Key moment that sparked Meghan and Kate feud

Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton’s feud sparked major division within the family – but it began much earlier than anyone could have guessed.

You might think that after four years, at least 13 interviews* adding up to an estimated 40 hours of assorted public and media outings including a six-hour docu-series, that we would know absolutely everything there is to know about the strained relationship between Kate, the Princess of Wales and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.

Surely, I hear you say, there could be no new detail, no new morsel, no new crumb of information left to excavate or winkle out; this history-making falling-out having been essentially stripmined by everyone from the press to Meghan and her princely other half.

But, you would be wrong. Because here we are, presented with a slew of new choice details courtesy of the Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey about how and why Kate and Meghan went from playing nice through politely gritted teeth while in public to essentially recreating the Battle of Tewkesbury in competing Erdem frocks.

Relations apparently became so jaundiced that Meghan “pointedly” referred to Kate by a different name than everyone else in the royal family.

Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle have never been close, but now appear to be worlds apart. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Let me explain. Close your eyes and pretend it’s 2016. At some point Harry, filled to the very brim with gingery glee with his new lady love, decided to introduce Meghan to brother Prince William and to Kate.

The reception the Waleses put on for the duo sounds about as half-hearted and unenthusiastic as that one time Prince Philip was forced into trying a samosa. While William made small talk with the Los Angeles native, the Princess of Wales (then the Duchess of Cambridge) stayed in the garden, playing with their kids.

Even when Kate finally did meet Aitch’s new squeeze, “as well as finding [Meghan] ‘a little full-on’, had no idea she would be a keeper, having met a succession of Harry’s girlfriends,” according to the Telegraph. 

But a keeper the Suits star turned out to be, and that initial chilly meeting does not sound like it was forgotten, let alone ever forgiven. Tominey writes: “From that point onwards, Meghan always pointedly insisted on calling the Princess of Wales ‘Kate’ even though the rest of the family referred to her as ‘Catherine’”.

It’s believed Markle would refer to Middleton as ‘Kate’ instead of her preferred ‘Catherine’. Picture: Daniel Leal / AFP

“What’s in a name?” a thousand dreadful community theatre productions of Romeo and Juliet might have pondered. The answer in the case of Meghan and Kate it sounds like, a hell of a lot. This name situation now joins the Bridesmaid Dress Incident, the Lip Gloss Contretemps and the Great Hugging Hooha in understanding this sister-in-law-ly rift that could rival something from the Borgias.

Tominey’s revelations don’t end there. In 2017 Harry got onto Amazon, I’m assuming, bought those ticky-tacky battery-powered plastic candles, as seen in Harry & Meghan, and got down on bended knee, proposing marriage and a lifetime of opening bridges to Meghan. She was keen. Dead keen.

Once Meghan was officially on track for HRH-dom, in February 2018 came the one and only official outing of the Fab Four, an excitable nickname that has aged about as well as pretty much everything ever uttered by Philip within audible distance of a shorthand pad.

So, both couples were on stage at the Royal Foundation Forum, with mental health on the agenda. From what we have learned since, it sounds like it was an outing that left everyone involved double-checking the spelling of the word “piqued”.

“Women don’t need to find a voice. They have a voice. They need to feel empowered to use it,” Meghan told the audience, in a statement so laden with layers of meaning in hindsight it should be buckling.

Meghan and Kate on stage at the Royal Foundation Forum. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty; The Sun

The soon-to-be duchess might have felt “empowered” to use her new platform as was her want, but her future in-laws reportedly demonstrated “expressionless irritation” (per Tina Brown) at her having gone off script. For her part, Meghan “seemed uncomfortable having to so publicly play ‘second fiddle’ to William and Kate as the superior royals in the palace hierarchy,” Tominey now reports. “I think there was always a sense that Meghan felt she was a self-made woman whereas Kate hadn’t really had her own career,” an insider with knowledge of the engagement told the Telegraph.

Markle reportedly considered herself ‘self-made’, compared to Middleton who married into wealth. Picture: Lisa O'Connor / AFP

“She seemed to feel like she had more of a right to speak than her sister-in-law, who had married into the family as an unknown whereas Meghan regarded herself as a philanthropist who could teach the royals a thing or two about charity.”

Generous of her and all but you have to wonder if Meghan had heard of any coals and whether they needed to be taken to Newcastle? Tominey has also revealed something else hitherto unknown about that not-so-fab four outing. At the time of the event, a massive cold front had hit the UK dubbed the Beast from the East, which saw large snowfalls and much of London grinding to a standstill.

“Royal aides were therefore surprised to find Meghan had dressed in a summer dress for the summit – as Kate, who was seven months pregnant with Prince Louis at the time, opted for something rather more conservative,” the Telegraph reports. (Looking back though, Meghan looks wonderfully chic and Kate looks a slightly frumpy Vicar’s wife grudgingly off for a municipal morning tea.)

“Meghan would ‘bristle’ when praise was lavished on Kate for her mothering skills, wardrobe and general kindness,” Tomney writes. “The duchess was a woman in a hurry while Kate was the complete opposite: an introvert, uncomfortable with confrontation.”

“She was constantly competing with Kate,” one observer has now told the Telegraph. “Whatever she had, she wanted more.” The same report details: “On another occasion, Meghan allegedly gifted an employee a Charlotte Tilbury lipstick set, but only after she had removed her preferred shade.”

A bombshell new royal book as thrust the couple back into the spotlight in recent days. Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP

This is all obviously hardly flattering stuff for the Duchess of Sussex but this latest series of revelations can’t be read in isolation. This all comes hot on the heels of the Sussexes’ oleaginous biographer Omid Scobie supposedly accidentally outing Kate as one of the two members of the royal family who allegedly speculated about Prince Archie’s skin colour before he was born. (The other was none other than Crown-wearer-in-chief King Charles.) Might we be seeing a certain circling of the monarchist wagons going on?

A fightback from sympathetic Kate quarters after Scobie’s Endgame’s claims? The countdown is now on until Christmas and Kate’s big annual ring-a-ding singalong carol event happening at Westminster Abbey on Friday. Thanks to Endgame, maybe that whole ‘goodwill to all people’ bit is running late this year?

* James Corden, Oprah Winfrey, Armchair Expert, The Me You Can’t See, Today, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, ITV, the Telegraph, the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Ellen DeGeneres, The Cut, and Variety.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Key moment that sparked Meghan and Kate feud