Yes, sources are still finding new ways to talk about the Duchess of Sussex’s conflict with all things royal; now, that includes her Buckingham Palace aides. Apparently, Meghan Markle’s royal staff feuded over her Hollywood past, according to royal expert Camilla Tominey, an editor at The Daily Mail who has covered the royal family for over fifteen years.
Tominey spoke to The New Yorker for a profile of Meghan, 38, and husband Prince Harry, 35, published under the title “Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Fractured Fairytale.” The piece includes varied royal sources, including experts such as Tominey and former staffers, among whom were some of those laid off by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex weeks before their move to Los Angeles, Calif. in April 2020. None of them seem to happy with the way the royal couple’s plan to step back from the royal family panned out.
According to Tominey, royal staffers had a particular bone to pick with Meghan. (No surprise there, given her longstanding feud with British media.) They were “less enamored of the very qualities that made her irresistible to the press: her showbiz luster, self-confidence, and feminist habits of assertion,” Tominey said to The New Yorker.
“I’ve put it down to a clash of cultures, in the sense that she had come from the celebrity world, which is very fast-paced and quite demanding. The royal world is very different—it’s much slower-paced, and hugely hierarchical,” she continued. “In the royal world, it’s ‘What should we do next?’ ‘Well, what did we do last time?’”
“It’s a bit like ‘Downton Abbey,’” Tominey explained. “There’s a hierarchy of staff who have been at Buckingham Palace for years and years, to serve Queen and country.” That is, the Sussexes were low on the chain-of-command—something that Meghan didn’t pick up on, Tominey and staffers allege.
Tominey adds, “For Harry and Meghan to be making demands, there was a bit of below-stairs chatter, particularly with the Duchess, that was ‘Well, hang on a minute, who do you think you are?’”
Meanwhile, former press secretary at Buckingham Palace, Dickie Arbiter, suggests that this whole royal exit is especially difficult for the Queen. “It is sad for the Queen—at 93, the last thing she wants to see is her family disappear into the sunset,” he said, before adding, “and it is also a letdown for the British people.”
“But the British people are stoic, and they get on with it,” he said. “And, if that’s what Harry and Meghan want, good luck to them.”