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Queen Elizabeth was ‘on to’ Meghan Markle ‘from the start’ and viewed her as an ‘opportunist’: book
Queen Elizabeth II had concerns about grandson Prince Harry‘s future wife Meghan Markle from the beginning, according to a new book.
In veteran political reporter Susan Page’s upcoming book, “The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History,” a palace aide claimed the late monarch grew skeptical of the American actress early on, viewing her as calculated and skilled at shaping her public image.
“Her Majesty had become wary of Meghan as an opportunist — was ‘on to her from the start,’ the aide said — and one with public relations skills that left the palace’s outdated press operation in the dust,” Page wrote.
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Fox News Digital has reached out to Harry and Markle’s representatives for comment.
According to Harry’s 2023 memoir, “Spare,” the former “Suits” star first met Elizabeth in October 2016 at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, England. Both Harry and Meghan have previously described the meeting as impromptu, recalling that the future Duchess of Sussex wasn’t aware that she would have to curtsy to his grandmother and had to practice ahead of the introduction.
In their 2022 Netflix series “Harry & Meghan,” the Duke of Sussex said he believed the royal family had reservations about his wife due to her being an American actress.
“I remember my family first meeting her and being incredibly impressed. Some of them didn’t quite know what to do with themselves,” Harry said. “Because I think they were surprised. They were surprised that a ginger could land such a beautiful woman and such an intelligent woman.
“But the fact that I was dating an American actress was probably what clouded their judgment more than anything else at the beginning: ‘Oh she’s an American actress; this won’t last.'”
“The actress thing was the biggest problem, funnily enough,” Megan said. “There is a big idea of what that looks like from the U.K. standpoint — Hollywood — and it’s just very easy for them to typecast that.”
Harry and Meghan announced their engagement in November 2017 and married in May 2018. In January 2020, they announced that they were stepping down as senior royals and moving overseas.
Elizabeth, who died in September 2022 at age 96, was reportedly deeply hurt and disappointed by the couple’s decision but remained publicly supportive of Harry and Meghan.
During a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Markle said the queen “has been wonderful to me.”
“She’s always been warm and inviting and really welcoming,” Markle added.
In “Spare,” Harry provided a personal look at his upbringing as the royal “spare” to his older brother Prince William, family conflicts, the impact of his mother Princess Diana‘s death and the tensions that led to his departure from royal life.
In “The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History,” Page wrote, “A senior royal aide said Harry’s bitterness toward the palace staff and his own family stemmed in part from his resentment over being treated as a ‘lesser royal’ than William — perhaps inevitable, given that his brother was the heir apparent.”
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According to the book, the aide said “Harry complained that he was put in a bedroom ‘miles away’ from William’s posher surroundings.”
Page’s book also revealed that palace staff harbored doubts about Harry’s true parentage. Harry has long faced rumors he is not King Charles III’s son — instead linking him to Diana’s lover James Hewitt — though the claims have been repeatedly denied and contradicted by the timeline.
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“Some staff openly speculated about whether Harry was in fact Charles’s biological son — the unsubstantiated gossip that the red-haired royal was the product of an affair between Princess Diana and the red-haired Calvary officer James Hewitt,” Page wrote.
“In his memoir, Harry said that even Prince Charles joked about his parentage. ‘Who knows if I’m even your real father,’ Charles would say, then ‘laugh and laugh.’ After all, Charles said, a patient at a nearby psychiatric hospital had insisted to him that he was the true Prince of Wales.
“The ‘remarkably unfunny joke’ made him feel more isolated, Harry wrote. He was already emotionally vulnerable: He had been just twelve years old when his mother had been killed in a spectacular car crash, paparazzi in pursuit.”
Charles and Diana finalized their divorce in August 1996 after several years of separation. Diana died just over a year later, in August 1997, at age 36, after a car crash in a Paris tunnel.
“The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History” will be released April 14.
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Former Giants co-owner Steve Tisch seen in team’s draft room
Cameras showed former New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch in the team’s draft room Thursday night during the first round.
At one point, Tisch was seen standing near Giants head coach John Harbaugh. Despite no longer holding a majority stake in the NFL franchise, Tisch remains the Giants’ chairman of the board.
ESPN obtained an NFL memo last month detailing plans by Steve Tisch and his siblings to transfer their stake in the Giants to trusts for their children.
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“Prior transfers to these Trusts were completed pursuant to 2023 and 2024 Finance Committee approvals,” the memo stated. “The Sellers now propose to transfer their entire remaining interests, totaling 23.1% of the Club, to the Trusts. … Following the transactions, the Sellers will no longer own any interest in the Club.”
It was not clear if the transfer requests were in any way related to Tisch’s name appearing in the Epstein files released by the U.S. Justice Department in January. Tisch’s name came up more than 400 times in the files. Tisch at the time said he knew Epstein but denied visiting Epstein’s island.
As for draft night, the Giants made what some viewed as an unconventional pick at No. 10, selecting offensive lineman Francis Mauigoa.
Before that, the Giants added another piece to their pass rush, selecting hybrid edge/off-ball linebacker Arvell Reese at No. 5.
Reese earned All-American honors at Ohio State and finished his first season as a full-time starter with 6.5 sacks.
Reese is set to join a pass rush that includes Brian Burns, Abdul Carter and, likely, Kayvon Thibodeaux.
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Rueben Bain’s short arms and tragic car accident history contributed to his NFL Draft slide
Everybody knew about the tragic auto accident and the follow-up a year later, but when it came to Rueben Bain’s draft status, people said, “No worries.” His arms are short, but he’s really good, so the refrain remained: “No worries.”
