Meghan Markle didn't understand that Princess Diana had to "work like a dog" before becoming a global superstar, a royal author has claimed.
Tina Brown, whose explosive new book The Palace Papers has just been released, says Meghan "didn't understand her role" when she became royal and thought she could follow the same path as her late mother-in-law.
But according to the former Vanity Fair editor, Diana carried out "a great deal of very humdrum assignments" before becoming a global icon.
In her book, Brown claims that despite all of the positive coverage of Meghan and Prince Harry's royal tour of Australia shortly after they married, Meghan "hated every second of it".
A former palace employee told the author that Meghan found the engagements old-fashioned, and would have rather put the spotlight on causes she wanted to highlight.
And speaking on ITV's Lorraine show, Brown said: "She didn't like it at all. She found the whole representational job of suppressing your own views and representing the monarchy, for her [it] was just an anathema.
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"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.
"I think that was her 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."
Just over a year after the successful tour, Meghan and Harry announced their intention to step down as senior working royals and move to America to carve out new lives for themselves.
And since they quit the UK in early 2020, Meghan has only returned once - earlier this month for a fleeting meeting with Prince Charles and the Queen alongside Harry on their way to the Invictus Games in The Hague.
During their tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey last year, the Duchess said she did not feel protected during the trip.
At that point she was pregnant and she said the tour was a turning point in her relationship with the monarchy.
Speculation has been mounting about whether Meghan will return to the UK in June for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
Harry said he did not know if he and his family would come to Britain to mark the event in a recent interview on US TV.
