Prince Harry 'Changed' After Marrying Meghan Markle, Royal Press Secretary Reveals

Prince Harry was once a beloved figure within the royal family, but his popularity quickly declined when he stepped away from The Crown to pursue a life in the U.S. with Meghan Markle.

"The Harry that I knew and I left and obviously that was before he got married so 2013, but he was the media's darling," Ailsa Anderson, Queen Elizabeth II's former press secretary told Times Radio.

"I remember at the start he could not put a foot wrong, he was just this war hero, he'd served, he was committed, he had the Invictus Games," she added.

Shortly after retiring from the armed forces, Harry created the Invictus Games, which continues to be one of his most celebrated endeavors.

"He really couldn't put a step wrong," the former staffer noted. "In private I just found him charming, funny and interesting, so yeah I am surprised and saddened, actually."

"You will remember all three of them together doing stuff like Heads Together for Mental Health and it just felt like a really amazing team," she noted in reference to Harry's once close bond with Prince William and Kate Middleton.

Before Harry's 2020 "Megxit" scandal, the Duke of Sussex often attended royal engagements alongside the Prince and Princess of Wales.

'"They were very joined up and offering support to each other," Anderson stated. "So when that doesn't happen suddenly, it's what happens in any family not just the royal family, it's a loss isn't it? It's a bereavement."

Aside from palace employees, Harry's friends noticed a shift in his behavior upon meeting Meghan. Tom Quinn interviewed Harry's former Eton cronies for Gilded Youth: An Intimate History of Growing Up in the Royal Family, and many of his former peers were annoyed by his evolution.

“They think real country people are defined by the fact that they shoot things. And if you go to a school like Eton, you don’t get a broad social mix. It’s only people from the old English aristocracy who are very conservative… This is the world that Harry grew up in. His only friends were the sons and some daughters of the old English aristocracy who are all like this. And so, his world was limited by that," Quinn wrote.

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"He was funny, a bit cynical and great company because, like the rest of us, he made jokes that we are no longer allowed to make," the insider added. "After Meghan came along, he changed completely into what he would once have been the first to mock: a sort of Guardian-reading tree-hugger. It was all Meghan’s influence. We used to joke that she must be very good in bed to have turned his head that far."

Harry's inner circle was “stunned" by how much the American actress influenced him.

"His friends were horrified because it was almost as if he’d gone over to the enemy," Quinn said.

"They were very rude about it. When Harry met Meghan, they got close very quickly. Harry wanted her to meet his friends. It never occurred to him that she might think they were awful, that they would make racist jokes. Harry once famously went to a party dressed up as a Nazi,” he added, referring Harry’s problematic past.