The royal family is not notorious for warmth and affection, let’s be honest. The Queen was not known to be ‘physically demonstrative’ with her own children, reportedly visiting them daily after breakfast and teatime, leaving the lion’s share of parenting to the nannies.

Royal protocol means the royal family rarely hold hands, kiss or hug in public to maintain the unspoken rule of dignity and decorum. When a newly married royal couple so much as peck on the Buckingham Palace balcony they are met with rapturous applause, as if it’s an act of rebellion.

As figure heads of British propriety, we can hardly blame them for their lack of affection. It’s hard to imagine the Queen and Prince Phillip were ever spooning on the sofa watching Coronation Street, or that Charles and Anne ever had to wrestle for the last Yorkshire pudding during Sunday lunch.

An earnest American joining the family and hugging everyone, then, was always going to freak them out. According to a recent report from The Times, Markle was known for ‘incessant hugging’ and ‘cheek kissing’ during her time as a senior royal in the UK, which made Prince William ‘uncomfortable’ and King Charles and Kate ‘flinch’.

It’s hardly surprising that people reared in such a stiff environment would take issue with Markle’s ostensibly American approach to tactility. ‘Meghan hugged him [William] virtually every time they bumped into each other,’ one anonymous staffer told The Times. The fact her new family had a problem with her warm gestures was something that Markle could not wrap her head around, once asking ‘why do William and Charles sound so serious all the time?’ and questioning why Charles and the Queen never hugged.

This clash of cultures is being revisited in Tom Quinn’s book, Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, as something that ‘deepened the rift between the brothers’. It sounds like a stretch, but apparently Markle’s affection fuelled rumours among palace staff that she was ‘flirting with William’, which the writer adds ‘she was obviously not’. Nevertheless, Markle’s demeanour created a tension.

‘When someone arrives from the United States and tries to change things, the old guard really don’t like it,’ a former member of the Kensington Palace staff said. ‘And the old guard are terrific snobs. They have to be less obviously snobbish today, but it’s still there.’

The guard went on to explain that Harry dating a divorced American woman was just about acceptable, but it’s not something that would have ever passed with William. As well as her overzealous hugging, Markle picked up on the fact that Harry was always playing second fiddle to his elder brother. She reportedly felt a need to stand up for him and encouraged him to tell his ‘truth’, which was seen as deeply disruptive.

The consensus seems to be that meeting Markle changed Harry – for better or for worse depends on who you are talking to. This was something William struggled to understand given that they had always grown up in tandem with one another and their lifestyle had never caused Harry issues before.

Allegedly, things took a turn when Harry and Markle moved into Nottingham Cottage, which is extremely small compared with Kensington Palace where William and Kate lived. Then there was the royal protocol that meant Markle wasn’t allowed to leave the premises without clearing a time in advance to avoid a clash with the more senior royals. None of which made sense to Markle, as it wouldn’t to most ordinary people, but instead of keeping quiet she was known to raise her concerns.

Without a deep understanding of how the royal family works or the British class system in general, it sounds like Markle was doomed to fail. She is from a different world and some of her Americanisms were always going to rub off on her husband, as some of his behaviours have no doubt rubbed off on her. The problem, though, is that the royal family is famously resistant to change.

Markle might have seemed like a ‘breath of fresh air’ when she first arrived, but she proved to be too much too soon for the old guard. That was always going to leave the brothers in a difficult position – William is the future King, the face of the old guard, while Harry, the self-proclaimed ‘spare’, is trying to carve out a new life as a philanthropist-cum-celebrity-cum-Duke in California. The two do not necessarily go hand in hand.

Ironically, it is William and Kate who seem to be leaning more towards Markle’s approach in recent times. When Kate announced she had completed her cancer treatment last September, she shared an insight into their family life on social media and her and William were more affectionate than we have ever seen them. In the video, they were seen lying on a picnic rug together, laughing arm in arm while sat on a log in the forest, and holding hands and kissing each other on the beach. It’s content from senior royals that would have been unimaginable even five years ago.

There is clearly a broad desire to humanise and modernise the royal family moving forward, whether their most established senior advisors like it or not – and it’s hard not to see Markle’s influence.