Meghan Markle and Princess Diana’s similar royal lives: 9 uncanny parallels, from drama around their weddings to Prince Harry and King Charles, to struggles with mental health and the press
- Netflix’s explosive docuseries Harry & Meghan has cast more light on how Meghan Markle’s experience of British royal life mirrored Princess Diana’s – and not in a good way
- From opening up about their mental health struggles to Oprah Winfrey and Martin Bashir, to Markle discovering she’d been betrayed by her dad and Charles’ affair with Queen Consort Camilla
Here’s what else the two women have in common …
1. Meghan Markle and Princess Diana both entered their marriages as non-royals
However, not only did she enter a relationship with Prince Harry as a non-royal, she claims she knew very little about the royal family as a whole or what being a working royal actually entailed.
“I didn’t grow up knowing much about the royal family. It wasn’t something that was part of conversation at home. It wasn’t something that we followed,” Markle told Oprah Winfrey in March 2021.
Princess Diana grew up in an aristocratic family and had more knowledge of the royal family – in fact, her sister even dated then Prince Charles before they were introduced. However, Princess Diana, who was 20 when she married the current king of England, revealed that she had no idea what joining the royal family would actually entail and the support she would or wouldn’t have.
“At the age of 19, you always think you’re prepared for everything, and you think you have the knowledge of what’s coming ahead. But although I was daunted at the prospect at the time, I felt I had the support of my husband-to-be,” she told the BBC’s Martin Bashir in a now-controversial interview in 1995.