Royal Biographer Calls Meghan Markle's Departure From The Royal Family A 'Tragedy.' Here's Why
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry stepped back as senior members of the royal family, announcing their decision in January 2020 on Instagram. During their sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey a year later, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex explained the reasoning behind their decision. Harry blamed the tabloids as the main reason for moving out of the UK, according to BBC News. Over the past two years or so, Meghan has constantly been blamed for forcing Harry to leave the royal family behind, even after Harry told Dax Shepard that he's known for many years that royal life isn't what he wanted. "I was in my early 20s, and I was thinking I don't want this job, I don't want to be here. I don't want to be doing this," Harry said in the May 13 episode of the "Armchair Expert" podcast.
However, when Harry and Meghan got engaged, they both seemed dedicated to living a royal life — even if it wasn't easy. "I think I can very safely say as naive as it sounds now, having gone through this learning curve in the past year and a half I did not have any understanding of just what it would be like," Meghan said during her engagement interview in 2017 (via YouTube). Now, one royal biographer believes that Meghan really did try to make things work before she and Harry left. Keep reading to learn more.
Is Meghan Markle's absence from the royal family a major loss?
Princess Diana's biographer Andrew Morton spoke about Megxit during the October 20 episode of the "Royally US" podcast. Morton suggested that Meghan Markle's departure from the UK was quite a loss for the royal family. "I thought that she was a team player before, and she was known as a team player on 'Suits,'" Morton explained. "When she joined the Royal Family, she made every effort to get involved. She converted to [the] Church of England, she changed her nationality and was going to become a Brit, and she gave up all her social media accounts, dropped the fact she was a patron of various charities, and she seemed to be willing to be integrated into the royal family," Morton added. For these reasons, he feels that the royal family suffered a "small tragedy" in losing the Duchess of Sussex.
"They've lost someone who was relevant to a section of the population that they couldn't really reach. She and Harry have shown that they're not prepared to accept what was put in front of them and make their own way," Morton said on the "Royally Us" podcast. And while some people still think that Harry and Meghan will someday return to royal life, that doesn't seem to be in the cards — at least not in the near future. In February 2021, the palace announced that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would not return to working members of the royal family, according to AP News.