When Princess Eugenie married Jack Brooksbank in the autumn of 2018, her mother, Sarah Ferguson, reportedly became enraged that Meghan Markle "stole her daughter's wedding day thunder."
"Meghan put her foot in it when she decided that it would be the ideal moment to announce that she and Harry were expecting their first child," authors Dylan S. Howard and Andy Tillett wrote in their book, Royals at War: The Untold Story of Harry and Meghan's Shocking Split with the House of Windsor.
"This was a huge social gaffe, even if you were not a royal — stealing the limelight from Eugenie, who was furious, as was her mother, Sarah," they added.
The Duchess of Sussex officially joined the British monarchy on May 19, 2018, when she married Prince Harry in a "unique" royal wedding ceremony at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. In tandem with the Sussex nuptials was the simultaneous planning for the youngest daughter of Prince Andrew and Fergie's October 12 ceremony at the same venue. As a "junior royal," Eugenie's event was always destined to be "much smaller" than the senior position Sussex exchange of vows.
By the fall, numerous royal analysts and insiders were already reporting on apparent "bullying of staff" and an overall "disagreeing with royal protocol" from Meghan. It was also known in inner circles that Kate, the then-Duchess of Cambridge "vehemently despised" the American actress. This led to the two millennial generation royal ladies not speaking "unless they shared a joint royal event."
This led many to speculate that Meghan purposefully announced her pregnancy to "infuriate the royals whom she had already grown intolerant of."
Fergie's anger was likely always behind closed doors due to her not moving within senior royal circles since her divorce from Andrew in 1996.
"I don't really know Meghan," the outspoken former royal told an outlet in 2023. "I haven't really met her."
The rift between Eugenie and the Duchess of Sussex seemed to have healed by November 2021 when Meghan told Ellen DeGeneres: "He [Harry] came to see me in Toronto, and our friends and his cousin [Princess] Eugenieand now her husband, Jack, they came as well, and the four of us snuck out in Halloween costumes to have one fun night on the town before it was out in the world that we were a couple. It was a post-apocalyptic theme. We had all of this very bizarre costuming on, and we were able to just have one final fun night out."
Eugenie is also said to be a member of the royal family that still remains the closest to Harry after his and Meghan's "frequent attacks on the monarchy."
Daily Mirror reported on the excerpt from Howard and Tillett's book.