Although it technically only takes marrying an existing member to join the Royal Family, the skills needed to truly belong take years to learn.
Along with hundreds of etiquette rules, they are expected to pick up how to run an army of staff and navigate dozens of high-profile events each month.
So when Meghan Markle joined The Firm in May 2018, the Queen knew she would need help transitioning from the life of Hollywood showbiz to the traditional world that royals live in.
For that reason, when Meghan went on her first royal engagement a month after her marriage to Harry, the late sovereign graciously decided she would give a personal masterclass.
Their trip to Cheshire was a roaring success and the pair were pictured happily giggling together, despite Meghan seemingly making a royal faux pas.
But the Queen obviously felt Meghan needed help from someone closer to her in age and experience.
After all, the Queen had been born into the position and prepared all her life for the duties.
Meghan Markle turned down Sophie’s offer to help mentor her into the Royal Family, according to a royal expert. The pair pictured at Royal Ascot in 2018
Meghan and Sophie look at each other at the Remembrance Day Service in 2019
The Queen reportedly wanted Sophie to help Meghan adjust to royal life. Pictured at Harry and Meghan’s wedding in May 2018
Queen Elizabeth II believed strongly that Meghan would be a breath of fresh air and a great asset to the monarchy.
So who did she think would be suitable for such an important task? Enter Sophie Rhys-Jones. It was thought the wife of the Queen’s youngest son, Prince Edward, would be perfect for the role.
Royal expert Gyles Brandreth told the Daily Mail show Palace Confidential in 2022: ‘The Queen wanted Meghan to make a success of the marriage and of her new role, and indeed did everything that she could to encourage that.
‘I think she suggested to her that Sophie Wessex, who certainly was a favourite with her, and had been through it because she had married into the Royal Family, and married Prince Edward, might help her, be a sort of mentor.’
On paper the pair looked like a perfect match. They didn’t come from the typical aristocratic sets that had been close to the Royal Family for generations, instead coming from aspirational upper middle-class families, who sent them to private schools to give them a leg-up in life.
Meghan’s father worked humbly as a lighting director and Sophie’s a tyre salesman.
On Meghan’s first royal engagement in June 2018 she was given a masterclass by the Queen, where they were pictured happily giggling together
Pictured: Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones on their wedding day in June 1999. The couple married in St George’s Chapel in Windsor
Edward and wife Sophie (pictured on Christmas Day with their children Lady Louise Windsor and James in 2018) now focus on their royal duties which involve a variety of patronages
The men they married were both third in line to the throne when they were born and in contrast, to use criminally old-fashioned parlance, of their ‘commoner’ backgrounds, had lived every waking moment in the limelight.
But the relationship between the two never took off for one simple reason, Meghan didn’t think she needed any help. In her eyes, all she needed was Harry for advice.
Brandreth said: ‘She felt she had Harry, she didn’t need to be offered a mentor.’
It seems Meghan came into the Royal Family with the certainty of a self-made woman who believed she knew better than the institution.
Some of Meghan’s former staff told royal author Tom Quinn of the awkwardness and hilarity of early meetings at Kensington Palace soon after she joined The Firm.
One said: ‘It was extraordinary because she was so confident that you could see she wanted to run the meeting rather than learn about the Royal Family through the meeting.
‘She was a great believer in grabbing the bull by the horns – except the Royal Family is not really a bull.’
Another added: ‘Meghan thought she knew better than an institution that has been in business for more than 1,000 years.’
More details about Meghan’s journey to join the Royal Family came from Tom Quinn’s 2024 book, Yes, Ma’am: The Secret Life Of Royal Servants (published by Biteback, £20)
Sophie looks at the flowers placed outside Balmoral Castle on September 10, 2022, two days after Queen Elizabeth II died at the age of 96
The suggestion that Meghan had a tendency to be overconfident when it came to her newfound royal status is not a new one.
Another of the couple’s former staffers told Mr Quinn ‘she really did have a messiah complex’, according to his new book Yes, Ma’am: The Secret Life Of Royal Servants.
They pointed out that Meghan was focused on how she could become the best-known and most loved member of the Royal Family.
According to one of Elizabeth II’s former courtiers, the Palace began to worry when they became aware that Meghan had plans for her life as a working royal that were not compatible with the approved programme.
In contrast to the ‘Meghan knows best’ attitude, when Kate joined the Royal Family in 2011 Palace staff noted to Mr Quinn that she took a far more careful approach.
Staff described her as ‘someone who slowly and carefully absorbs the atmosphere of a place, the relationship between people and the rules’.
She was definitely not someone who ‘jumps in straight away and tries to change everything to suit her way of thinking’.
Instead, she decided to bide her time and watch how others behaved first.
Over time she watched and learned, eventually finding her ‘mentor’ in Sophie.
Sophie and Queen Elizabeth II share a laugh at a meeting of the National Federation Of Women’s Institute at Royal Albert Hall on June 4, 2015
Sophie bravely denounced Putin’s forces for using rape as weapon of war as she became the first British royal to visit Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022
Sophie was a shining example in how someone could transfer from a normal life to that of a royal with success.
She became such a big hit over the years that the late Queen reportedly regarded her as a ‘second daughter’ and Sophie calling the Queen ‘Mama’.
