Meghan Markle was once accused of being “very rude” to a royal gardener at Windsor Castle, which resulted in the late Queen Elizabeth having a talk with her over the incident, according to a royal author. The Duchess of Sussex has been linked to various allegations of bullying over the years.

However, the most prominent ones, and the ones she has repeatedly and vehemently denied, were from her time as a working royal. Meghan married into the Royal Family in 2018 but quit two years later before she and Prince Harry moved to the US.

Last year, the Duchess was accused of making her staff “feel like s***” when she was a working royal, with a source telling The Sunday Times: “I witnessed people being chewed up in person and over the phone and made to feel like s***.”

At the time, royal historian Hugo Vickers said the allegations were “not surprising” as his own sources described similar situations from Meghan’s royal tenure.

He told the Sun: “Well, I’m afraid I’m not surprised by these allegations because even when she was at Windsor, I remember hearing from very good sources that there was trouble.

“There was a time when she was very rude to one of the under gardeners at Windsor when they were at Frogmore Cottage.

“The head gardener went to complain to the Queen and she told her off because she obviously didn’t like people being rude to staff.

“None of these other stories surprised me. She probably is not very good with staff or people that she’s employing. It’s just very unattractive.”

However, in Tom Quinn’s book Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, the duchess was defended by ex-courtiers.

Mr Quinn wrote: “Some people can cope with this — Kate Middleton is perhaps the supreme example — but others try to fight back, which is what Meghan clearly did.

He wrote: “‘You’ve got to hand it to her,’ a former member of her staff said. ‘She really is a fighter.'”