This coming autumn will be the ten-year anniversary of then-Meghan Markle being publicly identified as Prince Harry’s girlfriend. In ten years, British reporters, British royalists and British royal biographers and commentators have been incapable of being normal about Meghan. Ten solid years of the most vile racism, misogyny, bigotry, stupidity and lies, all directed at an American woman who dared to fall in love, move back to California and survive their onslaught. Well, today would have been Queen Elizabeth II’s 100th birthday, and those same royalists have obviously made the dead queen’s birthday into some kind of referendum on Meghan and Harry (mostly Meghan). Robert Hardman, who wrote one of the bajillion QEII biographies out this year, recently spoke about how Queen Elizabeth obviously thought that Meghan was a “narcissist.”

Queen Elizabeth II “detected narcissistic behavior on the part of Meghan” Markle after efforts to set the duchess up for success were “torn up,” insiders told royal author Robert Hardman. In his new book Elizabeth II, Hardman quoted a source who described the relationship between the monarch and Meghan, saying: “The Queen had seen plenty of narcissists in her life.”

And on Newsweek’s The Royal Report podcast Hardman went into greater detail about his sourcing for the extraordinary account: “A lot of people around the queen thought the queen thought Megan was, by the end, showing narcissistic tendencies.”

Hardman told Newsweek’s The Royal Report podcast “the queen was famously good at concealing her true thoughts” but added that Elizabeth’s inner circle became convinced the monarch believed Meghan exhibited narcissistic traits after attempts to set her up for royal success failed. He cited the care with which the queen gave her new granddaughter-in-law meaningful patronages that she thought would matter to Meghan, including with the National Theatre, playing off her past career as an actress.

Hardman said these efforts “were initially embraced by the [Sussexes] and then just sort of torn up…It was at first baffling, then frustrating, and then ultimately, in the end, those around the queen felt that she felt she had been let down by both of them but certainly detected narcissistic behavior on the part of Meghan.”

Elizabeth’s reported belief in Meghan’s narcissistic tendencies did not develop until “after things had blown up,” Hardman said.

“Early on she was actually delighted [with Meghan]. Don’t forget the queen was sort of bending all the rules to welcome Meghan into the fold,” he said. “You used to not take your girlfriend or even then-fiancee to stay at royal events until you were married and all this sort of thing. Those sort of rules went out of the window.”

The relevant passage in Hardman’s book comes after he discusses Harry and Meghan’s March 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview, in which Meghan said an unnamed royal had expressed “concerns and conversations” about how dark her unborn child’s skin might be before he was born. And the book suggests some in the palace felt Meghan’s choice of interviewer indicated she had been planning to speak out for years, citing the fact Oprah was a guest at the couple’s wedding.

“The business of having Oprah at the wedding now made sense,” said one senior aide. “The Queen had initially been very sympathetic to Meghan and her family problems. I think she saw similarities between Meghan and the young Philip and his chaotic family. But it was now starting to look like the move to California had been a plan all along.”

The source added: “The Queen had seen plenty of narcissists in her life.”

[From Newsweek]

If Meghan has been a narcissist in the past decade, she has certainly been doing narcissism the wrong way. She put herself in the hands of people she thought she could trust, and they constantly undermined her and smeared her at every step. A narcissist would have had more self-preservation and demanded more control. Meghan was driven to suicidal ideation because of the palace and press working hand-in-hand to abuse her – a narcissist would have handled that situation much differently. To this day, Meghan just lives her life mostly out of the spotlight while people like Robert Hardman obsessively track her every move – people being singularly obsessed with her doesn’t make HER self-obsessed. I’d also like to point out that there’s a difference between someone who is centered and someone who is self-centered. Meghan is the former – she’s always been a centered person, which helped her survive. She knows who she is, her priorities are in order, she’s not a style-stalking, copykeening idiot.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.