Meghan Markle's 'Sweet' Royal Tour Moment Caught on Camera

Footage of Meghan Markle taken during her first major overseas tour as a member of the royal family has been widely re-shared online, with fans praising the duchess' "kind" manner.

The video is the latest clip of Meghan to go viral on social media, with TikTok users increasingly building and posting edited compilation clips of royal family members including Prince Harry, Kate Middleton and Princess Diana.

The recently resurfaced footage of Meghan was filmed as part of her Australia and South Pacific tour with Prince Harry in October 2018.

That round of engagements, which saw them visit the islands of Tonga, Fiji and New Zealand, in addition to the Australian mainland, has been seen since by the couple as a turning point in their relationships with royal family members, who are alleged to have been wary of Meghan's overwhelming popularity as a result.

The clip, posted to TikTik by user, meghmarkle, and captioned "shes so kind fr😭," shows the royal accepting the offer of an umbrella during a stop in Auckland, New Zealand. The post has been viewed over 500,000 times and received in excess of 21,000 likes in just 48 hours.

Many commenters have praised the duchess for her engagement in the video, and for apparently offering to hold the umbrella over a guest sitting beside her as Prince Harry prepared to make a speech at the event, which celebrated the planting of trees in honor of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.

"She said 'I will hold it for us' 😩 she is so sweet inside out," wrote one user.

"Aww. She took it and shared the umbrella ☂️. Love her ❤️," another comment read with a further adding: "Meghan seems like the sweetest soul. I can never understand why ppl love to constantly tear her down."

The tour was an important milestone for Meghan and Harry for a number of reasons, firstly being their inaugural long-haul overseas tour as a married couple (having married in May 2018) and secondly as they had just announced that Meghan was pregnant with their first child.

In 2021, after the couple had stepped down from their working roles within the monarchy citing issues with the British tabloid press and relations with the royal family, the 2018 tour was raised as a turning point during their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey.

It was after this tour, Harry noted, that his family's previously warm attitude towards Meghan cooled.

"You know, my father, my brother, Kate [Middleton] and all the rest of the family, they were really welcoming [to Meghan]," he told Winfrey. "But it really changed after the Australia tour, after our South Pacific tour."

"That's when we announced we were pregnant with Archie. That was our first tour," Meghan noted.

"But it was also the first time that the family got to see how incredible she is at the job," Harry said. "And that brought back memories."

In this, he drew a comparison between Meghan and Princess Diana, who upon her first tour of Australia in 1983 received such a positive reception she was accused of outshining the then-Prince Charles.

The prince spoke in more depth about this in the couple's Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan, released in December 2022.

"The issue is," he said, "when someone who's marrying in, who should be a supporting, a supporting act, is then stealing the limelight, or is doing the job better than the person who is born to do this. That upsets people. It shifts the balance."

The royals have, for their part, stayed mostly silent on the allegations made by Harry and Meghan in the years since leaving the monarchy. In the aftermath of the Oprah interview, Buckingham Palace released a rare statement, reading:

"The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan. The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members."

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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