To be ‘a second Diana’ claims new book
a teenager she saw Harry’s mother as an inspiration and role model.
“According to family friends, Meghan was intrigued by Diana not just for her style but also for her independent humanitarian mission,” the book says.
The author, who says Meghan watched Diana’s funeral on television when she was 16 in 1997, quotes Ninaki Priddy, a childhood friend of the bride-to-be, saying: “She was always fascinated by the Royal Family. She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0.”
Morton, who worked with Harry’s mother on Diana: Her True Story, writes that Meghan ended her first marriage, to Hollywood producer Trevor Engelson, abruptly after two years by sending her wedding and engagement rings back to him in the post in 2013.
“It was such a bolt from the blue for Trevor that, even at a distance of five years, he can barely contain his anger,” he writes.
“Trevor went from cherishing Meghan to, as one friend observed, ‘feeling like he was a piece of something stuck to the bottom of her shoe’.”
Friends made similar complaints when she landed a part as paralegal Rachel Zane in the US legal drama Suits, says Morton. “Her friends in Los Angeles noticed the change in her now that she was on her way up,” he writes.
“She no longer had time for mates she had known for years, cancelling lunches at short notice or expecting them to rework their own schedules to accommodate a rising star.”
Morton says that before meeting the Queen, Meghan practised taking tea at Rose Tree Cottage in Los Angeles which serves cucumber sandwiches, requires gentlemen to wear jacket and tie, and insists mobile phones are switched off.
The book suggests the Queen has more faith in Harry and his brother Prince William than in Prince Charles. Morton writes: “A courtier told me the Queen trusts her grandsons. She has confidence in them in a way that she never had with her eldest son.”