Prince William Didn't Want Meghan Markle to Wear Any of Princess Diana's Jewelry on Wedding Day, New Biography Says

Meghan Markle has previously opened up about the emotional suffering she experienced as a member of the royal family (which led to her stepping down from her role as a working royal)—and a new biography confirms that her transition into royal life wasn’t a seamless one. In royal correspondent Robert Jobson’s new book, Catherine, The Princess of Wales: The Biography, the author alleges that the members of the institution weren’t fully accepting of the Duchess of Sussex or her assimilation into the institution. According to Jobson, before Meghan married Prince Harry at St. George’s Chapel in 2018 and became a member of the monarchy, Prince William was adamant that the bride-to-be didn’t wear any jewelry that his mother, the late Princess Diana, once owned.

In his book, Jobson hints at William’s wariness of Meghan before she married into the family, which caused him to be possessive over his mother’s belongings. “I have been told that, still concerned about the match, he’d sought assurances from the queen that Harry’s bride would not be wearing any of Princess Diana’s jewelry, even though his own wife was allowed to wear it,” he writes. 

Harry reveals in his tell-all memoir, Spare, that he wanted his now-wife to sport one of his mother’s tiaras. Reports also indicated that Meghan had her eye on the Spencer tiara, which Princess Diana wore on her big day. But the late Queen Elizabeth II prohibited her from sporting the piece and encouraged her to select an accessory from her collection at Buckingham Palace instead. Now, Jobson is suggesting that her now-brother-in-law may have been the reason why the former queen steered Meghan in another direction for her big-day diadem.

However, the former monarch still didn’t make the decision easy for Meghan. The bride-to-be reportedly wanted to wear an emerald-studded tiara—which was recently identified as the Greville Emerald Kokoshnik tiara, the one that Princess Eugenie wore on her wedding day—but the late queen denied her request once again. “It was obvious they were putting up obstacles, but why?” Harry asks in his memoir. After a lot of back and forth, Meghan ended up wearing Queen Mary’s Diamond Bandeau tiara, a diamond-adorned crown that dates back to 1893.

Instead of decking out her custom Givenchy wedding dress, which featured a bateau neckline and long sleeves, with Diana’s jewels, the bride adorned her outfit with other glitzy designs. Her chosen accessories? Meghan wore diamond stud earrings from Cartier—which were allegedly a gift from King Charles III—and a matching Cartier bracelet composed of maquette-cut, princess-cut, and trillion-cut diamonds. 

Even though Meghan was reportedly not allowed to wear any of Diana’s jewelry for the ceremony, she did end up donning one of her late mother-in-law’s accessories for the reception. En route to Frogmore House for her post-ceremony celebration, Meghan was photographed donning Lady Di’s aquamarine cocktail ring—which she paired with her custom halter-neck gown by Stella McCartney. The bauble has an emerald-cut center stone with a deep blue hue, and Diana supposedly commissioned Asprey to make the ring following her divorce from King Charles.