When Meghan Markle first stepped into royal circles, not everyone greeted her with the same enthusiasm.
According to a new claim from a royal author, Prince Philip quietly noticed something “uncannily familiar” about the American actress—so much so that he gave her an unexpected nickname behind closed doors.
Richard Eden, speaking on Reading the Royals, revealed that the late Duke of Edinburgh privately referred to Meghan as “DOW,” short for “Duchess of Windsor.”
It was his subtle nod to Wallis Simpson, the woman who famously turned the monarchy upside down back in the 1930s.
Why Meghan Reminded Philip of Wallis
Ingrid Seward, whose book My Mother and I delves into decades of royal dynamics, wrote that while the Queen initially embraced Prince Harry’s new girlfriend with warmth, Philip was far more guarded.
To him, the resemblance wasn’t just about their shared glamour or their chic, American confidence.
It was the energy—the same disruptive potential he believed Wallis had carried with her.
Philip actually met Wallis Simpson several times before her death in 1986, and Seward suggests he immediately sensed echoes of her in Meghan.
Wallis, of course, was at the center of the storm that led King Edward VIII to abandon the throne after only 326 days—all to marry the twice-divorced woman he couldn’t give up.
History Repeating Itself?
Eight decades later, Meghan arrived in Harry’s life, introduced by a mutual friend in the summer of 2016.
Like Wallis, she had a previous marriage behind her.
Before walking down the aisle at St George’s Chapel in 2018, she had wed and later divorced film producer Trevor Engelson after a barefoot ceremony in Jamaica.
Harry, according to royal writer Sally Bedell Smith, had no qualms about marrying a divorcee.
But when he announced he intended to marry Meghan, Philip’s reaction was blunt and old-school:
“One steps out with actresses, one doesn’t marry them.”
Two Women, Two Eras, Similar Scrutiny
Wallis’s marriage to Edward came at a time when the government, the monarchy, and the Church of England all pushed back fiercely.
Queen Mary herself insisted Edward had a duty to end the relationship.
But he refused, and in 1937 the pair married in France in a modest ceremony with no royals present.
Their wedding couldn’t have been more different from Harry and Meghan’s global spectacle in 2018.
Meghan rode to the chapel in a Rolls-Royce Phantom IV—the same model that carried Wallis to Edward’s funeral decades earlier—and wore a gleaming white Givenchy gown.
Ironically, Givenchy had been one of Wallis’s go-to fashion houses as well.
The Queen’s Quiet Reservations
While the Queen initially championed Meghan, Bedell Smith notes that Her Majesty later expressed discomfort over the brightness of Meghan’s wedding dress.
Lady Elizabeth Anson reportedly said the monarch felt it was “too white” for a remarriage in a church setting—too symbolic, perhaps, for royal tradition.
And in another curious coincidence, both Meghan and Wallis had only one family member at their weddings.
Wallis brought her Aunt Bessie. Meghan arrived with just her mother, Doria Ragland.
Royal biographer Robert Hardman pointed out the parallel, and Eden wondered aloud whether it’s a subtle “red flag” about both women’s complicated family ties.
Meghan, Wallis, and the Royal Echo Chamber
Despite their deeply different circumstances and the very different eras they lived in, the conversation around Meghan and Wallis keeps looping back to the same themes—outsider energy, independence, glamour, controversy, and the ability to shift the balance inside the royal household.
And whether Philip’s early instincts were fair or not, his private nickname suggests he recognized something in Meghan that reminded him of one of the monarchy’s most defining, disruptive figures.
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