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It looks like the world will have to keep calm and carry on without Prince Harry and Prince William being close again, or their wives, Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton, posing for girls-day-out photo ops at Wimbledon.
The brothers once-inseparable bond grew strained during the first two years of Harry’s marriage to Meghan Markle, and numerous reports say that Meghan and Kate Middleton never hit it off, probably because they have very different personalities and approaches to public life. Observers now fear that the publication of a tell-all book about Harry and Meghan’s struggles to break free from the royal family may have destroyed that bond forever.
“A lot of damage has been done,” Omid Scobie, co-author “Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family,” said in an interview with People about tensions between the two couples.
But it’s possible that the couples’ differences, and how these differences influenced their eventual falling out, were apparent when the couples first got together at Kensington Palace in early 2017. The differences between Meghan and Kate may have been even more apparent in the gift Meghan brought along to that meeting as a friendship offering to her future sister-in-law.
The gift was a leather-bound Symthson journal, People reported. Meghan brought Kate the gift for her 35th birthday. Journals by the luxury Bond Street brand retail for $60 to $300.
But at the time, The Sun also reported that the notebook specifically was a “dream diary,” presumably for the Duchess of Cambridge to jot down her dreams upon awakening as a way of gaining perspective on her non-dream life. Observers questioned if a dream journal was the most appropriate gift for Kate, and said it might have been something that Meghan, then running her lifestyle blog The Tig, might have chosen for herself.
“Finding Freedom” also recounts that first meeting of the future sisters-in-law. Overall, the book is packed with intimate details about situations in which the Duke and Duchess of Sussex felt they were wronged or falsely portrayed in U.K. tabloid reports. A number of those situations, already excerpted in the Sunday Times, involve heir-to-the-throne William and his wife, Kate Middleton.
“Finding Freedom” largely confirms some of the more infamous incidents reported by the tabloids, including when Meghan and Kate first met. And as “Finding Freedom” and The Sun reported, that first meeting seemed to go pleasantly enough.
Harry had brought Meghan, his then-girlfriend, to meet Kate at her and William’s apartment at Kensington Palace. Meghan, then best known as an actress on the TV legal drama “Suits,” had already met William a couple months earlier.
The Sun reported that Kate “loved” the journal Meghan gave her. “Finding Freedom” confirms that Kate appreciated the journal as well as the way in which Meghan lavished attention on Princess Charlotte.
But “Finding Freedom” notes that there already were underlying tensions between the couples. William had earlier expressed concern to Harry about moving too fast in his relationship with Meghan. It may be that future king William knew that most people are not suited to the intense public demands of royal life. But Harry was incensed, thinking that William was being a “snob” in regard to his girlfriend, a biracial divorcee who grew up in a middle-class Los Angeles neighborhood and who had sought Hollywood celebrity.
“Finding Freedom” also reported that Meghan had trouble bonding with Kate, who is an “extremely guarded person” and who keeps a tight group of friends. Kate also has become known for embracing the “never complain, never explain” approach to her royal duties.
But at the outset of her romance with Harry, Meghan expected Kate, who also came from a non-aristocratic background, to reach out and give her tips on dealing with royal life.
“That was not how things turned out,” the book said. Another source told Scobie and Durand that Kate felt that she and Meghan didn’t have much in common “other than the fact that they lived at Kensington Palace.”
But it looks like observers in 2017 predicted future tensions by seeing something off in Meghan’s dream journal gift to Kate. For one thing, a dream journal comes loaded with a lot of expectations about the recipient and expectations for how she will use it, observers said.
Vanity Fair writers Josh Duboff and Julie Miller, in a 2017 edition of their “In the Limelight” podcast, said the gift assumed that Kate would care about reflecting on her dreams to gain a better understanding of her emotions, ideas, aspirations, and overall mental well-being.
Duboff and Miller furthermore said the “bohemian” gift sounded like something Meghan would buy for herself. At the time, Meghan filled her Instagram feed with self-actualizing-sounding aphorisms.
Meghan also was reluctant to adopt the “never complain, never explain” approach to royal life. Before she and Harry announced in January that they were stepping back from royal life, she said that she was having trouble keeping the British “stiff upper lip.”
“I really tried, but I think that what that does internally is probably really damaging,” Meghan said in a now famous ITV interview while on a royal tour in South Africa with Harry. “I have said for a long time to H— that’s what I call (Harry) —”It’s not enough to just survive something. That’s not the point of life. You have got to thrive. You have got to feel happy.'”
The Daily Mirror’s Polly Hudson was even more dismissive of Kate’s gift in 2017, saying it seems like a treat “but is actually work.”
That’s because “dreams are just the worst,” Hudson said, adding that there was something “passive-aggressive” in Meghan’s gesture.