Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are making sure their kids know who their grandmother is. In touching footage provided by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in the first episode of their Netflix docuseries, a once baby Archie looks at a photo of his late grandmother, Princess Diana, hanging on the wall. Meghan is holding Archie and says, “Hey, grandma.”
Archie, who is now 3, babbles a bit and touches the photo of Princess Diana on the wall. “That’s your Grandma Diana,” Meghan whispers to Archie. Little Archie continues to touch the framed photograph.
“I accept that there’ll be people around the world who fundamentally disagree with what I’ve done and how I’ve done it, but I knew that I had to do everything I could to protect my family,” Harry says. “Especially after what happened to my mom. You know, I didn’t want history to repeat itself.”
Prince Harry tragically lost his mother when he was just 12 years old. Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris after being chased by paparazzi. She was 36 years old.
The royal admits that Meghan actually reminds him a lot of his mother. “So much of what Meghan is, and how she is, is so similar to my mom. She has the same compassion, she has the same empathy, she has the same confidence. She has this warmth about her,” Prince Harry gushes about Meghan.
In the early days of their romance, Prince Harry reveals he was worried about finding someone he could spend his life with knowing the “pain and suffering of women marrying into this institution.” He confesses that he was “terrified” that Meghan would be “driven away by the media. The same media that had driven so many other people away from me.”
When Harry and Meghan’s relationship went public, Meghan received an onslaught of hate in the press and online. The Duke of Sussex notably called out the “abuse and harassment” Meghan received just days after their relationship was announced in 2016.
Prince Harry also reveals in the second episode of the docuseries that some members of the royal family thought the way Meghan was being treated was par for the course. “What people need to understand is, as far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they’d been put through as well,” Prince Harry says. “So it was almost like a rite of passage. Some of the members of the family were like, ‘But my wife had to go through that. So why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why should you get special treatment? Why should she be protected?’ And I said, ‘The difference here is the race element.'”
After marrying in 2018 and welcoming their first child, Archie, the couple made the decision to step back as senior royals in January 2020. Meghan previously admitted that had suicidal thoughts while pregnant with Archie. To protect their family, Harry and Meghan moved to California, where they currently reside.