Meeting your partner’s family for the first time can be an extremely awkward and uncomfortable situation, which is probably amplified when they are the Royal Family.
Prince Harry has revealed that the Duchess of Sussex, 41, went into meeting his relatives, somewhat unprepared.
The Duke of Sussex, 38, has recalled the moment when Meghan Markle met his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II for the first time and mistook Prince Andrew for her assistant.
Writing in his Memoir Spare, which hit the shelves on Monday, Harry has documented his wife’s first meeting with the Queen at the Royal Lodge, in October 2016.
In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry has recalled the first time that Meghan Markle (left) met his grandmother The Queen (right) at the Royal Lodge in 2016
He wrote: After a moment Meg asked me something about the Queen’s assistant. I asked who she was talking about.
‘”That man holding the purse. That man who walked her to the door. That wasn’t her assistant? Who was it?”‘
Harry quickly prompted her that it was in fact his uncle and told Meghan: ‘That was her second son. Andrew.’
He wrote: ‘She definitely hadn’t googled us.’
The Duke of Sussex recalls how Meghan initially believed that Prince Andrew (left) was the Queen’s assistant
Harry (right) quickly corrected his beau, telling her that it wasn’t an assistant but the Queen’s ‘second son. Andrew’ (left)
This isn’t the first time that the Duchess of Sussex’s knowledge of the Royal Family has been analysed.
During the couple’s Netflix docu-series, which aired last month a giggling Meghan appeared to mock her own efforts at following royal protocol as she recounted the ‘surreal’ moment she first met the Queen – performing a deeply exaggerated curtsey in front of awkward-looking husband, Prince Harry.
The Duchess of Sussex compared the first encounter with Her Majesty to a lowbrow themed dinner at America’s ‘Medieval Times’.
Recounting the ‘intense’ moment, she performed a deep curtsey as husband Harry watched on, stone-faced, before he glanced off camera appearing awkward. The pair then chuckled afterwards.
During the couple’s docu-series Meghan giggled about her first meeting with The Queen and performed an exaggerated curtsey in front of awkward-looking husband, Prince Harry
The Duchess of Sussex compared the first encounter with Her Majesty to a lowbrow themed dinner at America’s ‘Medieval Times’
During the Netflix series Meghan appeared to mock her own efforts at following royal protocol as she recounted the ‘surreal’ moment she first met the Queen
Meghan met the Queen for the first time during a lunch at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, shortly after her and the Duke revealed they were dating, in 2016.
But she said the whole occasion felt like an antiquated banquet at Medieval Times, a family dinner theater in the US featuring staged medieval-style games, sword-fighting, and jousting.
The Queen was the first senior member of the Royal Family that Meghan met after she and Prince Harry announced their relationship in 2016.
‘She had no idea what it all consisted of,’ Harry told the docu-series, as he sat with his arm around his wife. ‘So it was a bit of a shock to the system for her.’
Harry wrote in his memoir that Meghan clearly hadn’t goggled the Royal Family before meeting The Queen and Prince Andrew (both pictured)
Grinning, Meghan added: ‘I mean. it’s surreal. There wasn’t like some big moment of “Now you’re gonna meet my grandmother”.
‘I didn’t know I was going to meet her until moments before. We were in the car and we were going to the Royal Lodge for lunch, and he [Harry] was like, “Oh, my grandmother is here, she’s gonna be there after church.”.
‘I remember we were in the car, driving and he’s [Harry] like, “You know how to curtsy, right?”. And I just thought it was a joke.’
The Duke continued: ‘How do you explain that to people? How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother? And that you would need to curtsy, especially to an American. That’s weird.’
Meghan revealed in the docu-series that she didn’t know that she was going to meet The Queen and thought that Harry was joking when he told her she would have to curtsey
Meghan then tells the documentary: ‘Now I’m starting to realise this is a big deal. I mean, Americans will understand this. We have Medieval Times dinner and tournament. It was like that. Like, I curtsied as though I was like… “Pleasure to meet you your Majesty.”
‘It was so intense. And then when she left, Eugenie and Jack and Fergie say “you did great!”. Thanks. I didn’t know what I was doing.’
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