The situation was helped by the fact Sophie had lost her own mother Mary Rhys-Jones, to stomach cancer in 2005 at just 71.
According to royal biographer Claudia Joseph, the Queen suggested the then Countess of Wessex, take the new Duchess under her wing.
Royal biographer Claudia Joseph told The Sun: ‘[Sophie] is 17 years older than Kate and has seen and done it all before.
‘She has found that Sophie is a true confidante and sounding board and they have developed a mutual respect and an unbreakable bond.’
And it wasn’t all strictly business with Sophie, as she and Kate have something of a ‘sisterly’ bond thanks to their shared interests and cheeky sense of humour.
Nevertheless despite the offer on the table, Meghan seemingly refused to accept Sophie’s help and instead opted to join the House of Windsor without a mentor.
For the Duke and Duchess’ final official engagement before they quit royal life in 2020, Sophie and Edward were seated beside them
Pictured: the Prince and Princess of Wales and Duchess of Edinburgh on the Buckingham Palace balcony in June 2011
Following the two-minute silence, the Duchess of Edinburgh placed a supportive hand on the Princess of Wales’s back as they left the balcony on Sunday November 10 last year
But after less than two years of a tortured relationship, she and Harry eventually withdrew completely and stepped down in the dramatic Megxit process in January 2020.
However instead of saying they should have listened, Sophie was magnanimous, saying in a rare interview with The Sunday Times after it: ‘I just hope they will be happy.’
She then explained that the Royal Family do all they can to try to help new members adjust to the royal life, adding: ‘We all try to help any new members of the family.’
Perhaps the reason why some people are able to adjust more easily to royal life than the other due to their personalities.
Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams described Sophie as ‘cheerful, dedicated and attentive’, claiming that she has always been ‘the achiever’.
However, in contrast, he suggested that the Duchess of Sussex is a very different character from the Duchess of Edinburgh, claiming that while Meghan is ‘self-obsessed’, Sophie prefers to ‘get on with it’.
He told Femail last year: ‘Sophie was famously a confidante of the late Queen and King Charles knows he can trust her implicitly.
‘Her temperament is very different from Meghan’s. The latter, though not without talent, is self-obsessed and reportedly temperamental.
‘Sophie is attached to nearly 70 organisations. Meghan had only a few patronages, Harry had a few more [and] they chose to give them up to make a new life elsewhere.
‘Sophie and Edward do not seek publicity or praise. Like Princess Anne, they get on with it, are trusted, do a lot of good and not just for themselves, as the Sussexes do often appear to do.’
The Princess of Wales and Duchess of Edinburgh attend a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace on May 9, 2023
Sophie pictured at the Imperial War Museum with Waging Peace Co-Executive director Maddy Crowther, has spoken out on the issue of sexual violence for years and met hundreds of survivors around the world
In recent years the King’s sister-in-law, who is married to his brother, Prince Edward, has travelled to current and former war zones including Chad, the Congo, Kosovo, South Chad, Lebanon and Sierra Leone (pictured)
But after Megxit and the falling out between the Sussexes and the rest of the family, Sophie was once more called in to help.
When Meghan and Harry return for royal events, such as at the funeral of the Queen in September 2022, it fell to her to act as peacemaker between them.
A royal expert cited reports that she is believed to have ‘stepped in to soothe tensions,’ including after the funeral of Philip, when she is said to have sought out Harry and spoken with him for some 30 minutes.
And a former aide of Sophie told the Telegraph that she ‘is made for the role of mediator.’
In the past Sophie, who was formerly the Countess of Wessex, was duty-bound to defer to Prince Harry’s wife who, as a duchess, was of a higher rank.
But as of 2023, when her husband, Prince Edward, was given the title of Duke of Edinburgh, she was also made a duchess.
A friend of the couple previously told the Mail on Sunday: ‘Sophie is relieved.
‘She no longer has to curtsey to someone in the family who has not only left royal duties but has spent the past three years criticising the institution that Sophie works so hard to support.’
Now Sophie and Meghan are technically on equal royal rank, although the most recent YouGov opinion poll shows clearly where the public’s preference lies.
Tina Brown (pictured) believes Meghan’s dramatic fall from grace and relevance is because ‘she has the worst judgment of anyone in the entire world’
Sophie has 51 per cent of Brits saying they felt positive about her, compared to just 20 per cent for Meghan.
Sophie is currently ranked as the sixth most popular royal, compared to Meghan who falters in 19th place. This reveals a dramatic turnaround from 2019 when Meghan was the sixth most popular royal and Sophie was in 11th place.
Perhaps Meghan shouldn’t have been so confident in her ability to become a royal star without Sophie’s guidance.
Tina Brown, the former editor of Tatler and The New Yorker, believes her dramatic fall from grace and relevance is because ‘she has the worst judgment of anyone in the entire world’.
The bestselling author of royal books, who had lunch with Princess Diana in New York two months before her death in 1997, added: ‘She’s a perfectionist about getting it all wrong. She really is.’
‘Her issue is that she doesn’t listen. She hires all these people, asks them their opinion, and then doesn’t follow it. She does what she wants to do. And all of her ideas are total crap, unfortunately.’
