When it comes to bullying allegations, Meghan Markle is well versed. But in Tom Bower’s latest book, Revenge, the claims are so damning that even Cockburn was gobsmacked.
Reducing a royal aide to tears is one thing, but investigative journalist Bower now claims that Markle’s wrath knows no limits. Meghan reportedly picked on Princess Charlotte, who was then aged three, causing her mother Kate Middleton to burst into tears at Meghan’s bridesmaid fitting.
It’s long been rumored that Meghan made Kate cry over the unacceptable length of the bridesmaid dress that Princess Charlotte was told to wear during Meghan’s wedding to Prince Harry, which was not in line with royal protocol. Kate apparently asked Meghan to allow the three-year-old to wear tights with the ill-fitting shoes that she was worried would cause blisters, but to no avail. After multiple palace sources leaked this account to the media, Meghan turned the story on its head when she claimed in her infamous Oprah interview that it was actually Kate who made her cry during the disagreement.
Bower’s new book corroborates the original claims that Meghan reduced Kate to tears over the length of Princess Charlotte’s hem:
Kate thought it was too short, and anyway did not fit. Melissa Toubati, Meghan’s assistant, and the dress-fitters employed by Givenchy’s Clare Waight Keller, witnessed Meghan emphatically reject Kate’s observation. Compromise was not a trait Meghan embraced.
The stand-offs, Kate decided, confirmed the complaints by Toubati and other members of staff about Meghan. Kate burst into tears. Kirstie Allsopp, a friend of Camilla, would later confirm that Kate was reduced to tears by Meghan bullying her staff.
Bower’s book also claims that Markle “compared Princess Charlotte unfavourably to her best friend Jessica Mulroney’s daughter,” who was also a flower girl in the wedding, causing further tensions between her and her sister-in-law to be. Kate had given birth to Prince Louis a short time before the fitting and was reported to be “too fatigued to cope” with Meghan’s unwillingness to compromise.
Meghan later claimed during her Oprah interview:
A few days before the wedding, she [Kate] was upset about something pertaining — yes, the issue was correct — about flower girl dresses. It made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings.
I thought, in the context of everything else that was going on in those days leading to the wedding, that it didn’t make sense to not be just doing whatever everyone else was doing, which was trying to be supportive, knowing what was going on with my dad and whatnot.
Now, Cockburn can’t say whose version of events is the correct one, though he’d bet a pretty penny on which duchess made the other cry. But one thing is for sure: the first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.
