Much has been made of Meghan Markle's meteoric rise from being a little-known TV actress to being the wife of The King's second son - but it would seem she always had a taste for the finer things in life. A royal author and close friend of Princess Diana has claimed that Meghan always had a reputation among upscale marketers for her interest in receiving expensive bags of designer freebies - and revealed how this continued after she married into The Firm.
Tina Brown's explosive book 'The Palace Papers: Inside The House Of Windsor - The Truth And The Turmoil', explains that Meghan would use her now-defunct blog, The Tig, as a way of getting luxury goods for free. The author explains: "She won a reputation among the marketers of luxury brands of being warmly interested in receiving bags of designer swag."
A book released earlier this year claims to reveal details of life behind palace walls and contains countless shocking allegations about the Royal Family.
Journalist Tina Brown's The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil was two years in the making and features interviews and information from more than 120 insiders and sources.
One major part of the book details exactly how Prince Harry and Meghan "completely underestimated" life outside of The Firm.
In an interview with The Washington Post to promote the explosive new book, Ms Brown said: "Meghan couldn't resist everything that was on offer on the celebrity buffet."
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She added: "They wanted to be able to have a commercial arm to their activities. Meghan certainly saw deals that were there to be made that they had to leave on the table because they were royals ."
Speaking about their decision to leave the family, Brown said: "I really think Harry wanted out, himself. Meghan gave Harry the tools to leave.
"She understood the world of agents and deals. I mean this wasn’t Harry’s world, but suddenly he had in Meghan a very worldly strategist who he decided to trust above all the other advisors."
Later in the interview, Brown explained: "I think they both complete underestimate what it was going to be like without the Palace platform. However much they hated, and I think they really did, the constraints and the pettiness, essentially they conceived, of the Palace and the advisors - trying doing it without the Palace advisors, right?
"Because what the Palace does, of course, it has an amazing convening power, there's no one who won't take a phone call from Buckingham Palace or Kensington Palace, they've got a huge convening power.
"Every invitation in the world comes through that conduit and private secretaries can just sift and say what about appearing this, or why don't you do this?"
In the book itself, Brown claims that Meghan loved a freebie, using her pre-royal celebrity status to get gifts from designer brands.
While this isn't unusual in the celebrity world, the author suggested that Meghan sent a message to PRs after she married Prince Harry.
The author wrote that Meghan "won a reputation among the marketers of luxury brands of being warmly interested in receiving bags of designer swag."
Adding that after her wedding in 2018, a member of Meghan's new team wrote to a publicist to say: "Make sure [the publicist] knows that she can still send me anything. She’s always been one of the good ones."
Elsewhere in the book, Brown addressed the alleged drama which took place ahead of Prince Harry's wedding to Meghan in 2018. According to Brown, Meghan used the late Queen's trusted aide and close friend, Angela Kelly, like a Hollywood stylist.
She writes: "Meghan did not - or could not - perceive the difference between the Queen’s personal aide and a contract stylist at NBC Universal." There have been numerous reports of a row over Meghan's wedding day tiara, with Harry reportedly saying "what Meghan wants, Meghan gets" after she was refused permission to wear her first choice.
A source told Brown there was "lots of raging" in the lead up to their wedding and that Meghan would shout in front of staff. The author added that she was told that Meghan and Harry share a mutual addiction to drama.
