How Duke feared he’d turn into Harry the has-been
New book details bullying claims against Meghan by her royal staff, and...
the Duke of Sussex was ‘fixated’ about becoming a has-been once his nephew Prince George turned 18, a new book claims.
It alleges harry, before he met Meghan, had a ‘long-held fear’ that he would be an ‘also-ran’.
this apparently compounded the frustration he felt when aides talked him down from things he wanted to do separately from William and Kate, the book says.
extracts of Courtiers: the hidden Power Behind the Crown by Valentine Low were published by the times last night.
the book also makes claims about Meghan’s treatment of staff. On one occasion the Duchess of Sussex is said to have strongly criticised a plan drawn up by a young female employee in front of colleagues.
William later tried to comfort the unnamed staff member by saying she was doing a good job and the woman burst into tears.
After Meghan and harry married, Samantha Cohen, the Queen’s former assistant private secretary, joined their team as their interim private secretary.
the book quotes a source saying that she too was ‘bullied’ and nothing she did was ever good enough for the couple.
extracts claim a source once said: ‘Sam [Cohen] always made clear that it was like working for a couple of teenagers. they were impossible and pushed her to the limit. She was miserable.’
the duchess’s lawyers denied in 2021 that Miss Cohen had been bullied, saying that the couple were always grateful for her support and dedication.
they have also long described such allegations as ‘massively inaccurate’ and that the duchess has ‘absolutely denied’ bullying anyone. While an inquiry launched by Buckingham Palace concluded that it would review how it handled bullying complaints, it did not say that the duchess had actually bullied anyone.
the book also tells how Meghan clashed with her personal assistant Melissa touabti over free gifts including clothes, jewellery and candles that some companies sent to the duchess.
Ms touabti, who quit just six months after joining the palace, followed the rule that members of the Royal Family cannot accept gifts from commercial organisations, but the book claims her approach ‘did not go down well
‘Like working for two teenagers’
with Meghan’. the book is due to be published on October 6 by headline Books.
In June, Buckingham Palace effectively buried a report into allegations of bullying by the Duchess of Sussex. Royal aides admitted for the first time the findings would never be made public.
A source told the Daily Mail at the time: ‘People suspected it would be buried, and now it seems that it has.’ the Daily Mail understands that even those who took part in the inquiry haven’t been told what the outcome is. Palace officials would confirm only that their investigation had concluded and ‘recommendations on our policy and procedures’ had been taken forward.
Royal aides announced in March last year that they were launching an inquiry into claims that Meghan’s ‘belittling’ behaviour while a working member of the Royal Family drove two female personal assistants out of the household and ‘undermined the confidence’ of a third.
Staff were said to have been left in tears and feeling ‘traumatised’ – with some likening their condition to having post-traumatic stress.
the Royal household employed a third-party law firm, paid for by the family privately, to probe the claims in a move that some predicted could increase tensions between harry and Meghan and ‘the institution’.
the allegations have always been strongly denied by the duchess, whose lawyers described them at the time as a ‘calculated smear campaign’.
Last year a palace spokesman made clear that the specifics of the allegations – which were brought to the attention of senior household staff at the time by harry and Meghan’s concerned press secretary, Jason Knauf – would not be investigated.
But they said they would investigate how the ‘historic allegations of bullying’ were handled by officials and whether any changes to their HR policies and procedures should be instigated as a result.
A spokesman confirmed that ‘if’ those findings were to be made public, they would be included in this year’s Sovereign Grant report – the official annual review into the royal household’s public finances.
But announcing the report yesterday, the Master of the Privy Purse, Sir Michael Stevens, said of the investigation: ‘there is nothing on this in the report.
‘As we said last year, this work was undertaken privately and had no Sovereign Grant money spent on it.
‘the review has been completed and recommendations on our (HR) policy and procedures have been taken forward. But we will not be commenting further.’