Prince Harry has revealed in his memoir, Spare, that he advised his wife Meghan Markle against clicking a photo in front of the Taj Mahal during her trip to India in 2017 to avoid speculation that she was imitating his mother Diana.
According to the memoir, which went on sale on Tuesday, Diana, visited the Taj Mahal in 1992 and got herself clicked sitting alone in front of the monument Daily Mail reported. The photo later became famous as many thought it represented Diana as a lonely figure and reflected her relationship with her husband, then Prince Charles. The couple got formally divorced in 1996.
Meghan Markle, on the other hand, visited India in 2017 with an NGO, World Vision, to work on menstrual health and the education of girls. Ahead of her visit, Prince Harry had asked her not to click a photo at the Taj Mahal as people would think she was mimicking Princess Diana.
“Do not take a photo in front of the Taj Mahal. She’d asked why and I’d said: My mum,’ Prince Harry wrote in the book. “’I’d explained that my mother had posed for a photo there, and it had become iconic, and I didn’t want anyone thinking Meg was trying to mimic my mother. Meg had never heard of this photo and found the whole thing baffling, and I loved her for being baffled,” Prince Harry wrote, according to the Daily Mail report.
Meanwhile, the royal family led by King Charles III and his heir, Harry’s elder brother Prince William, have maintained a studied silence as painful details from Spare and a round of pre-publication TV interviews have piled up.
But palace insiders quoted in the UK press said the Duke of Sussex had crossed a line in attacking Queen Consort Camilla, Charles’s second wife following the death of Princess Diana, William and Harry’s mother.
“He has been kidnapped by a cult of psychotherapy and (wife) Meghan,” one royal source told The Independent newspaper.
“It is impossible for him to return (to Britain) in these circumstances,” it said, as other sources accused Harry of betraying both his father and brother.
