set the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on the path to ‘Megxit’. It’s Meghan’s 44th birthday on Monday and following the so-called ‘peace summit’ last month, it appears at long last that the animosities between the Sussexes and the other royals may soon be thawing. But years before ‘Megxit’ had entered the vocabulary it was already becoming clear that the Duchess of Sussex was unhappy with her life as a working royal.
Writing in his royal bestseller Yes Ma’am, Tom Quinn claimed that the first sign that all was not well with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex became apparent while they were living at Nottingham Cottage within the grounds of Kensington Palace. Quinn said: ‘Starting life as a member of the royal family in Nottingham Cottage was the beginning of all Meghan’s troubles – she felt it was so small that it must be a reflection on how the royal family were belittling her husband. She just didn’t understand that real royals don’t care much about houses and material possessions because having always had them they take them for granted.’
According to Quinn, Meghan not only believed the home was too small for her larger standards but she was ‘compounded by a vague feeling that the Kensington Palace staff tended to treat Harry as less important than his brother’.
At the time, Prince William and Kate Middleton lived in the much larger apartment 1A inside the palace itself. A member of the comms team who was particularly close to Meghan told Quinn: ‘Meghan spotted immediately that Harry wasn’t quite as central to things as his brother William. This was the start of the whole grievance thing about being the spare. I don’t think Harry had even thought much about the fact that he was a spare until well into his marriage. Meghan managed to give him more perspective because she could see the family from the outside.’
Something I’d like to remind everyone about is that Meghan was a 30-something woman who had built a life for herself, with her own home, in Toronto and she uprooted that life to move to England in 2017. Like, she had all of the possessions, wardrobe and accumulated STUFF that comes with being a woman in her 30s with a well-paid job. There simply wasn’t room for Meghan and her life in the tiny Nottingham Cottage. But even then, she was happy because she was with Harry. Still, I agree that Meghan clocked how the family treated Harry. They always blame Meghan for Harry’s self-actualization, like without Meghan, Harry would have been fine just staying in a rundown shack and being mistreated forever. They actually say that (in so many words) outloud, like HOW DARE MEGHAN!
Also: “She just didn’t understand that real royals don’t care much about houses and material possessions because having always had them they take them for granted.” Yeah, that’s why all of the other royals she met were living in grand mansions, palaces and castles??
Photos courtesy of Netflix.
