Meghan Markle says watching Prince Harry as a father ‘is the most beautiful thing’

Meghan Markle has described the experience of witnessing Prince Harry father their two children as “the most beautiful thing to watch”.

The Duchess of Sussex shared her observation during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Thursday, where she opened up about the inspiration behind her children’s book The Bench and shared her son Archie’s response to seeing himself portrayed on the pages.

“I wrote this originally just as a poem for my husband on Father’s Day and it was about my observation of him and him being a dad, which is the most beautiful thing to watch,” Meghan told DeGeneres, according to a preview clip viewed by People.

According to the 40-year-old royal, who shares son Archie, two, and daughter Lilibet, five months, with Prince Harry, the idea eventually turned into a book at the urging of the couple’s friends, who said that the “sweet love story” resonated with them and could work as a children’s book.

“Once it was shared with a couple of friends and people that we are close with they said: ‘’No, this resonates for me too because it feels really inclusive and there’s representation.’ It’s just a sweet love story between a family and so I said: ‘Okay, let’s turn it into a children’s book,’” Meghan recalled.

The duchess then reflected on some of the qualities found in her family that she made sure to include in the book, such as the “softer side of masculinity, the softer side of fatherhood,” while she also noted that it was important for her to make sure that “everyone could see themselves in these pages”.

While speaking with DeGeneres for her first daytime talk show appearance since becoming a royal, Meghan also confirmed that Archie knows he’s featured in the book’s illustrations alongside his father, with the duchess revealing that her son was also excited to recognise the family’s two dogs, a beagle named Guy and a black Labrador named Pula, in the pictures.

“On that first page you open and you see our dogs and he goes: ‘That’s Pula! That’s Guy!’” the mother-of-two said of Archie’s reaction.

During the conversation, the duchess also opened up about the couple’s attempt to celebrate Halloween with their two young children this year, with Meghan revealing that “the kids were not into it at all” and “Archie was a dinosaur for maybe five minutes”.