Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton royally clashed in 2018.
In Tom Quinn’s new book, “Yes, Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants,” an anonymous royal staffer claims that the sisters-in-law made each other both cry when they were at odds over Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaids dress at the time.
During Markle’s wedding to Prince Harry, it was alleged that the women got into a tiff over the tailoring of 10-year-old Charlotte’s dress that left the Princess of Wales, 43, crying.
However, during a 2021 sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Duchess of Sussex, 43, claimed “the reverse happened,” meaning she was the one crying over what transpired.
“It was a really hard week of the wedding,” she said, noting that the future queen was “upset about something,” but later “owned it.”
According to Markle, Middleton later “brought me flowers and a note apologizing.”
“I actually think it’s — I don’t think it’s fair to her to get into the details of that because she apologized, and I’ve forgiven her,” she concluded.
The “Suits” alum found it “shocking” that the press ran with the incident months later.
“I would have never wanted that to come out about her ever, even though it happened,” Markle insisted.
Now, the royal staffer insists that the “papers and commentators got this wrong.”
“The truth is that as with many of these spats between sisters, brothers or even sisters-in-law, both sides were really upset,” the staffer told Quinn, per Newsweek.
“The truth is that during the discussions about the bridesmaid’s dress, Meghan said a few things she regretted and Kate said a few things she later regretted, but it was all in the heat of the moment. Both women were crying their eyes out!”
At the time, sources told People there was significant “stress” leading up to the wedding.
“Kate had only just given birth to Prince Louis and was feeling quite emotional,” royal reporter Camilla Tominey previously told The Daily Telegraph.
In Prince Harry’s 2023 memoir “Spare,” the royal, 40, wrote that Middleton texted Markle four days prior to their nuptials, saying: “Charlotte’s dress is too big, too long, too baggy. She cried when she tried it on at home.”
Markle then told Middleton to have Charlotte see the tailor “standing by” at Kensington Palace. The Princess of Wales allegedly refused, expressing “all the dresses need to be remade.”
“A short time later, I arrived home and found Meg on the floor. Sobbing,” Harry claimed in his book. “I was horrified to see her so upset but didn’t think it was a catastrophe.”
He added that Middleton stopped by the next day with flowers and a card.
The tailor, Ajay Mirpui, spoke out after Harry’s book was published and recounted the tense situation.
“If anything happened in the background, it didn’t happen in front of me,” the tailor told the Daily Mail in an interview at the time. “But yes, weddings are stressful at the best of times — and especially one at this high level; you’ve got to respect that. They were faced with a problem like anyone gets at a wedding, with last-minute hitches. I can understand why anybody would be upset if the dresses weren’t fitting — it’s nerve-wracking.”
“I feel for them all because you wouldn’t want the children to go out on a big stage in an ill-fitting dress — and that’s what they were,” Mirpuri admitted. “All six bridesmaids’ dresses had to be fixed, and we did it.”
This wasn’t the first time Markle and Middleton feuded. In the 2022 Netflix series “Harry & Meghan,” Markle recounted her awkward first encounter with Middleton and Prince William.
“Like I was a hugger, always been a hugger,” Markle began. “I didn’t realize that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.”
“I guess I’d start to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside, carried through on the inside,” she noted. “There is a forward-facing way of being, and then you close the door and you relax now. But that formality carries over on both sides, and that was surprising to me.”
Markle and Harry, who share kids Archie, 6, and Lilibet, 3, relocated to Montecito, California in 2020 after stepping back from their royal duties. They last saw Harry’s family in-person at the 2022 funeral for Queen Elizabeth II.
Earlier this month, Markle and Harry lost their bid for security in the UK.
Prince Harry’s final appeal against the United Kingdom government over taxpayer-funded security was denied.
He alleged he was singled out for “unjustified and inferior treatment” after he and his family were stripped of their publicly funded security detail.
“I can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK at this point,” Prince Harry told the BBC after the verdict.
“The things that they’re going to miss is, well, everything. I love my country. I always have done. Despite what some people in that country have done,” he went on. “I miss the UK, I miss parts of the UK, of course I do. I think that it’s really quite sad that I won’t be able to show my children my homeland.”
