When Meghan and Prince Harry first got together, she promptly decided that the Duke of Sussex was being “neglected” by the rest of the Royal Family, an explosive new book has claimed.

Whilst the couple have both been pretty vocal since leaving life in the UK behind about the issues they encountered during their tenure as working royals, the new bombshell book claims that Meghan’s perception that Harry was being “sidelined” by the House of Windsor came about pretty “quickly” once she was embedded in royal life.

The book seen by The Mirror – Yes Ma’am by Tom Quinn – sees insiders reveal the tensions inside the royal household, with former members of staff reporting their perspectives on just what was causing dissatisfaction for Harry and Meghan. In one passage, the author claims that the vast majority of staff he spoke to felt that Meghan rapidly came to the conclusion that Harry wasn’t being treated well because he was lower down the line of succession – with the destiny of future king falling on his elder brother Prince William.

“The strongly held view among current and former royal staff is that when Meghan arrived on the scene, she quickly convinced Harry that he was being neglected, sidelined and undervalued,” he wrote.

“She felt she was just standing up for her husband, telling ‘her truth’ and encouraging him to tell his, but this was seen as deeply disruptive in a Royal Family that relies not just on the staff doing what they’re told but on the royals themselves doing what history tells them they should do,” the author wrote.

One insider was quoted as saying that in their opinion, Harry didn’t seem to put much thought into being the ‘spare’ to William’s ‘heir’ before his relationship with Meghan. “I don’t think Harry had even thought much about the fact that he was a spare until well into his marriage,” the book continued.

“Meghan managed to give him more perspective because she could see the family from the outside and her experience of growing up was so totally different and, with her mixed-race heritage, as we now have to describe it, she was acutely sensitive to how people behaved towards each other; in fact, I think she was over-sensitive on Harry’s behalf and convinced herself he was being treated as completely unimportant,” a member of the communications team for Kensington Palace was quoted as saying.

Another source – a retired staff member at Kensington Palace – echoed these sentiments. “Before Meghan came along, Harry had his down days, certainly, but no worse than anyone else in his strange, privileged yet restricted world. He was normally a very polite, reasonably happy young man…He got on exceptionally well with his sister-in-law Kate and with his brother.

“It was only when he began to feel that he was being treated as a second-class citizen that the anger began to build up and then the rows – and there were a lot of rows – and the eventual split.”

However, one insider who previously worked at the palace admitted that long before Meghan’s arrival on the scene one courtier was worried about what Harry would do as he got older, “The courtiers and other senior advisers knew that Harry didn’t really want to do the usual royal round, partly because he got so fed up with all the handshaking and the small talk, but also because he felt continually that he was second best,” the insider revealed.

From Harry’s own perspective, detailed in his memoir Spare, he was acutely aware from childhood that he played second fiddle to his older brother and claimed that even as youngsters, the brothers were treated very differently.

Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants by Tom Quinn, published by Biteback, will be published on February 27

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