Meghan Markle would have learned lessons from Princess Diana that could have helped her survive in the royal family for many years to come.
Former royal butler Paul Burrell exclusively tells The Mirror that the late Princess would have taken Meghan “under her wing and educated her” when she first started dating her son Prince Harry. And her insights could have stopped the couple from breaking away from the royal family and moving to America.
“I think Diana would have embraced Meghan I think she would have tried to understand her,” Burrell says. Diana loved America and had even been planning to start a new life in California just before she died and had picked out a home in Malibu for herself and her two sons, Burrell claims.
“Diana loved America, she loved Americans. And she understood it was a different culture,” he says. The property she had her eye on in Malibu was a “white building clinging to the side of a cliff” on a picturesque stretch of coast not far from where Prince Harry and Meghan have settled, Burrell says.
“Diana was thrilled at the thought of going to live for some of the year in America,” he explains. “There was no way she would have decanted full time because she was proud of her association with the royal family. But she thought a bolthole as somewhere to escape to, she would love to escape to America.”
Burrell says Harry “must have known” about his mother’s “fondness” of America before he met Hollywood-born Meghan. “In his own way, he's thought well, Meghan's American and my mum would have loved Meghan,” Burrell says.
And Princess Diana’s confidant agrees that his close friend would have welcomed Meghan with open arms. “Yes, she would have loved Meghan. She would have embraced her. She wouldn't have agreed with everything that's happened since but in the initial days she would have encouraged her, educated her and embraced her.”
Burrell says that when Harry met Meghan he would have instantly felt the similarities between the beautiful actress and his beloved mother. “One day, he met a 36-year-old woman exactly the same age as his mother was when she died, who whispered in his ear, 'If we got together, we could do great things. We could change the world.' And I don't think Harry heard Meghan's voice. I think he heard his mother's voice,” Burrell tells us.
Harry’s “cinematic romance” with Meghan changed his life - and the shape of the royal family forever. “He was hooked. He was mesmerised by her spell and that hasn't changed so from then on, things would never be the same,” Burrell says.
Prince Harry and Meghan stepped down from the royal family in 2020 and moved to California, but Burrell claims if Diana were here, things could have been so different. “If Diana had been here, she would have taught Meghan how to survive. Because one thing Diana knew was how to survive,” he says.
Diana would have shown her daughter-in-law the “pitfalls” of the family and how not to fall into the “traps” that she fell into as a new member of the royals, Burrell says. “She would have said to her, be careful there are lots of snakes in this jungle,” he says. “Meghan never had that in the royal family, there wasn't a book for her to read on how to be a royal princess,” he adds. “There were no rules written down. She had to learn as Diana had to learn by being thrown in the deep end. But Meghan couldn't cope. Diana had to cope. And she learned fast.”
Burrell is convinced Meghan could have learned to become a valuable member of the royal family with Diana’s help. “What a pity that Diana wasn't here to educate her daughter-in-law because things would have been so have different,” he says. “In this whole equation, Diana is the missing piece and if she had been part of it, none of this would have happened.”