Leading up to the May 19 royal wedding at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, bride-to-be Meghan Markle was so offended by the bad smell inside the nearly 550-year-old chapel that she demanded the place be sprayed with air freshener before guests showed up, according to a report sourced to “royal insiders” in Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper on Friday.
Markle’s demand to break with tradition by sprucing up the atmosphere inside the “musty” chapel was so controversial with the royal staff that it went all the way up the ladder to 92-year-old Queen Elizabeth II herself, forcing the longest-reigning monarch in Britain’s history to issue a ruling on the air freshener issue, according to The Mail . And her ruling was — forget it.
“The chapel was a regular place of worship for the Queen – as it had been for successive monarchs since 1475 – and if it was good enough for them, it would be good enough for (Markle),” the Queen decreed, according to the Mail account, which also notes that while Markle and her now-husband Prince Harry largely acted as their own wedding planners, they required the Queen’s permission to use St. George’s Chapel as a venue for their nuptials, and with the chapel being the site of “several royal marriages including Queen Victoria’s and burial place of ten monarchs,” The Mail reported, the Queen has the final say on what goes on there.
The Mail cited the air freshener allegation as an example of what royal staffers are reportedly describing as Markle’s “dictatorial” style. As the Inquisitr recently reported, Markle is said to rise at 5 a.m. each morning and bombard her staff with text messages containing various orders and instructions.
On the other hand, the report appears to be part of what CNN has recently described as a systematic campaign of leaks by so-called “royal insiders,” “courtiers,” and “family friends” who seek to paint a picture of the newly anointed Duchess of Sussex as “a demanding bridezilla in the run-up to the wedding and a difficult boss who snaps at her staff.”
Markle’s personal assistant, 39-year-old Melissa Toubati, suddenly and unexpectedly quit her job earlier this month, according to the Mirror newspaper, though whether her abrupt departure was related to press leaks about Markle remains unclear.
According to CNN , some have speculated that the leaking campaign is at least partly racially motivated.
“There is an apparent effort to ‘other’ her —perhaps due to her being American but also, in a more insidious way, over her biracial heritage,” the CNN report said. “After all, how dare this successful, independent-minded, forthright woman have opinions on how she wants her wedding to be? How dare a woman who has worked hard at her career before she joined the royal family continue to send emails now she is on the inside?”
