Meghan 'Wanted to Get Back to Something She Knew' With Royal Exit—Courtier

Meghan Markle "realized" that royal life wasn't going to be a "soap opera" and "wanted to get back to something she knew" when she stepped down from her working role within the monarchy and moved to the U.S. with Prince Harry in 2020, a royal courtier said.

Lady Anne Glenconner, a close friend of members of the royal family and former lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, talked about Harry and Meghan, a couple she refers to as "the ones that have gone to America," during a recent address at Oxford Union, a debating society.

Glenconner was born in 1932, the daughter of the Earl of Leicester, and was raised at the family home, Holkham Hall in Norfolk. The hall is close to Sandringham House, a property belonging to the royals, and she grew up alongside Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, Margaret.

The courtier lives in a home on the Holkham estate, which is also close to Anmer Hall, the country home of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Prince and Princess of Wales.

"I live quite near Prince William and Kate," Glenconner told the Oxford Union audience. "They are great. She is extraordinary, she's wonderful, and I think they're a real safe pair of hands.

"We won't perhaps talk about the ones that have gone to America," she said, laughing, in a reference to Harry and Meghan, before she continued.

"Well, I was sad because they were greeted with the wedding that was so wonderful and everybody was so pleased. I mean, they couldn't have had a more lovely wedding, but of course...being a member of the royal family isn't that. It's not a soap opera...it's jolly hard work actually.

"If you think that you're going to drive around in a coach and just...have a wonderful time," Glenconner continued, "I think she just realized that it wasn't going to be like that, and being a film actress, I think she just wanted to get back to something she knew."

In January 202, Meghan and Harry announced their plans to reduce their royal working output. After a period of strained negotiations with the queen and Prince Charles (now King Charles III), it was decided that the couple would completely leave their official roles.

Following this, the couple moved to Los Angeles and eventually settled in the exclusive celebrity enclave of Montecito.

Since their move, Meghan and Harry have spoken out about the struggles they faced during their time as working royals, including mental health issues, and what they perceive to be the monarchy's unsupportive framework.

Meghan is now doing a weekly podcast, among other projects, and Harry's "wholly truthful" memoir is set for release in the coming months.

During her address at the Oxford Union, which was given shortly before the death of Queen Elizabeth and only recently released on YouTube, Glenconner also discussed her experiences at the queen's 1953 coronation, at which she was a maid of honor.

A maid of honor's duty was to hold the queen's train as she moved through Westminster Abbey and generally tend to her needs. The maids were selected from the daughters of peers.

"We could hear this roar of people," Glenconner said of the queen's arrival at the abbey on June 2, 1953. "We hadn't seen her in her dress, and two pages opened the door and we looked at her and she was wonderful.

"People say, 'Did she say anything to you?'" she continued. "We went in and she stood there...and she had her back to us and we were standing there, and she just looked round and she said, 'Ready, girls?' and off we went."

Following the queen's death on September 8, King Charles will be crowned in a coronation ceremony at the abbey on May 6, 2023. The service will follow the same lines as the one for his mother and previous British monarchs and stretches back to the days of the later Anglo-Saxons.

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