Meghan Markle has been described with several unflattering nicknames since she and her husband, Prince Harry, stepped away from their royal duties in 2020 via Yahoo.
Past staff allegedly branded her “Duchess Difficult” and it was recently revealed that former co-workers at Spotify called her “Eva,” after a movie character with a diva attitude.
But among all the nicknames Meghan Markle has been given, the one her father-in-law, King Charles, reportedly gave her may be the most bizarre.
As per the Daily Mail, it was recently revealed that King Charles once branded the Duchess of Sussex “Tungsten” before his ascension to the throne.
Reports suggest that the then Prince of Wales nicknamed Meghan following the metal as he saw her as a “tough” and “unbending” individual.
It might seem like a harsh nickname, Charles is said to have used it to compliment the former actress’s personality during her and Harry’s early days as working royals.
The nickname first surfaced in 2018, when a palace source told Charlotte Griffiths of the Mail On Sunday that Charles admired Meghan’s “strength.”
“Prince Charles admires Meghan for her strength and the backbone she gives Harry, who needs a tungsten-type figure in his life as he can be a bit of a softy. It’s become a term of endearment,” the source said.
Tungsten, who is known for its core strength and high melting point, is the strongest naturally occurring metal on Earth. Its important properties reportedly made it clear that Charles used it to praise his daughter-in-law Meghan.
As per a book by Royal Biographer Ingrid Seward, Philip, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 99, used to call Meghan the “Duchess of Windsor.”
The nickname refers to the title held by American socialite Wallis Simpson. She was the infamous U.S. divorcée who married Edward VIII in 1937 after he controversially abdicated the throne for her.
In Seward’s book “My Mother and I,” she claims that Philip always said Meghan and Simpson’s resemblance was “uncanny.”
“He wasn’t simply referring to the fact that both were pencil-slim, dark-haired and glamorous American divorcées,” she wrote, per the New York Post,
One significant similarity between Meghan and Simpson is that they were divorced women before marrying into royalty. Meghan was married to film producer Trevor Engelson from 2011 to 2014 and started dating Harry in 2016.
