12 December 2023 , 07:00
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When Prince Harry first struck up a relationship with Meghan Markle, she was still a working actress.
Not only was she still playing Rachel Zane in the hit TV legal drama Suits, but she also carried out charity work across the globe. And it seems this prompted Harry to issue a stern warning to Meghan just before she embarked on a humanitarian trip to India. Early in their courtship, Meghan went to India with World Vision, working to promote menstrual health management and education access for young girls. But before she travelled to the country, Harry admitted warning her not to take a photo in front of India's most famous landmark, the Taj Mahal.
Prince Harry with wife Meghan Markle (Getty Images)And in his controversial memoir, Spare, he explained that he gave the advice as he did not want people to think his wife was mimicking his mother Princess Diana. She was pictured sitting alone at the famous landmark on a tour of India. The image became considered symbolic of the state of her relationship with King Charles.
But Harry said when he gave Meghan the warning when she told him she'd be off to India - she laughed. He wrote: "Do not take a photo in front of the Taj Mahal. She’d asked why and I’d said: My mum. I’d explained that my mother had posed for a photo there, and it had become iconic, and I didn’t want anyone thinking Meg was trying to mimic my mother. Meg had never heard of this photo, and found the whole thing baffling, and I loved her for being baffled."
Princess Diana sits in front of the Taj Mahal in 1992 (Tim Graham/Getty Images)Diana was famously pictured alone on a bench in front of the Taj Mahal when she was visiting the country with the then Prince Charles in February 1992. Unknown to the outside world, the pair were already spending much of their time in the UK at separate residences, with Diana based at Kensington Palace and Charles preferring to be at Highgrove in Gloucestershire. Ten months after that photo was taken, they would announce their formal separation.
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However, many years later in 2016, Prince William and Kate did visit the monument, where they posed for a photo from the bench. The couple sat together for 25 seconds on the white marble bench before walking into the Taj Mahal for a private tour marking the close of their trip to India and Bhutan that year.
The bench has now become a major tourist attraction at the Unesco World Heritage site in Agra which has up to 25,000 visitors per day. An aide said William and Kate only decided the day before visiting that they would sit on the bench and said the decision was not to mirror Diana, even though the bench is associated with her worldwide.
A source at the time said Diana's visit to the Taj Mahal was "not a particularly strong memory at all" for William, adding: "He has many other memories of his mother that are much more important to him."