When a royal couple gets engaged before they really get to know each other, it often has disastrous results.
The Royal Family learned that lesson after Prince Charles proposed to 20-year-old Diana after only dating for around six months, meeting in person just a reported 13 times over that period.
So after Prince Harry started dating Meghan Markle in July 2016, and rumours of an engagement started to swirl by 2017, his family were quick to step in.
It’s claimed Prince William, who dated Kate for eight years before proposing, was ‘nervous’ about how quickly the couple were moving, as he was worried Meghan would struggle to transition into the life of a royal in such a short period of time.
But Harry brushed off his brother’s concerns, claiming that he had to marry her quickly because her ‘biological clock was ticking’ as she was almost 35 years old, according to royal author Tina Brown.
However, the author claimed William’s unsaid biggest worry was for his younger brother’s ‘mental fragility’ and that he wouldn’t be able to cope with all the ‘scorching scrutiny and harassment’ that Meghan would come to endure.
Here MailOnline looks back to when William warned Harry to take it slow with Meghan, but the younger brother did not want to listen…
When Prince Harry started dating Meghan Markle in July 2016, rumours of an engagement started to swirl by 2017. Pictured: The couple for the first time at the Invictus Games in Toronto in September
Harry brushed off his brother’s warning to take it slow, claiming that he had to marry Meghan quickly because her ‘biological clock was ticking’ as she was almost 35 years old, according to a book. Pictured: The couple with their son Prince Archie in 2019
It’s claimed Prince William, who dated Kate for eight years before proposing, was ‘nervous’ about how quickly Harry and Meghan were moving. Pictured: Prince William and Prince Harry in April 2017
William’s unsaid biggest worry was for his younger brother’s ‘mental fragility’ and that he wouldn’t be able to cope with all the ‘scorching scrutiny and harassment’ that Meghan would come to endure, according to royal author Tina Brown (pictured)
Shortly after Harry, now 40, and Meghan, now 43, started dating, the couple met the Queen at an informal drop by at Royal Lodge in Windsor after church.
According to Ms Brown, who was a confidante of Princess Diana’s and met with her just weeks before her death, the Queen reserved judgment and was ‘just happy Harry was happy’.
However the author wrote in her bestselling book, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor: ‘But William knew Harry all too well and feared he was heading for trouble. Every time his brother fell in love, it was an eruption of Vesuvius.
“You do realise this is the fourth girl you’ve taken to Botswana”, he couldn’t help but remark after Harry’s starry-eyed account of the trip.’
William didn’t immediately tell Harry about his anxieties about Meghan and was pleasant when they met for the first time over a relaxed tea in the kitchen of the Cambridges’ Kensington Palace apartment in November.
‘I was looking forward to meeting the girl who has put that silly grin on my brother’s face,’ he told her disarmingly, according to Ms Brown.
For her book, Ms Brown spoke to 120 royal insiders over the course of two years, and claims most of the family – including Prince Charles and the Queen – appeared to like Meghan, but it was Prince William who had the biggest reservations.
William also had concerns Meghan would not have enough time to create a life for herself in the UK and make new friends.
The brothers (pictured in 2021) fell out over Meghan’s introduction to the family
Meghan and Harry with Archie in 2019 on their royal tour of South Africa
The princes and their wives attend the 100th birthday of the Royal Air Force on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace in July 2018
The Princess and Prince of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex step out together to greet members of the public at Windsor Castle in Berkshire following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022
The Royal Family on the steps of St George’s Chapel in Windsor after Prince Harry married Meghan
She would also have to give up her entire life in North America, including her acting career.
At that time, Meghan knew almost nobody in London and had little understanding of British culture.
But perhaps more importantly she was not prepared for the ‘scorching scrutiny and harassment’ that comes with being a member of the Royal Family, claims Ms Brown who previously edited Tatler and The New Yorker.
She quotes sources from Palace veterans who knew the coming storm would be nothing remotely like the kind of benign exposure a TV actress had to endure.
But according to the book, Harry’s response to William’s fears was that the most effective way to protect Meghan would be to marry her ‘as quickly as possible’ so that she would receive the same police protection that he did while he was still a working royal.
Harry was also claimed to have said since she was a month away from turning 35, her biological clock was ticking.
It was also claimed by royal author Tom Bower in his 2022 book that after the couple’s first date Meghan told a friend her biological clock was ticking and she wanted children.
In January 2023 Harry discussed William’s warning to take it slow in his blockbuster tell-all memoir Spare, writing: ‘It’s too fast, he’d told me. Too soon. In fact, he’d actually been pretty discouraging about my even dating Meg.
‘One day, sitting together in his garden, he’d predicted a host of difficulties I could expect if I hooked up with an “American actress”, a phrase he always managed to make sound like a “convicted felon”.
Princess Diana is pictured with both of her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, in London in 1995
Prince Harry and Prince William arrive at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, ahead of Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle on May 19, 2018
The ‘once unbreakable’ bond between Prince William and Prince Harry (pictured in 2005) has suffered a breakdown since Meghan’s introduction to the family
Charles posed with his sons Prince William (R) and Prince Harry (L) during the Royal Family’s ski break at Klosters in 2005
Prince William and Kate with Prince Harry and Meghan during the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey in March 2019
‘Are you sure about her Harold?
‘I am, Willy.’
‘But do you know how difficult it is going to be?
‘What do you want me to do? Fall out of love with her?’
Despite the warning from his family, head over heels Harry later claimed they fell in love ‘so incredibly quickly’ it was proof the ‘stars were aligned’.
