The Duchess of Sussex suddenly realised she was dating a royal when Prince Harry asked her if she knew how to curtsy before her first meeting with The Queen.
The Duchess was Meghan Markle back when a family lunch date with Prince Harry turned into a much bigger affair when he realised his grandmother would be joining them.
"We were going to lunch at Royal Lodge, where members of the family live, specifically (Prince) Andrew and Fergie (Sarah Ferguson), and usually (Princesses) Eugenie and Beatrice would spend a lot of time there," Meghan told Oprah Winfrey during her much-publicised TV tell-all, which aired in America on Sunday night.
"Eugenie and I had known each other before I had known Harry, so that was comfortable," she went on.
Recounting that the Queen was finishing a church service in Windsor, so she was going to be at the house, Meghan said: "I remember, Harry and I were in the car, and he goes, 'My grandmother is here, so you’re going to meet her', and I said, 'Oh great! I love grandparents, I loved my grandmother, I used to take care of my grandmother. This is great'."
She then recalled: "And (Harry) goes, 'Do you know how to curtsy?' And I said, 'What?' I thought that was generally what happened, outside; I thought that was part of the fanfare. I didn’t think that was what happened inside. And Harry said, 'It’s The Queen'."
The former Suits star remarked: "And that was really the first time the penny dropped and I realised what I was getting in to."
Elsewhere during the two-hour TV special, the Duchess revealed Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge made her cry over her flower-girl dresses before her royal wedding, and not the other way around, as was reported in the media, adding: "Everyone in the institution knew it wasn’t true."
She went on to say that Duchess Kate had apologised and added she considered Prince William's wife - her sister-in-law - a "good person".
Meghan also revealed that she and Prince Harry wed in secret three days before their Windsor Castle ceremony, stating, "We were both really aware that this wasn’t our day. This was the day that was planned for the world."
The TV interview was the Duke and Duchess' first since opting to step away from the royal family at the end of 2019 and leaving the U.K for America. The Oprah interview was conducted at the pair's Santa Barbara, California home.
