Meghan Markle has lifted the lid on her 'amazing' first royal Christmas at Sandringham, which saw her spend the festive period with the late Queen and Prince Philip and her in-laws, the Prince and Princess of Wales.
She recalls the 2017 trip, which broke from tradition as she attended before officially becoming a royal, in the first episodes of her and Prince Harry 's Netflix documentary.
In a sweet interview, she told viewers about sneaking off to call her mum to tell her how amazing the royal celebrations were and revealed a funny moment with her husband-to-be's grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh.
She says: "I remember so vividly the first Christmas at Sandringham. Calling my mum, and she's like, 'How's it going?'. And I said, 'Oh my gosh, it's amazing'.
"It's just like a big family like I always wanted. And there was just this constant movement and energy and fun.'
She then revealed how she sat next to Prince Philip, "H's grandfather", at dinner, saying: "And I just thought it was so wonderful. And I was like, 'Oh, we chatted and it was so great. And I talked about this, and talked about this.
"He [Prince Harry] was like, 'You had his bad ear. He couldn't hear anything you were saying.' I was like 'Oh...well, I thought it went really well!'
The opening scenes of the first episode showed an airport with a close-up of a departures sign while piano music plays over the footage.
It then cuts to Harry and words on the screen tell viewers he is in the Windsor Suite at Heathrow Airport in March 2020.
He appears to be filming himself speaking into his phone camera and says: “Hi. So we’re here on Wednesday the something of March.
"We’ve just finished our two weeks, our like final push, our last stint of royal engagements. It’s really hard to look back on it now and go ‘what on earth happened’? Like, how did we end up here?”
He reveals the Duke of Sussex said a friend told them they should document this particular period of their lives.
He said: "A friend of ours actually suggested that we document ourselves through this period of time.
"With all of the misinformation that was going on out there, especially about us and the departure, it seemed like a really sensible idea.”
Meghan is then seen speaking into her phone camera and seems to ask if this is the first video she has filmed, saying: "I don’t know. We’ve talked about it. We keep talking about it, because we know that, right now it might not make sense, but one day it will make sense.”
In interview footage, she says: "We’ve been really conscious of protecting our kids as best as we can and also understanding the role that they play in this really historical family.”
Episode one began with words written in white on a black background which said: "This is a first-hand account of Harry & Meghan’s story, told with never before seen personal archive.
"All interviews were completed by August 2022. Members of the royal family declined to comment on the content within this series.”
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