A bombshell book claimed that Prince Harry was upset because no one in his family saw similarities between Meghan Markle and his late mother, Princess Diana. Tom Bower wrote in his book, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors, that the Duke of Sussex had hoped that Diana’s sisters would draw parallels between her and his then-girlfriend, Meghan.
“Harry assumed that Diana’s family and friends would see a similarity between Diana and his fiancee. Both, he said, shared the same problems,” Bower recounted.
“He was disappointed. No one agreed that his vulnerable mother had anything in common with his girlfriend,” he added.
Bower said that the royal family did not see it the way Harry did, and even went on to raise concerns. “More discomforting for him, they thought Meghan would not fit in with the Royal Family,” Bower wrote.
‘She has the same compassion, the same empathy, the same confidence’
Harry has time and again drawn comparisons between Diana and Meghan. He said in the 2022 Netflix docuseries Harry and Meghan, “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.”
During Harry and Meghan’s engagement interview with the BBC in 2017, he expressed his pride about the connection he thought his mother would have had with Meghan. “I think she (Diana) would be over the moon, jumping up and down, so excited for me, but then, as I said, she would have probably been best friends – best friends with Meghan,” he said.
The Sussexes previously admitted that some people close to them doubted their relationship, including some of Harry’s relatives. Harry revealed in their controversial Netflix series that some members of the royal family thought his relationship with Meghan would be short-lived, saying “But the fact that I was dating an American actress, was probably what clouded their judgment more than anything else. Oh, she’s an American actress, this won’t last long.”