'PUH-LEEEZZ': Fans roll their eyes at Harry's claim royals felt 'threatened' by Meghan Markle's popularity

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"The internals at the palace were incredibly threatened by that," she claimed, referring to the couple's popularity that is illustrated in the docuseries with clippings of newspaper headlines from that time and soundbites from pundits about the actress becoming too much of a "royal rockstar." Lucy's claim is presented without any other evidence besides a headline from The Daily Beast saying, "Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are Wildly Popular. That Could Be a Problem," featured in episode 4. The Daily Beast can corroborate that the trip raised concerns about William's ability to cope if Harry continued to eclipse him, but it also stated that "no one will be more delighted [the tour] is going so well than Kate and William."

Another now arch-critic, Piers Morgan, is heard claiming Meghan is becoming "a royal rock star, bigger as a couple than William and Kate. That’s probably not a good thing in the long term." Their popularity and "stealing the limelight," as well as the fact that they were "doing the job better than the person who was born to do this"— presumably William — "that upsets people because it shifts the balance," according to Harry.  "But the media are the ones who choose to put that on the front page," he claims, presumably recognising that the coverage had nothing to do with behind-the-scene machinations by his family. After a Remembrance Day event in the early days of their marriage, Harry returned to breakfast to discover Meghan on the main pages after attending an event with other royals, including the Queen. "It's not my fault," Meghan told him. "I know," Harry responded. "And my mum [had] felt the same way," Harry says in the Netflix documentary.

The episode then switches to a tape from Diana's Panorama interview, in which she claims that her husband, Charles, got envious of her fame during their tour of Australia. Prince William had demanded that the interview never be shown again after it was revealed that interviewer Martin Bashir obtained it via dubious means, thus its appearance in a show co-produced by Harry is a provocation in and of itself. "With the media attention came a great deal of jealousy," Diana explains.

Another paid employee, James Holt, who is executive director at the Archewell Foundation, then observes that, "Some people in the institution around the family started to see that this new couple could destabilize the power dynamics. Whether actively talked about or not, the aim was to put them in a box or make them irrelevant."

Mocking the couple, a viewer wrote, "Cringing so hard at Harry and Meghan’s Netflix Volume 2 narrative: They were just too popular and too successful that the Royal Family conspired with the media to bring them down. Because the Queen was so angry Meghan got a front-page picture on the Daily Telegraph. Puh-lease!" Calling out the situation for its messiness, another fan tweeted, "Soooo...what they're saying is "somebody" in the Royal Family was jealous that Meghan and Harry were popular among the public. So they sought to tear it all down for them with false stories and outright lies. WOW! This is so fu*ked up." Some are still questioning the couple for criticizing the royal family for Meghan's media treatment, "So I’m 3/4 way thru episode 4 in Australia of Harry and Meghan. They certainly are blaming everything on the RF. They think they were the most popular royals so had to be taken down." Further slamming the couple, another viewer wrote, "Meghan is jealous of Kate and Harry of his brother and they will [were] popular until they starting acting like hypocrites and being insufferable." Questioning Meghan's personality, one Twitter user also wrote, "Oh my… this is embarrassing for Meghan and Harry isn’t it. Is this that tabs both of them have on themselves? I believe Meghan was popular at the beginning because she was new, to be expected. I then believe people got a feel of her personality."

The final three episodes of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan's Netflix documentary series are currently airing.

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