Many royal fans can recall the last time they saw Prince William, Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle, and Prince Harry all in the same place. On March 9, 2020, they were all in attendance at Westminster Abbey for the Commonwealth Day Service. The Sussexes’ last day of official royal duties coincided with the event, so the couple’s interactions were brief and awkward.
While William greeted Harry and Meghan that day, Kate did not even make eye contact with her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, according to royal fans. The Duchess of Cambridge was once close to Prince Harry, but little is known about whether she ever bonded with Meghan, and reports on whether the duchesses have spoken since Megxit are conflicting. Here’s what we know about Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton’s relationship so far.
Meghan’s gift to Kate for her birthday was deemed ‘inappropriate.’
Meghan and Kate’s relationship didn’t get off to the best of starts. Meghan thought it would be a nice gesture to give the Duchess of Cambridge a birthday gift after the two women met around the Duchess of Cambridge’s 35th birthday in 2017. Biographers Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand revealed in their book Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family that the Suits actor gave Kate a leather-bound dream journal.
The issue with the gift is that it was deemed “inappropriate” by a number of royal watchers to give to a future queen. During their In the Limelight podcast, Vanity Fair writers Josh Duboff and Julie Miller discussed the gift, saying that a dream journal seemed like something Meghan would buy for herself because she used to run a blog.
Meghan giving Kate such a gift was also criticized by Polly Hudson of the Daily Mirror, who pointed out how much work logging a dream journal entails. “Dreams are the absolute worst,” Hudson explained. “The only way (the gift) could be more boring is if she had to record other people’s dreams, because there’s nothing more boring on the planet.” Meghan’s present, which is meant to help you “better understand your waking life emotions, stresses, victories, and mental well-being,” was “passive-aggressive,” according to Hudson.
During a dress fitting, one of them burst into tears.
It’s unclear whether Kate ever used the journal, but any tensions between the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Sussex boiled over just before Harry and Meghan tied the knot, and one of them ended up in tears. When the story first broke, it was claimed that Meghan made Prince William’s wife cry during a flower girl dress fitting for Princess Charlotte. Meghan, on the other hand, claimed that it was Kate who made her cry during her primetime special with Oprah Winfrey.
Harry’s wife told the former talk show host, “The reverse happened.” “And I don’t say that to belittle anyone… It was a particularly trying week leading up to the wedding, and she was upset about something, but she owns up to it, apologizes, and buys me flowers with a note apologizing.”
The story was first reported by Camilla Tominey, an associate editor at The Telegraph. Tominey said she was sticking by her original story after Meghan gave her version of events. She insisted that the information she reported came from two trusted royal insiders, and that Kate, not Meghan, was the one crying.
Meghan claimed that in the royal family, “nothing is as it seems.”
Meghan was “disappointed” that she and her sister-in-law never spoke about their unique experience of marrying into the royal family, according to the authors of Finding Freedom. Scobie and Durand wrote, “Their relationship hadn’t progressed much since she was Harry’s girlfriend.” “Meghan imagined Kate reaching out to her and explaining everything a newcomer to the Firm needed to know. That was not the case. Meghan was disappointed that she and Kate hadn’t bonded over their shared position, but she wasn’t worried about it.”
Throughout Meghan’s time as a senior royal, we saw flashes of what appeared to be a good relationship between her and Kate, but the Duchess of Sussex herself admitted that it was all a ruse.
Meghan was asked by Oprah about the numerous photos of her and Kate looking happy and smiling together. That’s when Meghan admitted that the ladies weren’t as close as they appeared to be. “From what I’ve seen and heard over the last four years, it’s nothing like what it appears to be.” “It’s nothing like what it looks like,” the duchess added, referring to the royal family.