Why then did Rueben Bain slide to the middle of the first round of the NFL Draft on Thursday?
Whoever said neither issue would cause Bain to fall out of the Top 10 was obviously wrong.
He fell to the No. 15 overall selection held by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
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And judging by Bain’s demeanor during his post-draft interview on ESPN, he wasn’t thrilled about it.
“I know I’m the best in the country, I’m sure,” an unsmiling Bain told ESPN’s Laura Rutledge after his selection. “That’s how I think of myself.
“I’m telling you I can do anything I put my mind to because of my mindset. I know when I get to this next level I’m going to pop it. “
The Buccaneers selected Bain to be their outside rusher complement to Vita Vea on the interior.
The Bucs thus get the ACC defensive player of the year and a consensus All-American.
But they also get a player that multiple other pass-rush needy teams passed up. The New York Jets took TCU’s David Bailey with the No. 2 overall selection and the New York Giants picked Arvell Reese in the No. 5 slot.
Bain was not only the 15th player taken overall but the third edge defender. That’s considered great by any standard. But it’s a disappointment to Bain and changes the narrative on him somewhat.
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“He’s got to prove himself and beat the odds and prove he can get it done in the NFL,” draft guru Mel Kiper said on national TV.
Interestingly, most of the coverage of Bain’s slide focused on the short length of his arms.
Melvin Ingram once upon a time measured in with arms the spanned 31 1/2 inches. And although that is considered short, Ingram turned into a good player. He played 12 seasons and made three Pro Bowls.
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But Bain’s arms measured in at 30 7/8 inches, and that is extremely short. Indeed, it is the third-shortest arm length of any DE ever to participate in the combine.
So, is that the reason Bain dropped out of the Top 10?
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Or is it his driving troubles and the manner in which he addressed those with teams?
Bain, you should know, was driving in March of 2024 when he hit another car on South Florida’s I-95 in the 4 a.m. hour and set off a chain reaction — hitting an eastside concrete wall and then careening all the way across the highway to the westside concrete barrier — that eventually left passenger Destiny Betts in a coma.
Betts, who had not been wearing a seatbelt, died three months later from complications of her blunt force trauma injuries.
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Bain was charged but cleared of careless driving because, in part, the traffic homicide investigator said he received the final report after Bain had already paid his citation.
NFL teams were aware of all this, plus an ensuing accident the player had in October 2025, for which he was also charged with careless driving.
To make matters more dicey, Bain declined to be fully transparent about the accidents with some NFL teams he met with starting at the NFL combine. That disappointed at least one team, an evaluator on that team told OutKick.
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Bain also declined to discuss the matter on Wednesday in front of reporters.
The Buccaneers, however, feel good about Bain, his short arms and his questionable driving.
“We’ve known about this a long time,” said general manager Jason Licht. “I know it just came out a couple of weeks ago. It was a very tragic accident. Tragic experience for the family. And it’s something you never want to see happen.
“But he’s a good person who was involved in something that, you know, none of us ever want to be involved in and never want any of our loved ones involved in. But he loves football. He loves football.”
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Fernando Mendoza embraces wheelchair-bound mom after Raiders select him No 1 overall
Fernando Mendoza shared the moment of being selected first overall in the NFL Draft with his family from home on Thursday night.
He was seen hugging his family, including his mother Elsa Mendoza, in a moment of celebration.
Despite being projected to be the first overall pick, Mendoza skipped the in-person draft in Pittsburgh to stay in Florida with his mother, who battles multiple sclerosis (MS) and is bound to a wheelchair.
Mendoza told reporters after he was drafted that he decided not to go to Pittsburgh to make it easier for his mother to travel to Las Vegas tomorrow when he visits his team.
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When Mendoza was only about 4 years old, his mother was diagnosed with the disease. It is a chronic, autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that can affect the brain and spinal cord. She has spent the last few years in a wheelchair.
Elsa Mendoza wrote about the experience in a 2015 letter to her sons that was published in The Players Tribune.
“I was diagnosed about 18 years ago, but of course you never knew that. You and Alberto were so young, and I was doing fine… and mostly I didn’t want you to worry. It just felt like this impossible thing to place on you guys. On my sweet boys. And then I kept doing fine until about 10 years ago, when we went skiing and I broke my ankle and knee,” she wrote.
“But even after that, I wasn’t quite ready to tell you — only that my leg hadn’t healed all the way, which is why your mom had her limp. It wasn’t until five years ago, when I got Covid, that things started to go downhill in a way where there was no more hiding it. It was during football season, and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to travel. And the thought of you wondering if I supported you any less, because suddenly I wasn’t at your games? I hated that. So that’s when I knew we had to sit you and your brother down.”
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She went on to recall, “how hard of a conversation it ended up being. ‘Your mom has this degenerative disease… and while we don’t know how it will progress, it’s going to start to affect us in a few ways. But it won’t affect us in the ways that matter. We’ll have each other, and love each other, and be there for each other. I promise.'”
Both of Mednzoa’s parents grew up in Miami, Florida, as the children of Cuban refugees who fled communism after Fidel Castro rose to power in the country.
Mendoza’s father, Fernando Mendoza Sr., was a rower at Brown University and a 1987 Junior World Championships gold medalist.
But Mendoza’s father also played football when he was younger, and was teammates with Miami Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal at Christopher Columbus High School during the 1980s. Mendoza would go on to defeat his father’s former teammate in this year’s CFP national championship game.
Meanwhile, his mother played tennis at the University of Miami.
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