Meghan Markle Had to Take Part in a Kidnapping Training Before Joining the Royal Family
Meghan Markle Had to Take Part in a Kidnapping Training Before Joining the Royal Family
Royal etiquette wasn't the only thing she had to master.
When it came to marrying into the royal family, etiquette wasn't the only thing Meghan Markle had to master — she also had to participate in some intense safety trainings.
According to a new biography on Meghan and Prince Harry, the duchess took on security courses meant to ensure her safety as a member of the royal family.
“She underwent an intense two-day security course with the SAS, the British Army’s most elite regiment,” authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand wrote in Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Family. "Meghan took part in a staged kidnapping, where she was bundled into the back of a car by a ‘terrorist,’ taken to a different location and then ‘saved’ by officers firing fake guns (the kind used in Hollywood filming) for realism."
The training, while intense, was not without reason — security is a major concern for any public figure, let alone the British royal family (Princess Anne once famously escaped an attempted kidnapping). After all, the question of who would pay for security and bodyguards became a question when Meghan and Harry announced they would be breaking away from the royal family. Donald Trump, unprompted, tweeted that the U.S. would not be paying for their security when the couple said they'd be splitting their time between North America and the U.K., the Sussexes fired back with a statement saying they'd be paying for their own security.
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In fact, Finding Freedom also discussed Meghan's private reaction to Trump's tweet — the book's authors wrote that "Meghan’s response to the president’s tweet was to roll her eyes. The Sussexes had never asked the US government for support and had always planned to cover their own security costs after March 30."
