Princess Eugenie reportedly found herself in an extraordinarily awkward position after a deeply personal gift from Meghan Markle — a first-edition copy of The Bench personally given to Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank — mysteriously appeared for sale on eBay with a staggering £20,000 ($26,484) asking price, prompting Eugenie to personally contact Meghan and explain that she would never knowingly sell such a private gift.

The episode became even more uncomfortable because this was not simply a signed copy of Meghan’s 2021 children’s book.

It was apparently a personal gift. According to sources cited by Naughty But Nice, Eugenie herself contacted Meghan after discovering what had happened, reportedly horrified that something Meghan had personally given her had somehow ended up on an online marketplace.

“Eugenie called Meghan herself. She was horrified the book had somehow ended up for sale and made it absolutely clear she would never knowingly sell a personal gift from Meghan,” a source told Naughty But Nice.

That reported phone call changes the entire story. Rather than Eugenie deliberately getting rid of a gift from Meghan, the mystery now centers on how the book managed to leave her possession without her apparently knowing about it.

A Very Personal Gift

The copy of The Bench was reportedly inscribed specifically for “Eug & Jack,” making it considerably more personal than an ordinary first edition, with the handwritten message celebrating the relationship between fathers and sons and reportedly making a reference to Frogmore Cottage.

Meghan has previously explained that The Bench began as a poem she wrote for Prince Harry on his first Father’s Day following the birth of their son, Archie, before it was developed into a children’s picture book exploring the bond between fathers and sons through a mother’s perspective.

That makes the personalized copy particularly meaningful.

And it helps explain why Eugenie would reportedly have been so concerned about Meghan’s reaction when the book suddenly appeared online.

“Eugenie genuinely doesn’t know how it left her possession,” another insider told Naughty But Nice. “What mattered to her was making sure Meghan knew this wasn’t some deliberate snub.”

That distinction appears to have been extremely important.

The discovery could easily have been interpreted as Eugenie deciding that the gift was unwanted or unimportant, but the reported conversation with Meghan suggests she wanted to make absolutely certain her cousin-in-law understood that was not what happened.

The £20,000 Mystery

The biggest question remains brutally simple: How did the book get there?

Sources reportedly point to the fact that Eugenie and Jack have moved between different homes and divided their time between properties over the years, creating the possibility that the book was misplaced, stored somewhere else or passed along without their knowledge.

But nobody appears to know exactly what happened. And that uncertainty is what makes the story so strange.

A personal gift was apparently sitting somewhere within Eugenie and Jack’s world, and then suddenly it was being offered to the public for £20,000.

The eBay listing has since disappeared, but the mystery surrounding its journey remains.

“Meghan accepted the explanation,” the source added. “But nobody can explain how the book got there.”

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Eugenie Caught in an Awkward Royal Moment

For Eugenie, the leaked apology appears to have been about protecting a personal relationship rather than simply explaining a missing book.

She and Jack have generally been viewed as maintaining a comparatively warm relationship with Harry and Meghan despite the much wider fractures within the Royal Family, which makes the possibility of Meghan interpreting the sale as a deliberate slight particularly uncomfortable.

The reported phone call therefore becomes the heart of the story. Eugenie apparently did not want Meghan believing that she had taken a deeply personal gift, removed the sentimental meaning from it and put it on the market for an enormous sum.

Instead, she reportedly wanted Meghan to know that she had no idea how the book ended up there and that selling it was never her intention.

And that leaves one enormous question hanging over the entire episode.

Someone, somewhere, had possession of a very personal gift. Someone put it on eBay. Someone attached a £20,000 ($26,484) price tag to it.

And neither Meghan nor Eugenie, according to the sources, appears to know how it happened.

For now, the listing is gone. The apology has reportedly been made. Meghan has reportedly accepted Eugenie’s explanation.

But the mysteries of how that very personal royal gift traveled from Eugenie’s world to an online marketplace and who leaked the apalogy to the media remain completely unanswered.