Prince Harry’s ‘True Start of All the Troubles’ Had to Do With an Assistant and … Freebies?
TL;DR:
- Prince Harry claimed the “true start of all the troubles” occurred when Meghan Markle supposedly had “driven” their assistant to quit.
- “Because we couldn’t speak publicly about the reasons for the assistant’s departure, rumors filled the void,” Prince Harry explained.
- In Spare, Prince Harry also described “shattering” nerves and “sniping” among palace staff while Prince William blamed Meghan Markle.
Prince Harry looked back on the “true start of all the troubles” in Spare. Was it that Meghan Markle’s acting career was the royal family’s “biggest problem” with her? Or the sibling rivalry between the Duke of Sussex and Prince William? No. Harry cited a staff member leaving due to freebies — and what happened after — as what, “in many ways,” ignited “all the troubles.”
Prince Harry claimed his and Meghan Markle’s assistant was asked to resign over ‘freebies’ after which ‘rumors filled the void’
In a passage in Spare, Harry’s deeply personal memoir that debuted on Jan. 10, 2023, the 38-year-old revisited the origin of “all the troubles.” He explained it had to do with his and Meghan’s assistant being asked to resign because the pair brought “evidence” to the palace’s attention she “traded on her position with Meg to get freebies.”
Meghan, Harry wrote, was “said to have driven our assistant to quit,” (via Newsweek). But, as he claimed, that was far from the truth. “In fact that assistant was asked to resign by Palace HR after we showed them evidence she’d traded on her position with Meg to get freebies.”
Harry, 38, continued, saying he and Meghan couldn’t set the record straight on what happened which left rumors flying about the former Suits star being a particularly tough employer sprouting the nickname “‘Duchess Difficult.’”
“Because we couldn’t speak publicly about the reasons for the assistant’s departure, rumors filled the void,” Harry wrote. “ In many ways that was the true start of all the troubles. Shortly thereafter, the ‘Duchess Difficult’ narrative began appearing in all the papers.”
Harry described a tense ‘climate’ among staff that Prince William ‘blamed’ on Meghan
Elsewhere in Spare, Harry recalled Kensington Palace staff in the office he and Meghan once shared with William and Kate becoming increasingly on edge.
“Nerves were shattering, people were sniping,” he wrote. “In such a climate there was no such thing as constructive criticism.” Harry continued: “All feedback was seen as an affront, an insult. More than once a staff member slumped across their desk and wept.”
Harry claimed his brother, the now-Prince of Wales and first in the line of succession, blamed Meghan and Meghan only.
“For all this, every bit of it, Willy blamed one person. Meg,” Harry wrote. “He told me so several times, and he got cross when I told him he was out of line. He was just repeating the press narrative, spouting fake stories he’d read or been told.”
Harry told William the “great irony” of it all “was that the real villains were the people he’d imported into the office, people from government, who didn’t seem impervious to this kind of strife—but addicted to it.”
A royal author alleged Harry and Meghan’s former staffers nicknamed themselves the ‘Sussex Survivors Club’
Journalist and royal author Valentine Low claimed in his 2022 book, Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown, Meghan alleged bullying of staff led to a nickname. Those employed by the couple supposedly called themselves the “Sussex Survivors Club.”
“So bad did things eventually become that Harry and Meghan’s team would later refer to themselves as the Sussex Survivors Club,” Low wrote. “Sources say the team came up with a damning epithet for Meghan: a ‘narcissistic sociopath.’ They also reportedly said on repeated occasions: ‘We were played.’”
Meghan steadfastly denied the bullying claims while an independent investigation got underway. Once completed, Buckingham Palace didn’t release the findings.
