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The Unflattering Nickname The Press Has Given Meghan Markle

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Royal aides gave the Duchess of Sussex a nickname that had nothing to do with her wardrobe or her wedding — and everything to do with 5 a.m. text messages.

By the end of 2018, British newspapers were reporting that Kensington Palace staffers had started calling Meghan Markle “Duchess Difficult” behind closed doors. The label followed months of high-profile departures from her household, capped by the abrupt resignation of her personal assistant just six months into the job. It’s a story about a demanding boss, a royal household unused to that pace, and a family caught between defending her and watching the tabloids run with it.

• Royal aides claimed Markle woke as early as 5:00 a.m. and fired off text messages, emails, and directives to staff about her schedule and initiatives.
• Personal assistant Melissa Touabti, 39 — previously an aide to Robbie Williams and Ayda Field — quit in November 2018 after just six months, reportedly reduced to tears by the workload despite Kensington Palace publicly praising her role in organizing the May 2018 wedding.
• Royal biographer Robert Jobson reported that Prince Harry told palace employees bluntly, “What Meghan wants, she gets.”

Origins of the Duchess Difficult Moniker

The nickname surfaced in British press accounts describing Markle as exacting and relentless with her own staff. According to those reports, she was up before dawn most mornings and expected the same urgency from the people working for her — texts and emails about her schedule and pet initiatives landing in aides’ inboxes well before a typical workday started. For a household accustomed to a slower, more traditional rhythm, that pace reportedly wore people down fast.

The Touabti Resignation

The label gained real traction after a string of staff exits at Kensington Palace, the most notable being Melissa Touabti’s. Touabti, 39, had come to the role with serious credentials, having worked previously for Robbie Williams and Ayda Field, and she was the aide credited with helping pull together the logistics of the royal wedding in May 2018. She lasted only six months before walking away, reportedly worn down by the demands of the job to the point of tears — a striking detail given that Kensington Palace had gone out of its way to issue an official tribute crediting her with a “pivotal role” in the wedding’s success. For a palace that rarely comments publicly on departing staff, that statement alone signaled how notable her exit was.

“What Meghan wants, she gets.”

Palace Friction Beyond the Nickname

The “Duchess Difficult” reports didn’t emerge in isolation. They landed alongside separate stories about a strained relationship between Markle and Kate Middleton in the run-up to the wedding, part of a broader pattern of palace insiders airing tension through the press — the kind of behind-the-scenes friction that’s cropped up before among royal family members who turned out to be nothing like their public image. Jobson’s account of Prince Harry’s blunt instruction to staff — “What Meghan wants, she gets” — was cited as evidence that the prince was actively shielding his wife from pushback inside the household, even as it fed the narrative that she was steamrolling longtime employees.

The Family’s Defense

Not everyone signed onto the unflattering framing. Then-Prince Charles had reportedly given his future daughter-in-law an affectionate nickname of his own — “Tungsten” — a nod to her resilience and refusal to bend under pressure, the opposite spin on the same trait the tabloids were mocking. Thomas Markle, meanwhile, spoke out publicly against the British press and the palace establishment, accusing them of unfairly targeting his pregnant daughter. It’s a dynamic that echoes the broader, messy history covered in the timeline of Meghan Markle’s parents’ dysfunctional relationship, where public statements from her father have repeatedly become part of the story themselves. The contrast is telling: the same demanding, unbending streak that earned her a title befitting a workplace nightmare from anonymous staffers earned her a term of endearment from her own father-in-law.

Touabti’s exit left Kensington Palace searching for a new personal assistant heading into 2019, with the “Duchess Difficult” label already attached to whoever took the job next.