Meghan Markle was “never going to be a routine royal”, according to royal historian Robert Lacey, who claimed the Palace failed to harness the Duchess of Sussex’s ambition after she joined the Firm.
Palace 'didn't know how to handle' Meghan
Lacey argued that Meghan’s arrival exposed a problem that had existed within the monarchy for generations: how to find a meaningful place for the younger sibling of the heir - and, crucially, their spouse. The author suggested the institution was built around Prince William and Prince Harry remaining a team, but that dynamic shifted dramatically after Harry met the former Suits actress.
Speaking about the Duchess while promoting his book Battle of Brothers, Lacey said: “Meghan changed all that. She is difficult. She has an incredible and dangerous level of self-belief.”
'Spare's wife' never going to be routine
His assessment was not entirely critical of Meghan, with the expert placing significant responsibility on the Palace for failing to recognise that Harry’s new wife would not simply slot quietly into a conventional supporting role. He argued: “They made the mistake of dealing with the spare’s wife thinking she was just a routine royal. She was never going to be a routine royal.”
The problem of the so-called royal “spare” long predates Harry, with younger siblings including Princess Margaret and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor having faced the challenge of establishing their positions while the direct heir remained firmly at the centre of the monarchy. Lacey claimed the institution has repeatedly struggled with precisely that dilemma, saying: “They always treat the second-born badly, not to say cruelly.” He added: “It’s the classic heir and the spare thing. They just don’t know what to do with the spare. And they certainly didn’t know what to do with the spare’s wife.”
Harry's memoir and the couple's exit
Harry would later make the loaded term his own, choosing Spare as the title of his 2023 memoir, which laid bare his frustrations with his position within the Royal Family and his fractured relationships with other senior royals. Lacey has separately described Meghan as a “force of nature” and suggested that the Palace struggled to cope with the couple’s popularity, claiming Harry and Meghan became royal “rock stars” capable of overshadowing more senior members of the Firm.
That popularity, however, existed alongside reported tensions over how the Sussexes wanted to approach their roles within an institution where hierarchy and collective responsibility have traditionally taken precedence over individual profiles.
Royal author Tom Bower has also claimed Meghan’s eagerness to make an immediate impact differed significantly from the more cautious approach taken by Princess Catherine when she entered royal life. In Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors, Bower claimed Catherine had become frustrated by the Duchess’s approach and contrasted the speed at which the two women settled into their positions. He wrote: “Unlike her own cautious approach to ‘learn the ropes’ before engaging in royal duties, Meghan was running - but what was her destination? And who was she running with?” Bower then questioned whether Meghan understood that members of the institution were expected to operate collectively beneath the monarch rather than as competing individuals.
Meghan ultimately spent less than two years as a full-time working royal, with the Duke and Duchess announcing in January 2020 that they intended to step back from their senior positions before completing their final engagements that March.
