Have Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle really fallen out?

Speculation is mounting about a rift between Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton, amid reports that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are moving from Kensington Palace to the Windsor Estate.

Prince Harry and his pregnant wife have been living alongside the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at the Palace but are planning to up sticks and set up home at Frogmore Cottage, in the grounds of the Queen’s Berkshire home.

Reporting on rumours of mounting tensions between the two royal wives, the Daily Mail quotes a source as saying: “Kate and Meghan are very different people. They don’t really get on.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The newpaper says that insiders “insist there has been no dramatic falling out”, but The Daily Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey claims there was an “incident” in the build-up to the royal wedding in May.

Tominey, who first broke the news of Harry’s relationship with Markle, says two separate sources “claim Kate was left in tears following a bridesmaids dress fitting for Princess Charlotte”.

An insider told the journalist: “Kate had only just given birth to Prince Louis and was feeling quite emotional.”

Royal sources “have been furiously seeking to dampen down stories of a rift at the heart of the ‘fab four’, as the young royals are known, trying to make the case that Meghan and Harry are moving to Frogmore Cottage, near Windsor, out of privacy and space concerns”, says The Daily Beast’s London-based royal blogger Tom Sykes.

According to Tominey, there was noticeable tension between the two women when they appeared together at the first ever Royal Foundation Forum in February.

And the dress-fitting incident reportedly occurred at around the time Markle was reported to have “upset” the Queen by asking to wear an emerald tiara at her wedding, rather than the one offered by the 92-year-old monarch, says the Daily Mail.

But as Lisa Ryan at The Cut says, “there’s no indication of any all-out war” between Harry and William’s spouses.

“Overall, it seems Kate and Meghan are friendly, but as a person who has relatives, I would not be surprised if they occasionally piss each other off,” Ryan concludes.