This summer will be the tenth anniversary of Prince Harry’s first date with then-Meghan Markle. He wrote about it in detail in Spare, how he saw Meghan on social media and everything in his world stopped when he saw her face. He knew Meghan was the One very early on and he was basically all-in from their first meeting. In retrospect, Harry’s discovery of his soulmate was “the thing” which caused all of the drama and angst within the institution. It wasn’t Meghan in particular, it was the fact that Harry was so in love, that it was a transformative love, that he would do anything for Meghan, even if it meant taking her far away from his racist family. Harry and Meghan made everyone else look bad, especially the other brother and the other brother’s wife. Harry would walk through fire for Meghan – William wouldn’t even shoulder some blame publicly for a poorly Photoshopped Mother’s Day image when his wife was being treated for cancer. Well, speaking of, the Daily Mail has yet another “The Mail Remembers” piece, this one about what happened when Meghan and Kate first met. Clock the tea about the timeline of William’s fury over Harry’s relationship.

Before he left his royal duties behind, Prince Harry once shared an incredibly close bond with Kate Middleton and fondly described her as ‘the big sister I never had’. So when he fell head over heels for former Suits star Meghan Markle in the summer of 2016, it was unsurprising that Harry, now 41, was eager to introduce Kate to his new American beau. Yet Kate repeatedly ‘side-stepped’ Prince William and Harry’s efforts to introduce her to Meghan, now 44, according to royal author Christopher Andersen.

Her ‘initial reluctance’ did, however, ‘come from a good place,’ claimed a close friend of the then-Duchess of Cambridge, who first met Kate while they were both students at Marlborough College.

‘She’s always been a substitute big sister to Harry, watching out for him and making certain no one takes advantage. I think she was a little frightened by what she was reading,’ the friend allegedly explained. The princess’s reservations were perhaps due to her husband’s alleged doubts and apprehension about his brother’s whirlwind romance, the royal author added.

‘William worried aloud that things were moving too fast. Meghan had secured a degree of control over his brother that no other woman ever had,’ wrote Mr Andersen in his book, Brothers And Wives. ‘Harry was on the defensive whenever the subject of Meghan came up, leaving friends and family alike on tenterhooks,’ he added.

Indeed, according to the royal author, the prince once became so enraged when he learnt that one of his long-time Eton friends had made a ‘crude’ joke about Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, that he ‘cut him off for good’.

‘Not even his closest friends were immune from Harry’s wrath when it came to Meghan,’ noted the royal author.

Yet Kate’s initial resistance at meeting the woman who had captured Harry’s heart did not last long. On January 10, 2017, Harry took Meghan to the Cambridge’s Kensington Palace residence at Apartment 1A to meet Kate. Any initial anxieties or concerns about their blossoming romance was seemingly put to one side, as the princess was said to have warmly embraced Meghan with a hug when they arrived at the four-bedroom property.

Meghan, meanwhile, was keen to make a good first impression – and surprised Kate with a $295 Smythson Portobello notebook as a belated birthday gift, while also taking the time to play with then one-year-old Princess Charlotte. While it lasted less than an hour, the informal meeting between the two women was said to have been a resounding success on all accounts.

[From The Daily Mail]

Harry also wrote about taking Meghan over to Will and Kate’s Kensington Palace apartment, and Kate refused to go and meet Meghan, and William kept Harry and Meghan in the foyer, basically. Harry wanted to introduce Meghan and Kate then but Kate had some excuse. Of course, Harry also wrote that William and Kate were very familiar with Meghan already because they were fans of Suits. That, more than anything else, was probably the reason why Kate had her panties in a twist. Meghan was a beautiful actress on one of William’s favorite shows, and Kate was just sick about it. As for the timeline of everything – they’re basically saying that Kate refused to meet Meghan because of what the racist tabloids were writing about Meghan in the fall of 2016? And because William was irate over Harry’s relationship? Yikes. None of this makes William and Kate sound good or healthy.

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