Prince Harry was reportedly deeply hurt when his late mother, Princess Diana’s sisters, didn’t recognize the qualities in Meghan Markle that he believed mirrored his mother’s.
Having lost Diana at the age of 12 in August 1997, Harry had looked forward to introducing Meghan to his mother’s family, hoping they would warmly embrace her.
When Harry married Meghan in 2018, he expressed to the BBC that his mother would have been “over the moon” about their relationship. However, her sisters apparently did not share his sentiment.
According to royal biographer Tom Bower in his controversial book Revenge: Meghan, Harry, and the War Between the Windsors, Harry had assumed Diana’s relatives and friends would notice the similarities between his fiancée and his mother.
He believed they both endured similar struggles. But Harry was left disappointed when that comparison was not shared.
Bower wrote, “No one believed his emotionally fragile mother had anything in common with Meghan. Even more unsettling for Harry, they felt Meghan wouldn’t be a good fit for the Royal Family.”
Princess Diana’s sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, along with her brother Charles Spencer, whom Diana was especially close to, did not appear to see Meghan in the same light as Harry did.
In fact, Bower claimed that Charles had war.ned Harry before his wedding in May 2018.
That conversation, according to Bower, did not go well. He quoted Harry reflecting later: “This was going to be really hard,” in reference to integrating Meghan into the royal fold.
Despite the skepticism from his relatives, Harry has consistently spoken about how much Meghan reminds him of his mother.
In their 2022 Netflix docuseries, he shared, “So much of what Meghan is and how she is, is so similar to my mum. She has the same compassion, the same empathy, the same confidence. She has this warmth about her.”