A Timeline Of The Drama Surrounding Meghan Markle And The Royal Family

When Britain's Prince Harry married American actress Meghan Markle in 2016, forward-looking people cheered. While the move could by no means atone for the royal family's purported history of contributing to colonialism and plain old classism, it at least showed the family's willingness to move past these old values and embrace a more inclusive and modern vision of what a royal family could look like.

But as we all know, this was not to be. While the royal family was officially pleased to welcome Markle into The Firm, the British tabloid press and much of the public were not. The cultural adjustment to royal life was more than California-raised Markle bargained for (per Us Weekly), and the vicious level of public scrutiny was more than even a seasoned Hollywood veteran like her could handle. This pressure — much of it from other royal family members — drove Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to step down from their royal duties in 2020, a move than saddened the royal family and shocked the public. With the pair revealing more about that tumultuous time in their new Netflix series "Harry and Meghan," it's time to look back and review how it all unfolded.

Sadly, the media's kind treatment of the new couple was not to last. It didn't take long for the more salacious tendencies of the British tabloid press to come out, and soon Prince Harry and Meghan Markle found themselves — along with the rest of the royal household — fending off an endless barrage of racially and sexually tinged rumors and slurs, per The Guardian. An official statement from Kensington Palace noted, "The smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments."

Kensington palace sources also told The Guardian that Prince Harry feared for the safety of Markle and her family, who were being physically stalked and harassed by paparazzi. Even Markle's mother, still living in Los Angeles, was forced to "struggle past photographers in order to get to her front door," according to an official Kensington Palace statement. "Given what she was going through in the press and what was happening privately, Harry no longer felt it was acceptable for someone in his position to sit quietly," a palace source told The Guardian. "This is happening because of him, not her. The traditional no-comment position no longer felt acceptable to him."

Meghan Markle didn't get to meet her future grandmother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, until shortly before her engagement. And per ET Online, she didn't have much time to prepare for the meeting, either. Instead, Harry made a snap decision one day to swing by and make the introduction. "I didn't know I was gonna meet her until moments before," Meghan recounted in the Netflix docuseries "Harry and Meghan" (per ET). "We were in the car, driving and he's like, 'You know how to curtsy, right?' And I just thought it was a joke."

And while the initial meeting was weird and stressful for Markle, who compared it to a scene from the themed dinner-theater chain Medieval Times, she and Queen Elizabeth II developed a surprisingly easy rapport. "[Her Majesty] has a brilliant sense of humor. That's one of the first things that brought her and Meghan closer," a source told Us Weekly. "It's that warm side of her that has made Meghan feel so at ease." And while their relationship cooled a bit following Prince Harry's and Markle's decision to leave the royal household, it remains one of Markle's warmest memories of her time with the family

No wedding would be complete without some petty family drama, and the wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle — elegant and warm-spirited as it appeared to spectators — had its share of behind-the-scenes family angst. For starters, Markle's own family life wasn't all sweetness and light: Her parents are divorced, and while her mother's presence at the wedding was a source of delight for many viewers, the absence of her estranged father – who'd been caught staging photos with paparazzi, according to Us Weekly — was conspicuous. Fortunately, Prince Charles was happy to step in and support his future daughter-in-law by walking her down the aisle during the ceremony.

And because weddings tend to make already fraught relationships between relatives worse, another tiff between Markle and Kate Middleton was almost inevitable. Fortunately, they both realized what they were doing and quickly mended fences. "A few days before the wedding, she [Kate] was upset about flower girl dresses, and it made me cry," Markle told CBS (via Us). "It really hurt my feelings. ... She was upset about something, but she owned it, and she apologized. And she brought me flowers and a note, apologizing. And she did what I would do if I knew that I hurt someone, right, to just take accountability for it."

If the relationship between Meghan Markle and her sister-in-law was fraught, the tensions between their husbands were even more so. While Prince William publicly expressed support for Prince Harry's new love and their eventual marriage, behind the scenes, he expressed concern that the relationship was moving too fast and too publicly, according to Cosmopolitan. Naturally, this did not go over well with Prince Harry, who later accused his brother of not doing enough to make Markle feel included in the family.

Still, appearances are everything in the royal family, and while royal watchers noticed some chilly body language between the two brothers in their public appearances, the two attempted to put up a unified front. After Prince Harry and Markle married, for instance, the two brothers and their wives set up and operated a charitable foundation together, The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But in 2019, the foundation announced that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would leave the foundation and start their own with transitional funding from the Royal Foundation, per Cosmopolitan. The foundation and the royal family portrayed this as part of the natural evolution of the Sussexes' philanthropic focus – but royal watchers couldn't help wondering if the rift was personal.

The pressure from the royal household and the media on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle didn't let up after the birth of their son and soon drove the couple nearly to a breaking point. "Not many people have asked if I'm OK, but it's a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes," Markle told ITV (via Insider). In late 2019, per Insider, reports from royal sources revealed that the couple was planning a six-week break from their royal duties and would be spending the winter holidays with Markle's mother in Canada.

The break must have been beneficial for them since upon their return in January 2020, they announced their plan to make it permanent, saying they would step back from their royal duties and be financially independent of the royal family. This unconventional move blindsided the rest of the royal family. As a source told Us Weekly, the queen was "so disappointed that her own grandchild would heap so much embarrassment on the monarchy and bring all this unwanted attention on his family at the worst possible time."

Time and distance do wonders to de-escalate conflicts. Having settled into a seaside home in southern California (per The Cut), Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have mostly put their old lives behind them and are now focusing on building their new identities and careers. Looking back, Markle revealed to The Cut that try as they might, the couple could never have truly fit into the royal family. "Just by existing, we were upsetting the dynamic of the hierarchy. So we go, 'Okay, fine, let's get out of here. Happy to,'" she said.

Their new lives have helped cool the tensions between the couple and the rest of the royal family. In June 2022, the couple returned to London to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's platinum jubilee, their first public appearance with the royal family since their departure. And in the couple's interview with CBS (per Us Weekly), Markle clarified that much of her misery was brought on by royal handlers, not her in-laws themselves. "So, there's the family, and then there's the people that are running the institution," she told CBS. "Those are two separate things. It's important to be able to compartmentalize that because the queen, for example, has always been wonderful to me."