Meghan Markle had a “messiah complex” and saw her purpose in the royal family as finishing Princess Diana’s work,

while Prince William was nervous that her tactile style would be interpreted as her “flirting” with him,

a revealing new book featuring interviews with dozens of former royal staffers has claimed.

The book by journalist Tom Quinn, entitled, Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, and excerpted in The Times of London Thursday,

shines a poignant light on the psychology of “needy” Prince William, saying that his wife Kate Middleton treats him as a “fourth child,” and that he once mournfully lamented that his father, King Charles III, had never given him a piggyback.

Prince Andrew is cast as a spoiled and petulant prince who dismissed one courtier from his service because he “disliked a mole on the man’s face” and another for wearing a synthetic tie.

However it is likely that the servants’ tales about Meghan will once again steal the headlines. One source, described as a former staffer for Meghan and Harry told Quinn: “Meghan really did have a messiah complex… all her big ideas were about doing good. She once said, ‘What Diana started, I want to finish,’ and we took that to mean she wanted to become a sort of globetrotting champion of the poor and the marginalized. She has managed to do this to some extent, but she really wanted to do it as a princess and with the full backing of the royal family, but on a part-time basis.”

Quinn says that royal staff all told him they thought that Meghan felt “slightly looked down on by the courtiers.” He points out that Kate was also subject to appalling snobbery and cruelty from some palace figures in the early years of her marriage to William due to her non-aristocratic background but became the “supreme example” of rising above critics and making it work.

One source said: “It was the same kind of backbiting gossipy criticism that Meghan had to put up with, but Kate is actually a much stronger person than Meghan in many ways. Yet what Meghan saw as Kate being pushed around, Kate saw as an essential part of being a member of the royal family. Kate’s view of Meghan was always implied rather than spoken, I think. It was that Meghan thought she knew better than an institution that had been in business for 1,000 years and more. Kate was never going to buy that.”

The book says that Meghan had several nicknames including “Duchess Difficult” and “Mystic Meg,” the latter referring to her supposed penchant for spiritual thinking and her habits of “hugging and cheek kissing” which made William and Charles “flinch.”

Meghan has previously said she is a “hugger” and suggested Kate was not.

Meghan also apparently felt slighted when she and Harry were given the relatively humble Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of the Kensington Palace estate to live in in 2017. One staffer is quoted as saying, “Meghan felt it was so small that it must be a reflection on how the royal family were belittling her husband.”

Another source described as “a member of the comms team who was particularly close to the duchess” is quoted as saying: “She spotted immediately that Harry wasn’t quite as central to things as his brother, William. I don’t think Harry had even thought much about the fact that he was a spare until well into his marriage. I think she was oversensitive on Harry’s behalf and convinced herself he was being treated as completely unimportant.”

Quinn is a credible and respected royal writer who wrote a much admired biography of the late Queen Mother’s most trusted servant and gatekeeper, William Tallon, widely known as “Backstairs Billy,” who was credited with making her gin and tonics “exactly the way she liked them, nine-tenths gin and one-tenth tonic.”