Prince Harry would never have married Meghan Markle if his mother, Princess Diana, were still alive, according to her former butler and confidante Paul Burrell.
The 67-year-old former royal aide worked for Diana for more than a decade and became one of her most trusted friends, and RadarOnline.com can reveal he believes the late Princess’ presence would have completely altered the course of her younger son’s life.
Burrell made the claim about Markle while reflecting on how Diana’s death in 1997 left Harry emotionally adrift and searching for the kind of love and security he had lost.
He said: “If Diana had been alive, I doubt whether Harry would have married Meghan. For the next years, going through his life, he was lost, he didn’t know where love was.
“When he heard a 36-year-old mature American woman whisper something into his ear along the lines of, ‘You and I could be a great team’ or, ‘We could change the world’ – he didn’t hear Meghan’s voice, he heard his mother’s voice. “Because Harry was always searching for love and he found it with Meghan.”
Burrell, who served both Queen Elizabeth II and Diana before leaving royal service in the late 1990s, said he believed the Princess would have guided her son through relationships with a “steadying hand,” and that her wisdom might have changed the choices he made later in life.
“Diana would have given him the kind of grounding that only a mother can,” a royal insider told us.
“She adored both her boys, but she also had a sense of perspective. She would have seen the red flags early on – not necessarily with Meghan herself, but with the media storm and isolation that came with her.”
Harry, 41, met actress Markle, then 36, on a blind date in London in 2016.
Their relationship quickly grew serious, with Meghan leaving her role on the hit TV drama Suits and moving to the UK.
Their engagement was announced in November 2017, and the couple married the following May at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.
The royal wedding – watched by nearly two billion people worldwide – was heralded as a symbol of a modern monarchy.
But tensions soon followed, with reports of rifts between Harry and his brother, Prince William, and between Markle and members of the royal household.
In 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped down as working royals and relocated to California, a move that sent shockwaves through the royal establishment.
In his 2022 Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, the prince openly compared his wife to his late mother.
“So much of what Meghan is, and how she is, is so similar to my mum,” he said. “She has the same compassion, she has the same empathy, she has the same confidence. She has this warmth about her.”
But Burrell suggested those similarities may have been precisely what drew Harry to Markle in the first place – and what blinded him to the potential pitfalls of their relationship.
“He’s been trying to fill the void left by Diana his entire adult life,” another Palace insider claimed. “In Meghan, he saw someone who echoed his mother’s spirit – but also someone who would fiercely defend him in a way Diana always did.”
Burrell, who once described Diana as “the only person who ever truly understood me,” has told friends she would have wanted her son to be happy – but also protected.
A source claimed: “Diana would have been the bridge between Harry and the rest of the family. She would never have let this rift get to its current point.”
