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Meghan Markle apparently experienced quite a shock when she found out being part of the Royal family didn’t automatically make you a billionaire.
The former Suits star has been married to husband Prince Harry since 2018, with the pair tying the knot after two years of dating. (In)famously, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have made their transatlantic odd-couple dynamic the crux of their entire brand. As an American actress, the stuffy, old-fashioned realm of the Royals was a whole new world for Meghan, one that she never really found a way to belong to, hence why the Sussexes migrated to ‘Merica in 2020.
We’re learning more and more about just how little Meghan knew about the Royal way of life over time, like how she got in trouble for “hugging and kissing” brother-in-law Prince William. What’s more, it turns out the duchess was also under the impression that her future spouse had a lot more in his palace piggy bank than he actually did.
Meghan quickly found out her fairy tale fantasy about Royal life wasn’t the reality
The new book Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants sheds fresh light on all kinds of gossip that went on behind palace doors. The most interesting material, unsurprisingly, has to do with the Meghan years, with many reported revelations portraying Markle as someone (understandably) ignorant of the ins and outs of Royal life, causing a stream of tiny breaches in protocol that ultimately shattered her relationship with the family.
For starters, at the beginning of their romance, Meghan is noted to have believed that Harry would have been worth far more than he was. Author Tom Quinn writes that Meghan was shocked when she found out her boyfriend’s net worth was “only” £20 million. The future duchess is said to have “quickly realized” that she had to “reassess other assumptions she’d made about this strange new family.”
According to Quinn, Meghan had a very Disney-fied view of the Royal family, which clashed with the restrictive reality she found herself in. “Meghan Markle had a typically American view of the royal family before she joined it — for her, life was all about castles, glittering balls, and limitless wealth and ease,” Quinn explains. As one Royal staff member the author spoke to summarized, “She expected a billionaire and she got a millionaire.”
To be fair to Meghan, this isn’t really anything she hasn’t already admitted herself, as she’s spoken about her lack of Royal knowledge in the Sussexes’ Oprah Winfrey interview and their 2022 Netflix series. Harry has defended his wife’s unawareness of the do’s and don’t’s, too, admitting that his family is just plain weird. “How do you explain that to people?” Harry asked rhetorically on their Netflix show. “How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother? And that you would need to curtsy, especially to an American. That’s weird.”
As for Harry’s net worth, the good news for Meghan is that at least he’s got a little more spare change to his name these days. As of 2024, the prince is estimated to be worth £53 million. He might not be a billionaire yet, but that still ain’t too shabby.