Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton's Feud: A Timeline of Only Officially Confirmed Incidents Ever Recorded

Speculation about tension between Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, and Catherine, the Princess of Wales, has circulated for years, but much of what has been reported has come from anonymous royal sources rather than either woman directly. Below is a chronology limited specifically to incidents that have been confirmed on the record, either by Meghan herself, by Prince Harry in his 2023 memoir "Spare," or through other directly attributable statements, rather than unverified tabloid sourcing.

May 2018: The bridesmaid dress dispute ahead of the royal wedding

Days before Harry and Meghan's May 2018 wedding, a dispute arose over the flower girl dress being made for Princess Charlotte, who was serving as a bridesmaid. According to Harry's account in "Spare," reported by Page Six, Kate was dissatisfied with the dress and felt it needed to be entirely remade rather than simply altered, a disagreement that led to a tense exchange between the two women. Harry wrote that he later found Meghan crying on the floor following the confrontation. Harry additionally revealed a detail not previously made public: that Kate had become upset after Meghan told her she "must have baby brain because of her hormones," a comment Kate took as offensive, according to Harry's account as reported by Fox News. Kate had given birth to her third child, Prince Louis, roughly one month before the wedding.

At the time the story first broke in British tabloids, in the months following the wedding, reports characterized Meghan as the one who had made Kate cry. The Telegraph reported that account, and spokespeople for Kate denied the claims at the time, calling the article "wholly inaccurate."

March 2021: Meghan and Harry's interview with Oprah Winfrey

During their widely watched CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey, which drew approximately 17 million viewers, Meghan directly addressed the dress incident on the record for the first time, correcting the version of events that had circulated in British media. "The narrative with Kate, which didn't happen, was really, really difficult and something that I think, that's when everything changed, really," Meghan told Winfrey. She stated plainly that the widely reported version of the story, in which she had made Kate cry, was inaccurate. "The reverse happened," Meghan said, confirming that she, not Kate, had been the one who cried during the incident. She described the moment as "a turning point" in her relationship with the royal family and the surrounding media coverage.

Meghan also addressed the emotional difficulty of having been publicly blamed for the incident despite it not accurately reflecting what occurred. "What was hard to get over was being blamed for something that not only I didn't do but that happened to me," Meghan said. "Everyone in the institution knew it wasn't true.... I'm not sharing that piece about Kate in any way to be disparaging to her. I think it's really important for people to understand the truth. ... She's a good person." She went on to describe how she felt public narratives had unfairly framed the situation as forcing people to choose sides. "And I think so much of what I have seen play out is this idea of polarity, where if you love me, you don't have to hate her. And if you love her, you don't need to hate me," Meghan said.

Notably, during that same interview, Meghan did not mention the "baby brain" comment Harry would later disclose in his memoir, an omission Harry himself later addressed directly.

January 2023: Prince Harry's memoir "Spare"

Harry's memoir, published in January 2023, provided the most detailed on-the-record account of the dress dispute to date, including his disclosure of Meghan's "baby brain" remark to Kate and his description of finding Meghan in tears following the confrontation. According to Fox News' coverage of the book's release, Harry's account effectively confirmed that Meghan had, in her Oprah interview, left out a detail about her own role in triggering Kate's initial frustration during the exchange, even while accurately correcting the broader public narrative about who ultimately cried.

Following the book's publication, Ajay Mirpuri, the royal tailor who had been involved in the original dress fitting dispute, spoke to the U.K.'s Daily Mail about the incident, according to Fox News, though his comments primarily addressed his own involvement in the fitting process rather than offering new confirmation of the interpersonal dynamics between the two women.

What remains unconfirmed

Beyond the 2018 dress incident and its subsequent public airing through the 2021 Oprah interview and Harry's 2023 memoir, the vast majority of reported tension between Meghan and Kate in the years since has come from anonymous royal sources, unnamed insiders, or speculative commentary from royal watchers rather than from either woman directly, or from documented, attributable accounts. Neither Meghan, Kate, Buckingham Palace nor Kensington Palace has issued additional on-the-record statements specifically detailing further incidents of tension between the two women beyond the 2018 dress dispute and its aftermath.

Allies close to the royal family have periodically pushed back against Harry's broader characterization of royal family dynamics in "Spare," though according to Fox News' reporting, such pushback has largely come anonymously rather than through formal, attributed statements from Kate or Buckingham Palace addressing the specific dress incident itself.

As speculation about the relationship between the two women continues amid Harry and Meghan's planned return to the UK, the confirmed, on-the-record record remains limited to the 2018 dress dispute and the two women's subsequent, differing public accounts of it, offered respectively through Meghan's 2021 Oprah interview and Harry's 2023 memoir. Any broader characterization of an ongoing "feud" beyond that single documented incident continues to rest primarily on unverified sourcing rather than confirmed, attributable statements from either Meghan or Kate themselves.