Queen Elizabeth’s childhood friend Lady Glenconner believes Meghan Markle thought royal life was all glitz and glamour before marrying Prince Harry.
The 91-year-old, who was one of the late queen’s maids of honour at her coronation in 1953, claims the Duchess of Sussex thought she would be “riding around in a golden coach” and treated like a movie star.
“I think the thing about Meghan was, she had no idea what was expected of her really,” Glenconner said on the “Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth” podcast Thursday.
“I think she just thought it was sort of like being another actress, you know.”
Glenconner noted that, in actuality, being a member of the royal family can be “extremely boring.”
She explained that most of their days are spent “meeting hundreds of thousands of people that you’re never going to meet again” — and doing it with a smile.
“I think it was very sad and I feel very sad for Harry,” she said of the pair’s decision to leave it all behind.
Glenconner, who also acted as the lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth’s sister Princess Margaret, then recounted a conversation she had with American politician John Kerry at King Charles III’s Coronation.
When the socialite asked Kerry what people “in America” think about the couple, the 79-year-old allegedly agreed with her.
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“He said, ‘We all feel very, very sorry for Harry,’” he allegedly replied. “I think I can just leave it at that.”
Markle, 42, and Harry, 39, started dating in 2016 and the pair wed two years later.
Yet in early 2020, the Sussexes left behind their royal duties and moved to California, where they have lived with their two young children ever since.
The twosome quit their roles amid allegations of racism and mistreatment within their family as well as scrutiny from the British media and subsequent security issues.
Since then, they have done several tell-all interviews and released a docuseries about their negative experience, leaving many people close to their estranged family with a bad taste in their mouth.
In June of this year, another one of the late monarch’s friends spoke out about how the couple’s press tour impacted the queen during her final months.
“For the last years of her life, certainly from when her husband [Prince Philip] died [in April 2021], the Queen was in a lot of pain,” the anonymous pal told the Daily Beast at the time.
According to the friend, Queen Elizabeth’s hearing, sight and mental clarity all got “much worse” by her Platinum Jubilee in June 2022 — four months after the release of Harry’s bombshell memoir, “Spare.”
“That was the time for Harry and Meghan to bite their tongue,” sniped the insider. “Instead they produced this unending stream of incredibly hurtful films and interviews attacking her life’s work.
“For Harry to announce he was writing a memoir when his grandmother was not just recently widowed but actually dying herself, as he must have known she was — well, the cruelty of it takes the breath away.”
They noted that there is “nothing” the couple could ever do “to assuage the anger and disgust some of her friends feel about what they did to the Queen in her final years.”
