Afro-Asian bride for Prince Harry

A royal announcement on Monday confirmed Britain's Prince Harry will marry his American actress girlfriend Meghan Markle next year. Harry, 33, who revealed a year ago he had fallen for the actress after a four to six month secret relationship, proposed to Meghan, 36, in London earlier this month.

Royal protocol dictated that fifth in line to the throne Harry had to ask his grandmother the Queen for permission to marry and she has agreed. Harry and his American fiancee, who divorced her first husband in 2013, will move into Nottingham Cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace next door to his brother William and sisterin-law Kate.

The couple managed to keep their relationship secret from the world but their cover was blown when keen observers spotted pictures of them wearing matching bracelets. The Prince followed the actress on Instagram using a pseudonym. The daughter of an African-American mother and a father of Dutch of Irish descent, Markle spent time on film sets as a child.

Her father Thomas was a cinematographer, and worked on the hit US sitcom ‘’Married with Children’; her mother is Doria Ragland - a social worker and yoga therapist.

She also has a wheelchair-bound estranged half-sister, Samantha Grant, 52, who is writing a book about her sibling. Grant's book has the working title 'The Diary of Princess Pushy's Sister' and it will talk in-depth about her family's racist past.