Harry and Meghan stepped back from official royal duties in 2020 following anger over what they believed were intrusions by the media and the restraints of royal life.

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A royal insider has revealed the moment he thinks sparked Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s exit from the Royal Family, leaving him “in floods of tears”. Paul Burrell served the Firm for 21 years as a footman to the late Queen, a butler for King Charles, and most famously for Princess Diana.

In his new book, The Royal Insider: My Life with the Queen, the King and Princess Diana, he claimed that revelations about Charles and Diana’s marriage may have inspired Megxit. The couple split in 1992 and divorced in 1995, but Mr Burrell said he thinks Diana knew the marriage was over when Harry was born in 1984. Mr Burrell claimed Charles made a shocking comment to Diana after the birth of their first son, calling him “my spare”.

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He told The Sun: “Then came the damning blow: he [Charles] said, ‘Well at least I’ve got my heir and my spare now and I can return to Camilla’.

“She [Diana] told me, ‘I cried myself to sleep that night knowing that my marriage was over and that he’d gone back to Camilla’.

“Years later, in the autumn of 2017, I would come face to face with Harry and William in their mother’s old apartments 8 and 9 at Kensington Palace and I would tell them what their mother had said to me.

“They asked me when and where I thought it had gone wrong with their parents.

“And I said I thought it was at that moment. Harry stared straight at me, poker faced. He couldn’t believe what I was telling him. I was in floods of tears but he never flinched. This happened just before Harry became engaged to Meghan.

“I think that powered him and put fuel in his tanks to go forward with everything that he felt. It may have contributed to what happened after and is probably the reason he called his book Spare.”

Harry and Meghan stepped back from official royal duties in 2020 following anger over intrusions by the media and the restraints of royal life.

They have kept their Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles but are no longer addressed as His or Her Royal Highness (HRH).

The couple no longer have their official UK residence, Frogmore Cottage, after being asked to vacate the Grade-II listed property on the Windsor estate.