According to Battle of the Brothers: William and Harry by historian Robert Lacey, in a desperate move William even called in Princess Diana’s brother Earl Charles Spencer to try and get Harry to slow down.
‘For his part, William was worried that his brother was going too fast in his courtship and he didn’t shrink from saying so when Harry started talking about getting hitched,’ Mr Lacey wrote.
‘William couldn’t understand how Harry could contemplate marrying this still unknown and untested quantity less than two years after their first meeting,’ the book continues.
But ‘the result of the Spencer intervention was an even more bitter explosion’, according to Mr Lacey, although Harry ‘understood why Diana’s brother should want to help’ and ‘didn’t blame his uncle’, who walked with the princes and their father behind Diana’s coffin at her funeral in 1997.
Princess Diana is pictured with her sons Prince William (left) and Prince Harry (right) during the summer holidays in Majorca in 1988
‘Yet he was furious with his elder brother for dragging other family members into the row,’ the author claims.
But it wasn’t just William who lovestruck Harry was ignoring, some of his closest friends were also ringing the alarm bell over Meghan.
Harry had been friends with Tom ‘Skippy’ Inskip since their days at Eton together and their fathers had been friends before that.
It was he who accompanied the prince on his ill-fated trip to Las Vegas in 2012, when the prince was photographed naked during a game of ‘strip billiards’.
However the long and colourful history did not protect the friend from Harry’s rage, and the two apparently fell out after he warned the prince against marrying Meghan.
According to the Sussex-friendly book Finding Freedom, Skippy expressed doubts about how quickly the relationship was moving and decided to warn Harry.
He is believed to have advised Harry and Meghan to live together before ‘doing anything more serious’.
A source close to Sussexes told the book’s authors that although his advice ‘came from a good place,’ Harry ‘didn’t totally see it that way’.
According to the biography, Finding Freedom, Skippy (pictured with his wife at Harry and Meghan’s 2018 wedding) had a falling out with Prince Harry after he shared his ‘doubts’ about Meghan before they became engaged
Prince Harry and friends, including Tom ‘Skippy’ Inskip (centre right) attend the wedding of a mutual friend on September 14, 2013
Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Andrew, Prince Harry, Prince William, Meghan, Prince Charles, Kate and Camilla leave Westminster Abbey last year after attending the Commonwealth Day service at the church in London on March 11, 2019
Some of his other friends had whispered Harry was ‘f***ing nuts’ to be dating the ‘woke’ spoilsport after she ‘reprimanded’ them over transgender and feminism jokes at a shooting weekend in November 2016, according to Mr Bower.
Despite the stiff opposition from friends and family, Harry proposed in November 2018, a little more than a year after they first met and began dating.
He later wrote in Spare: ‘We both wanted to start a family straightaway. We were working crazy hours, our jobs were demanding, the timing wasn’t ideal, but too bad. This had always been our main priority.’
The Prince also recounted in the memoir how his wife Meghan ‘bonded’ with his late grandmother the Queen on her first royal engagement with the late monarch by telling her how much she wanted to be a mother.
However once the engagement was announced it seemed the fears Meghan was not ready for the media storm that would ensue were well-placed.
She was used to publicist-fed entertainment coverage and magazine puff pieces that were common in Hollywood in return for access, claims Ms Brown.
The author writes American celebrities often find themselves dazed by the ‘sheer demonic creativity’ of the British popular press which has made a habit of tearing through the reputation of celebrities for people to read at the breakfast table.
And the negative media attention on Meghan only worsened in the months leading up to the wedding and after it.
On November 4, 2016, a story by The Sun with the headline ‘Harry’s Girl on Pornhub’ became a particular source of anguish for the couple, writes Ms Brown.
The story appeared on the front page and was based on the fact a random user had uploaded clips of Meghan’s sex scenes from the legal drama Suits on the site.
A friend of Meghan’s told Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, the authors of Sussex-friendly book Finding Freedom, that she felt ‘sick to her stomach’ when she saw the headline.
The Sun was forced to apologise in 2017 for publishing the story and clarified that Meghan had ‘never been involved with such content and had no idea that the video clip had been published illegally on this website’.
Relations were also said to be fraught between the princes’ wives, Meghan and Kate. The book claims that one stand-offish episode at a charity polo match was a snapshot of the pair’s ‘cordial but distant rapport’
Meghan also had a widespread falling out with her father Thomas Markle, who has publicly criticised her
Thomas Markle has been a constant source of bad news for the princess since she became a royal in 2018
But the story was just one in an avalanche of bad news for Harry and Meghan that appeared in the press.
Meghan also had a widespread falling out with her father Thomas Markle, and her half-sister Samantha, who both publicly criticised her.
She was quickly dubbed ‘Duchess Difficult’ by the press after a series of fallings out behind the scenes and allegations of bullying, which have been denied, were made against her.
Throughout Harry begged his family to speak out to defend Meghan, but the long-running royal mantra of ‘Never Complain, Never Explain’ dictated no response was the best way to let the media storm blow over.
But the situation became too much for Harry and Meghan to bear, and after a difficult few years they stepped down from their roles as senior royals in January 2020.
Since then they have fired countless broadsides against ‘press intrusion’ into their privacy from their base in California in the form of Harry’s extremely intimate book Spare and a Netflix documentary littered with personal details.
However the couple’s rush to get married and beat the ticking biological clock worked, and they now have two children, Prince Archie born in May 2019 and Princess Lilibet born in June 2021.
But perhaps William wonders from time to time whether his brother might have remained a working royal alongside him if he had taken his advice and been more prepared before marrying Meghan.
