5 surprising revelations about royal life from the 'Harry & Meghan' docuseries

Harry and Meghan first connected through Instagram. In the docuseries, Harry said a mutual friend set him up with Meghan after he saw a video of her with a puppy filter while scrolling on his private account in the summer of 2016, Insider's Mikhaila Friel reported.

Meghan said the mutual friend emailed her to let her know that "Prince Haz" had asked about her, to which Meghan asked who he was and if she could look at his Instagram feed.

Royal reporters Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand wrote in their 2020 book, "Finding Freedom," that Harry had a private Instagram account that Meghan started following shortly after they met, Town & Country reported.

Despite joining an institution she admits she knew very little about, Meghan said she received no formal instruction about how to follow royal protocol after meeting Prince Harry, and she dubbed the experience "baptism by fire."

She referenced the 2001 movie "The Princess Diaries," in which Anne Hathaway's character, Mia Thermopolis, receives etiquette training after learning she is the princess of a principality called Genovia.

"Joining this family, I knew that there was a protocol for how things were done," Meghan said. "And do you remember that old movie 'The Princess Diaries' with Anne Hathaway? There's no class and some person who goes 'Sit like this, cross your legs like this, use this fork, don't do this, curtsy then, wear this kind of hat.' It doesn't happen. So I needed to learn a lot. Including the national anthem."

When asked how she learned the British national anthem, Meghan replied, "Oh, I Googled it."

Anita McBride, who served as former first lady Laura Bush's chief of staff from 2005 to 2009, previously told Insider that Queen Elizabeth's dressmaker used to confer with the staff of US first ladies to make sure their outfits wouldn't clash during visits.

"Those kinds of behind-the-scenes conversations are really part of the larger planning and protocol and discussions that go into an event like that — down to clothing, food, menu, and flowers, and all of those things," she said. "When it's done right, it conveys a great sign of interest and respect in your guest and pride in how the US and how the president and first lady have welcomed a foreign visitor."

In "Harry & Meghan," Meghan indicated this rule applies to actual members of the royal family, as well.

She said she "rarely wore color" while in the UK because of royal protocol rules about outfit colors at public appearances, Insider's Rebecca Cohen and Amanda Krause reported.

"To my understanding, you can't ever wear the same color as Her Majesty, if there's a group event," she said. "But then you also should never be wearing the same color as one of the other more senior members of the family."

That wasn't the only reason Meghan chose such a simple color palette, she said.

"It was also so I could just blend in," she said. "I'm not trying to stand out here. There's no version of me joining this family and trying to not do everything I could to fit in."

The royal family gets its money from a combination of the taxpayer-funded Sovereign Grant and a portfolio of land and other assets called the Duchy of Lancaster. Royals who work for the Crown full-time aren't allowed to earn any money from outside sources, Insider's Caroline Praderio, Taylor Nicole Rogers, and Kelsey Vlamis reported.

Harry said in the docuseries that it's "normal" for the royal family to have financial control over other members.

"For my whole life, the purse strings have been controlled by my father," he said.

Harry detailed the royal family's relationship with the media in the docuseries, claiming different offices in the institution work against each other to protect their "principals," Insider's Samantha Grindell and Anneta Konstantinides reported.

"You know, there's leaking, but there's also planting of stories," he said. "So if the comms team want to be able to remove a negative story about their principal, they will trade and give you something about someone else's principal," he said. "So the offices end up working against each other."

Harry also said he and William made a pact when they were younger to never trade stories about each other, and that it was "heartbreaking" when William's office appeared to betray that agreement. Based on the stories about Meghan that appeared in the tabloids, Harry said he believed William's office was trading stories about him and his wife.

"I would far rather get destroyed in the press than play along with this game or this business of trading," Harry said.

He continued, "And to see my brother's office copy the very same thing that we promised the two of us would never ever do, that was heartbreaking."