Why Meghan Markle Compared Living at Kensington Palace to Living in a Prison

After Meghan Markle and Prince Harry stepped down from their roles as working royals, the Duchess of Sussex was not shy about revealing that her life behind palace walls was not a fairy tale.

Everyone remembers the televised TV special in which Meghan sat down with Oprah Winfrey and discussed how royal life wasn’t anything like what people may have thought. She talked about dark times for her and being in despair. She also told the former talk show host that she couldn’t go out with her friends and didn’t have access to her passport or driver’s license, or keys. She also claimed that nothing people see in photos with the family is what it seems.

Now, a royal author is pointing to something else Meghan reportedly had such a problem with that has raised a lot of eyebrows. That’s because most people can only dream about what it’s like to live in a palace but if you ask the former Suits star, it’s like a prison.

Expert shares reason Meghan reportedly likened Kensington Palace to a prison

Tom Quinn, who has written several books about Meghan and the other royals, revealed that Prince Harry’s wife described life at Kensington Palace like a prison. She reportedly made the comparison due to her feelings of isolation and strict Palace rules that she and Prince Harry were expected to live by without any freedom to do what they wanted.

Quinn wrote in his book titled Kensington Palace that once the “initial glamour” of royal life for the American actress “wore off,” she was left “horrified” by what everyday life was going to be like living at the same Palace where other royals resided.

Therefore, just a few months later, the Sussexes moved to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor.

Express noted that one contractor told Quinn that the Frogmore property was extensively renovated to look like some sort of “Californian condo” and “Meghan realized that living there would be like living in the Russian steppe.”

Another biographer says Meghan enjoyed being a princess until her dream began to ‘rot’

In January 2020, the duke and duchess announced that they were “stepping back” from royal life. There have been several theories over the years about their reasoning for doing so.

One comes from biographer Ingrid Seward, who believes Meghan and Harry’s South Pacific tour and how the duchess was upset that she wasn’t personally recognized by other royals for her efforts was a major tipping point. According to Seward, Meghan enjoyed the whole idea of being a princess but wanted to be the star and certainly not told what to do, and that’s when things began to unravel.

Speaking to The Sun, Seward said while “Meghan enjoyed playing the part of a princess, I think it was a bit of a shock [that] she was being told what to do. She was being told where to go, and she was being told how to do it. She wasn’t taking a starring role in the actual size of the monarchy. She was just a little pinpoint. At that moment in Australia, she was in a starring role but she wasn’t really, she was just a cog in the wheel.”

The author added: “I think it was an eye opener for [Meghan] that she was always going to be a cog in the wheel because she was married to the No. 2 man [and] not the No. 1 man, which would have been [Prince] William. That was definitely when the rot began to fester a little bit.”