How Meghan Markle’s grave misunderstanding of Princess Diana’s past left her with an ‘anathema’ for royal work

Meghan Markle's misunderstanding of Princess Diana's humble beginnings in the Royal Family left her completely unprepared for royal service, according to a new biography. 

• Meghan Markle grossly underestimated the amount of 'humdrum assignments' expected of a full-time royal, a new book has claimed. 
• The Duchess of Sussex wanted to follow in the footsteps of the late Princess Diana but failed to recognize how much grunt work her mother-in-law had done to prove herself in the Royal Family, according to Tina Brown. 
• In other royal news, Kate Middleton speaks out on ‘lonely and overwhelming’ time as she shines a light on ‘vital work’.
  

Meghan Markle was left with an 'anathema' for royal service after misunderstanding Princess Diana's early role in the British monarchy, a new biography has claimed. 

The Duchess of Sussex had reportedly always wanted to model her public persona on the Princess of Wales, having only seen the images of her late mother-in-law on the red carpets of glitzy events and performing high-profile charitable acts. 

However, according to Tina Brown's new book, The Palace Papers, Meghan was woefully unaware of the grunt work Diana did before she became the renowned humanitarian and fashion icon we know her as today. The princess, who was just 20 when she married Prince Charles in July 1981, was required to complete a huge amount of tedious royal duties in her early years at the Firm—and to do so without complaint. 

"I think that was her [Meghan's] fundamental sense of misunderstanding of what was going to happen when she joined the Royal Family—she saw the palaces and Diana as this global humanitarian superstar, but forgot that for 16 or 17 years Diana worked like a dog within the Royal Family doing a great deal of very humdrum assignments," Brown said during an interview on ITV's Lorraine. 

These expectations of subservience didn't go down quite as well with Meghan, who was significantly older than Diana when she married into the Royal Family. The then-36-year-old had already established herself as a successful TV actress, rising to global stardom with her role as Rachel Zane in the hit legal drama, Suits, and was used to living a far more independent life than the aristocratic Diana. 

Meghan was also known for championing causes close to her heart without any censorship—a privilege she was forced to give up in order to serve the Crown. 

"She didn't like it at all," Brown said. "She found the whole representational job of suppressing your own views and representing the monarchy, for her [it] was just an anathema.

"It's not how she viewed her role, the world, she did not understand the point of it and for her, yes she was a great success, but it was not something she wanted to do."