The royal family continues to deal with the aftershocks of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s decision to step down from their roles as senior royals.
Following their move to the United States, much of the public criticism seemed to fall on Meghan, who was often seen as the driving force behind the shift in Harry’s priorities and behavior. As the couple recently marked their seventh wedding anniversary, an old video of Meghan explaining why she became the focal point of backlash has been resurfacing online.
The clip, originally from the couple’s Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, has gone viral on TikTok.
In it, Meghan addresses long-standing accusations that she changed Harry once they began dating. “In any relationship, oftentimes, when a guy falls in love with a girl, his buddies are like, ‘Oh my God, he changed. I don’t see him anymore. He is always with her.’ And you blame the girl. They are angry with her because she is the thing that took him away,” she says in the video.
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She continued, “And that is whether you are in a small town or a big city or in the royal family. He wouldn’t ever have been attracted to or interested in me if he hadn’t already been on his own path.”
Meghan suggested that when people feel uncomfortable about change, they look for a target. “Most people need to find someone to blame to try to, like, reconcile how you are feeling because something has changed and it doesn’t feel good and you don’t like it and what is the thing that is different,” she said.
Referring to their final days in London before relocating, she added, “But you blame me… because also if you can blame me, then you have no fault. So that last week, it was bittersweet.”
While Meghan didn’t specify whether she was referring to Harry’s friends or family, many interpreted her words as directed toward both. It is well known that Harry’s relatives held her responsible for his departure from royal life. However, what is less publicized is that Meghan also reportedly had tensions with some of Harry’s close friends.
Biographer Tom Bower recounted one such episode in his book Revenge, as cited by Newsweek. According to Bower, during a private getaway, Meghan clashed with several of Harry’s longtime friends.
The disagreement reportedly stemmed from a shooting trip where, as Bower described, Meghan “challenged every guest whose conversation contravened her values.” He wrote, “According to Harry’s friends, again and again she reprimanded them about the slightest inappropriate nuance. Nobody was exempt.”
Bower claimed the topics of humor among Harry’s friends included jokes about “sexism, feminism, and transgender people,” which Meghan found offensive. He also noted that the group felt she was “too woke” and that Harry, influenced by her, had become someone entirely different — even described as a “tree hugger” by some of them.
These moments, layered with both private tensions and public scrutiny, continue to shape how Meghan’s role in Harry’s departure from royal life is perceived — and why, years later, she is still at the center of the conversation.
