There’s a certain clichéd joke in pop culture that you’ll never be good enough for your mother-in-law. But when your mother-in-law continues to be – 27 years after her death – one of the most enduringly beloved women in the world, iconised along the likes of Mother Theresa and Florence Nightingale – that trope carries extra weight and significance.
Add to that the constant public dialogue that you’ll never match up to her, and it’s no surprise that Meghan Markle is starting to feel the heavy burden of being married to Princess Diana’s second son. Indeed, having recently received backlash yet again after wearing a pair of earrings once belonging to the late princess, the Duchess of Sussex is apparently starting to feel haunted by the ever-presence of the mother-in-law she never met.
“It’s such an enormous responsibility to be married to the son of the Queen of Hearts,” says an insider close to Meghan, who has long positioned herself as something of a successor to Diana in her philanthropic efforts, love for fashion, and tendencies to go against the grain. “It’s wonderful that the public still loves Diana so fervently; Harry is grateful for that, but the downside is that people are unjustly hard on his wife. He expected there to be an added layer of pressure on Meghan, but he never imagined it to get ugly. It’s very hard on Meghan when people slam her and say she’s trying to copy Diana, when all she’s doing is trying to honour her memory and carry on her legacy.”
The most recent round of furore surrounding Diana’s legacy was sparked last month, after Meghan wore butterfly earrings, which previously belonged to the late Princess of Wales, while on her and Harry’s pseudo-royal trip to Colombia. Meghan has previously worn the earrings – which Diana first sported during a trip to Canada with then Prince Charles in 1986, when Harry was still a baby – for two public photocalls. The first was when Kensington Palace announced she was pregnant in 2018; and the second was when she returned from maternity leave in 2019. But wearing them again last month seemed to provoke some outrage from online commenters, with one saying, “She cosplays Diana all the time,” while another added, “Desperately trying to be as popular as Diana. Never going to happen.” A third weighed in, “Meghan will never, I say never, come close to Diana, no matter how much of her jewellery she wears.”
According to our source, the backlash towards her sartorial nod to Diana – which she did as a tribute, rather than as a way to try to compete with her – has hit Meghan all the harder, considering the constant speculation that Harry wouldn’t have married her if his mother were still alive. Harry, for his part, has often drawn close comparisons between Meghan and Diana, saying they both shared the same “compassion” and “warmth” and has expressed his deep regrets that they never got to meet, but that hasn’t stopped those with inside knowledge weighing in on the matter. In 2022, Dickie Arbiter – a former Buckingham Palace press secretary who worked for Queen Elizabeth from 1988 to 2000 and regularly interacted with Princess Diana – suggested things would have gone very differently if that fatal car accident in 1997 had never happened.
“I’m going to stick my neck out here, and I doubt Harry would have married Meghan [if Diana hadn’t died] because Harry wouldn’t have been in the state he was in as a result of his mother’s death,” he said. “He would have taken a completely different course and he would still be here working in support of the [late] Queen.”
It’s certainly true that Diana’s death was instrumental in convincing Harry to step down as a senior royal and leave the UK for good, saying himself in his and Meghan’s docuseries, Harry & Meghan, that he couldn’t handle the “feeding frenzy” that followed women who married into the royal institution. Harry explained that, after learning that Meghan was suffering from suicidal ideation after their wedding in 2018, he had to take drastic action. “I knew that I had to do everything I could to protect my family,” he said. “Especially after what happened to my mum. I didn’t want history to repeat itself.”
Harry’s insistence that Meghan is hounded the same way that Diana was has often proved to jarring with the general public – but, as our source explains, the two, who named their three-year-old daughter Lilibet Diana (they’re also parents to Archie, five), remain focused on keeping her memory alive. Indeed, considering the royal rift between Harry, his father and his brother, it’s apparently all the more important to the Duke of Sussex that he stays close to his maternal relatives – who aren’t just the last remaining links to his late mother, but they’re also his last remaining links to any family he’s still close to in the UK.
Last month, Harry made a surprise trip back to the UK to attend the funeral of Sir Robert Fellowes, the late husband of Diana’s elder sister, Lady Jane Fellowes – reportedly avoiding any run-ins with Prince William, who was also in attendance, on the day. We’re told that Harry is determined to stay close to his late mother, and her family, amid all the fall-out from his estrangement from the palace. And the fact that Meghan is willing to pay such loud tributes alongside him – despite the flak she cops in the process – is something he doesn’t take for granted.
“Meghan insists that she can handle it and that it’s all worth it,” we’re told. “Diana is such an influential spirit in both their lives, and that can weight a little heavy as far as pressure goes, especially with all the comparisons. Some of them are pretty cruel. But it hasn’t dampened Meghan’s determination to keep flying that flag. Harry is so proud of her strength and says that’s just one of the things that she has in common with his mum.”