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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle met in 2016, were engaged before the end of 2017, and married on May 19, 2018.

That’s a relatively speedy engagement and one that made quite a few heads turn.

The reason for the hasty nuptials, however, is likely a lot sweeter than you might think.

Thanks to the explosive new book, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, by royal author Tina Brown, the real motivation has been revealed.

The Independent has more:

Having spoken to more than 120 royal insiders over the course of two years, the author writes that while most of the family – including Prince Charles and the Queen – appeared to like Meghan, it was Prince William who had the biggest reservations.

It was claimed that Harry’s brother was “nervous” about how quickly the couple were falling in love because of how much Meghan would have to give up if they were to marry, including her acting career and her life in the US.

Prince William was adamant that Meghan needed “more time to build up a life in the UK and make friends”, added Good To Know.

There were also concerns about Harry’s “mental fragility” as he would end up taking on all the “scorching scrutiny and harassment” that Meghan was enduring.

But Harry was keen to step up to the plate and protect Meghan from that trouble:

Brown explains, “To his brother’s concerns, Harry riposte can be summarised as, I am told, ‘Well, actually the best way that I can protect her is to marry her as quickly as possible because as soon as I marry her she will then get police protection.’”

Despite Harry’s efforts, negative media attention on Meghan both before and after the wedding did not relent.

One of the worst was a headline posted by The Sun in 2016 (“Harry’s Girl on Pornhub”) which the publication was forced to apologise for in 2017 after being called out for the fake news.

It all became too much, and with little to no mental health support and protection from Buckingham Palace – as the couple revealed in that bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview – they stepped down as working senior royals in 2019.

Because of that, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex also lost their publicly-funded police protection in the UK.

[sources:independent&goodtoknow]