According to a new royal book which sheds light on Meghan Markle’s time at the palace, the Duchess of Sussex was given an interesting nickname by members of staff, on account of her ‘new agey’ and ‘woke’ personality
Meghan Markle’s royal life proved painfully short of the fairytale everyone had hoped for, as her time at the palace was fraught with difficulties. And one “friendly” nickname whispered among palace insiders reflected her struggle to fit in, according to a new royal book.
The former Suits actress dazzled at her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry and soon threw herself into life as a royal – curating a fundraising cookbook for the victims of the Grenfell Tower catastrophe and teaming up with non-profit fashion organisation Smart Works. On the surface, everything seemed wonderful, but behind closed doors, Meghan was struggling, and in January 2020, just two years after their St George’s Chapel wedding, she and Harry announced they would be stepping down as senior working members of the Royal Family.
Both Harry and Meghan have since spoken out about the difficulties they experienced as a newlywed couple at the very centre of the Royal Family, with California-born Meghan having struggled with the “formality” shown by her new in-laws. In his 2023 memoir Spare, Harry famously claimed his brother Prince William “recoiled” from Meghan’s hug, describing this first awkward encounter as a “classic collision of cultures”.
And according to royal author Tom Quinn, Meghan’s “new agey” and “woke” personality, in stark contrast to Harry’s more formal family, earned her the nickname “Mystic Meg”. Writing in his new book, Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants – which has been excerpted in The Times, he says: “It’s true that her nickname for a while was the Duchess of Difficult, but she had other, friendlier nicknames, including Mystic Meg, which came about because she was so new agey, so woke, about so many things.
“She could be difficult because she was finding life difficult — trying to feel her way and work out the intricacies of a positively medieval, labyrinthine system. She couldn’t understand why Charles, for example, was so formal with his mother. She once said, ‘But they’re mother and son — why are they so completely stiff with each other?'”
Quinn also claims that Meghan believed that some “sensitive” senior royals “behaved like babies”. He penned: “Meghan really disliked the hierarchy,’ a member of her former team said. ‘Many of the rules do seem pretty pointless and exist only so that the relative status of each senior royal is protected. And the senior royals are such a sensitive bunch — if one gets a gold pen or a new car, they all want one. Meghan thought they behaved like babies.'”
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In the couple’s 2022 Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan, the Duchess opened up about her introduction to royal life, explaining that she hadn’t known that the Royal Family’s “formality” carries through behind palace doors, which proved “surprising” to her.
She told viewers: “Even when Will and Kate came over, and I was meeting her for the first time, I remember I was in ripped jeans, I was barefoot. Like I was a hugger, I have always been a hugger. I didn’t realise that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.
“I started to understand that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside, that there is a forward-facing way of being and then you close the door and think, ‘OK, we can relax now’. But that formality carries over on both sides, and that was surprising to me.”
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