Prince William had taken issue with “opinionated” Meghan Markle from the very start of her romance with Prince Harry, according to royal expert Omid Scobie.
Scobie’s biography, “Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival,” details an array of claims about the Firm, including the famous royal rift between the Sussexes and the Waleses.
He claimed that the “Suits” alum’s arrival into the royal family was a “jolt to the system,” which immediately left William, the heir to the throne, “concerned that [Harry] was moving too fast with someone who had lived a life so far removed from that of his brother.”
Scobie claimed that the Prince of Wales believed that Harry and Meghan’s different “upbringings” and “nationalities” made her an “outsider” within the Firm.
“[Their romance came] at the expense of the family image,” Scobie writes. “It was felt that Harry was rushing into something that had serious blowback potential.”
Once William’s alleged opinion of Markle became obvious to others, Harry accused his brother of not making Markle feel welcome.
Soon after, leaks from the palace claimed William “truly didn’t like Meghan” because she was “too opinionated,” Scobie alleges.
“William shifted away from acting like a brother and became more like someone only focused [on the Crown],” he wrote.
Scobie also noted he saw a shift in William’s attitude over the years.
“William was always someone that brought kind of a ray of sunshine to royal engagements, he was happy, he was always willing to have a bit of banter with you, he was interested in the people around him,” he shared.
“And the man I see before me today is, of course, taking the job more seriously… But there’s a harder, almost more worn-down demeanor to William as well.”
Scobie also made several claims about William’s wife, Kate Middleton, claiming she sought the help of elocution experts in a desperate bid to sound “posher” than him.
In the tell-all book, he says that the Middleton family had a strategy that involved “calculatingly placing Kate right at the center of young William’s world” by urging her to enroll at St. Andrew’s University, instead of Edinburgh University.
“Kensington Palace has never denied that Kate had several rounds of elocution lessons as she became more serious with William,” Scobie writes.
“Friends have noted over the years that her accent now sounds ‘posher’ and ‘even more plummy’ than her husband’s.”