Prince Harry left the Royals in 2020 because Meghan Markle made him ‘too…’
ByTuhin Das Mahapatra
Mar 21, 2025 12:39 PM IST
Royal author Tom Quinn reveals that Meghan Markle's influence led Prince Harry to be more progressive, distancing him from royal expectations.
When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped down from Royal duties in 2020, an old palace staffer alleged the Duke of becoming “a tree-hugging lefty” and “rejecting the values and traditions of his family.”
Prince Harry's proposal to Meghan was as sweet and down-to-earth as their relationship. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)(AP)
Prince Harry's proposal to Meghan was as sweet and down-to-earth as their relationship. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)(AP)
Royal author Tom Quinn, in his latest book Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, cited insights from numerous former and current palace staff. “Meghan was blamed for… making Harry ‘too woke,’” he told Fox News.
“One of Harry’s best friends said, ‘I can’t understand what Harry sees in her. She’s a tree hugger. She’s so woke.’ For Harry’s traditional friends, being woke was not a good thing. But I think Harry was, in a way, entranced by the fact that Meghan was able to offer him an alternative world from the one he’d always known.”
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How Meghan Markle influenced Prince Harry’s worldview
Harry and Meghan first crossed paths in early 2016. By October of that year, their romance was made public. The Suits star was initially welcomed by the British media as a refreshing addition to the royal family.
The Royal author narrated, “There’s a famous occasion where Meghan went with Harry and some of his friends from school and from the army — she went on a pheasant shoot at Sandringham, the royal family’s country home,” but the Duchess absolutely “hated” the day when Harry's friends started cracking some jokes.
“She hated it because all of Harry’s friends were making the sorts of jokes that suggested they disliked everything to do with ‘woke,’” Quinn explained. “They just don’t like that kind of thing because, to a large extent, it’s seen as left-wing. They just didn’t like it.”
Meghan took Harry away from Royals: Source
“With Meghan, [Harry] shifted across. He became much more sympathetic as she is about wanting to do good in the world. The idea of Harry being worried about those things before Meghan — it would never have occurred to him,” Quinn observed.
“I think Meghan really took him away from that [old] world, and they didn’t like that.” Quinn also claimed that members of the royal family were not pleased with the change. “The royals certainly didn’t like that.”
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Even a former palace staff member recalled that before Meghan entered his life, Harry was “one of the easiest and nicest people to work for.”
“That terrible modern word ‘woke’ has often been used, and although I don’t like it, I can see why it is applied to Harry — he did become far more concerned about social issues and the rights of minorities than he’d ever been before Meghan’s arrival,” the former aide shared in Quinn’s book.
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