Was Meghan ‘naive and vulnerable’ when she married Harry? 2017 interview cited to suggest she had fair warning
In the bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey on March 7, Meghan Markle was quite candid about how unprepared she was to embrace the life of a royal at the time of marrying Prince Harry in 2018. However, in an old resurfaced interview from 2017, after the pair got engaged, Harry admitted that he did give the former 'Suits' actress a fair bit of warning about the kind of life that she should expect with him if she was to marry him.
During the interview with Oprah, Meghan pointed out in no uncertain words that she did not have much idea about the royal family because it was not a topic that was frequently discussed at her home. "I would say I went into it naively because I didn’t grow up knowing much about the royal family. It wasn’t part of something that was part of (the) conversation at home," she told the legendary interviewer. "It wasn’t something that we followed. My mum even said to me a couple of months ago, 'Did Diana ever do an interview?' Now I can say, 'Yes, a very famous one', but my mum doesn’t know that."
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A number of experts have noted in the past that Meghan's lack of training for adjusting to palace life was apparent on more than one occasion. Robert Jobson, a royal commentator, previously noted how she seemed to be completely unaware of the protocol as she "raced" ahead of Harry on a royal visit, shaking hands with everyone. Meghan herself has admitted that she didn't know that she had to curtsey to the Queen on their first meeting. However, Sky News' royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills highlighted the fact that many now "question whether Meghan really was that naïve and vulnerable".
In Meghan and Harry's engagement interview with the BBC in 2017, the Duke of Sussex said he had told Meghan and was set to tell her more about the difficulties of royal life, warning her about what she was getting herself into. The pair had met each other on a blind date a year prior to getting engaged.
"I tried to warn you [Meghan] as much as possible, but I think both of us were totally surprised by the reaction after the first five, six months we had to ourselves. You can have as many conversations as you want and try and prepare as much as possible, but we were totally unprepared for what happened after that. Of course, that sense of responsibility was essentially from day one, or maybe a couple of months in, when I started to realize actually this is, I feel I know that I am in love with this girl and I hope that she is in love with me but we still have to sit down on the sofa," he said at the time.
He added "You know, I still have to have some pretty frank conversations with her to say what you are letting yourself in for it’s a big deal. It’s not easy for anybody. But I know at the end of the day, she chooses me and I choose her, and therefore whatever we have to tackle together or individually, it will always be us together as a team."
Even Meghan admitted at the time that she had received a fair bit of training for what was about to transpire in her personal life, although the prospect of it was quite daunting. "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. I don’t think either of us did. We both said that, even though we knew that it would be," she said.