The late Prince Philip was renowned for his forthright manner and regular public gaffes. The late Queen’s Greek-born husband was particularly known for his rude remarks to anyone he considered “foreign,” once asking indigenous Australians if they were “still throwing spears” and referring to some particularly sloppy electrical work as looking as if it was “put in by an Indian.”
The prince’s famous rudeness even extended to members of his own family. According to royal historian Hugo Vickers, who has recently published a new biography of the late Queen Elizabeth II, Philip would routinely refer to his grandson’s wife with a dismissive two-word nickname.
In his new book, Hugo reveals that Philip would simply refer to Meghan Markle as ‘The American‘. He adds that the Queen had once “torn Meghan off a strip” after she had been rude to one of the royal gardeners.
Hugo Vickers however wrote on another note: “The staff at Sandringham joyfully surrounded the couple at the annual Christmas party and nicknamed the actress ‘Sparkle’.
While King Charles privately nicknamed Meghan Markle “Tungsten” because he admired her tough, resilient, and unbending nature during her time as a working royal.
However, on the Daily Telegraph’s royal podcast, Hugo diplomatically declined to comment when royal-watcher Camilla Tominey asked him if she thought Philip had “seen through Meghan’s theatrical ways”.
Prince Philip, who died in April 2021 two months short of his 100th birthday, had previously compared Meghan to another controversial royal from a previous generation, privately calling her ‘DoW’, his code for ‘Duchess of Windsor’, referring to Wallis Simpson.
Speaking on GB News, royal expert Ingrid Seward claimed that Philip thought that Meghan bore an “uncanny” resemblance to Wallis, whose romantic entanglement with King Edward VIII precipitated one of the most dramatic crises in royal history. The Queen’s uncle Edward abdicated the throne so he could marry the twice-divorced American.
“He wasn’t simply referring to the fact that both were pencil-slim, dark-haired and glamorous American divorcees,” Ingrid said.
She added: “I think Prince Philip was very canny about people and he didn’t always see the bad in them, he tried to see the good in them.
“I think he just couldn’t get away from the fact [of the] similarities between Meghan and Harry and Edward and Mrs Simpson.
“There are so many similarities which is why he used to call her The Duchess of Windsor, I mean not to her face.”
In her 2023 book about King Charles’s relationship with the late Queen, My Mother and I, Ingrid wrote: “One of the few wary of succumbing to (Meghan’s) charm offensive… was Prince Philip.
“From the moment he detected her apparent similarity to Wallis, he referred to her as DoW.”
For his part, Prince Harry has said that there has always been a “huge level” of unconscious bias within the Royal Family, and that it was only after living “in his wife’s shoes” for a while that he began to see the implicit racial prejudice among people of his social background.
In a conversation with Black Lives Matter activist Patrick Hutchinson published in GQ magazine, Harry praised the “incredibly important” movement and described how for a while, he did not realise that unconscious biases exist in society.
“Unconscious bias, from my understanding, having the upbringing and the education that I had, I had no idea what it was,” Harry said. “I had no idea it existed. And then, sad as it is to say, it took me many, many years to realise it, especially then living a day or a week in my wife’s shoes.”
He said prejudice was “learned from the older generation, or from advertising, from your environment”.
“Unless we acknowledge we are part of this cycle, then we’re always going to be fighting against it,” Harry added.
