One former classmate said that Prince Harry “made jokes that we are no longer permitted to make” before meeting Meghan Markle. The assertion is made in author Tom Quinn’s latest book, “Gilded Youth: An Intimate Account of Growing Up in the Royal Family.” It includes rare testimony from palace staff, as well as historical sources and royal insiders.
It seeks to investigate the traditional upbringing of the British royal family and how it has influenced them through time. Quinn also investigated the Duke of Sussex’s schooling at Eton College, which he attended from 1998 to 2003.
“In the past, I’ve worked as a journalist for very old-fashioned magazines in England where most of the readers are people who hunt, shoot, and fish,” Quinn explained to Fox News Digital. “They tend to be very grand, very right-wing. They typically really dislike what they would describe as ‘woke’ and ‘tree-hugging.’
They think real country people are defined by the fact that they shoot things. And if you go to a school like Eton, you don’t get a broad social mix. It’s only people from the old English aristocracy who are very conservative… This is the world that Harry grew up in. His only friends were the sons and some daughters of the old English aristocracy who are all like this. And so, his world was limited by that.”
One Eton contemporary admitted to Quinn that Harry, 38, “hated all that politically correct stuff – all that woke nonsense.” “He was funny, a bit cynical, and great company because, like the rest of us, he made jokes that we are no longer allowed to make,” the source claimed. “After Meghan came along, he changed completely into what he would once have been the first to mock: a sort of Guardian-reading tree-hugger.
It was all Meghan’s influence. We used to joke that she must be very good in bed to have turned his head that far.” Those close to Harry at Eton claimed they were “stunned” by how swiftly he changed after meeting the American actress. When she married the British royal in 2018, the former “Suits” actress, who met Harry in 2016, became the Duchess of Sussex.
“His friends were horrified because it was almost as if he’d gone over to the enemy,” Quinn chuckled. “They were very rude about it. When Harry met Meghan, they got close very quickly. Harry wanted her to meet his friends. It never occurred to him that she might think they were awful, that they would make racist jokes.
Harry once famously went to a party dressed up as a Nazi. They wouldn’t think anything of that because they never worried about that sort of thing. They thought that kind of thing would mean you were left-wing and a tree-hugger. They didn’t think it was terrible to make racist jokes.”
“I think they were really shocked,” Quinn continued. “Meghan spent the day apparently telling them that they couldn’t make these awful jokes. One of them said at the end of the day, after meeting Meghan, they exchanged messages, not with Harry and Meghan, but with each other saying, ‘Why is Harry going out with this awful woman? She’s a tree-hugger. She’s obsessed with being woke.’ But I think Harry’s world was very split. And Meghan is a very powerful personality. Everyone says it.”
A former Kensington Palace aide who worked closely with the Duchess of Sussex claimed that “Harry was never like this before he met Meghan.” “He had no ideas of his own,” claimed the source. “He rarely, if ever, spoke about global warming. He was a sort of Tim-Nice-but-Dim character who liked getting pissed with his army and Eton friends, did a bit of shooting and fishing, and was otherwise undistinguished.”
“Harry was always looking for a woman to whip him into shape; nice chap but no idea where he was going or what he should do – at least until Meghan came along,” a friend from Eton added. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped back as senior royals in 2020. They currently live in California with their two young children.