Your support helps us to tell the story
Melania Trump has revealed she is pen pals with King Charles.
The unexpected friendship between the monarch and the former fashion model, who is married to Donald Trump, was revealed in her memoir, Melania.
The former First Lady, 54, explained that after their first meeting in New York in 2005, the pair reconnected in 2019 during a state visit to the UK, by which point Trump was in the White House.
“The evening’s state banquet was a formal and elegant affair. I was seated next to Prince Charles, and it was an absolute pleasure to reconnect with him,” Melania wrote.
“Our paths had crossed many years ago in New York City. This time we engaged in an interesting conversation about his deep-rooted commitment to environmental conservation.”
Melania: A Memoir recounts Ms Trump’s childhood in Slovenia, later work as a fashion model, and eventual relationship with Donald Trump that saw her become the second-ever first lady born outside of the US.
Mr Trump, who is currently running for a second term in the White House, is also said to have a good relationship with the royal family, and King Charles is reported to have reached out in a letter to him following a failed assassination attempt earlier this year.
The contents of the king’s message to the Republican candidate remain private.
This good relationship was also referenced in Melania’s memoir, where she said that she and her husband “truly connected” with the late Queen Elizabeth II.
She explained that on the 2019 visit, they were treated with “utmost hospitality” and the late queen even gifted the former First Lady a silver box, adorned with the ceiling motifs from Buckingham Palace’s music room.
However, while the Trumps appear to outwardly have a positive relationship with the British royals, there have been conflicting reports about how the late Queen Elizabeth II felt about the former president.
Royal author Craig Brown claimed in his 2024 biography of the late monarch, A Voyage Around The Queen, that she found Mr Trump to be “very rude”.
“She particularly disliked the way he couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder, as though in search of others more interesting,” the book claims.
However, this claim was debunked by Mr Trump himself, who described the author as a “sleazebag” and insisted that he had a “great relationship” with Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, describing her as a “great woman”.
The friendship between Ms Trump and the British monarch is far from the only bombshell revelation in the memoir, and the former first lady also revealed that she is pro-choice.
“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” she wrote.
“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?”
Her comments come in direct opposition to the views of her husband, who has taken credit for the controversial overturning of Roe vs Wade in 2022 – limiting many American women’s access to abortion.
The Independent has reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment.
