Meghan and Harry: The Real Story

by Lady Colin Campbell

The Queen was said to be surprised that her soon-to-be granddaughter-in-law, already married and divorced once, had chosen virginal white in defiance of all accepted custom in royal and aristocratic circles, where a nod in the direction of reality dictated that no colour lighter than cream should be worn.

The colour of her dress was not the only surprise Meghan delivered on her wedding day. Traditionally, after the couple signs the register and rejoins the congregation, the bride curtsies to the Queen and the groom bows. It has always been done and it was expected by all that it would be done on the 19th May 2018. Princess Anne did it at her two weddings. Diana did it at hers. So too did Princess Alexandra, the Countess of Wessex, the Duchesses of York, Kent and Cambridge. However, as Meghan rejoined the congregation and set about walking down the aisle with a beaming Prince Harry by her side, she omitted to curtsy when she passed the Queen. This caused consternation throughout the assembled company at St. George’s Chapel, one of whom told me, ‘No one could believe it. She walked out, sailed down the aisle, with not so much as the merest bob in the direction of Her Majesty.’ The Queen is not on record as having made a comment or a complaint, but ‘she will have noticed.

What Harry ought to have known, and Meghan could not have, was that most people at Court work for ridiculously low sums.

The British press and general public, as well as the political establishment, also embraced Meghan’s mixed-race heritage. There had been other mixed-race unions in other royal houses and the general feeling was that it was high time the British Royal Family caught up with their Continental cousins.

But even in California, mixed race couples were still more of an exception than the norm, and Meghan states that some of her early memories were coloured by the embarrassment of people mistaking her mother for her nanny.

According to Meghan, when she was two, her parents separated.

In 1992, at the age of eleven, Meghan transferred to Immaculate Heart High School. This again was a school where Hollywood’s elite and aspirational sent their children.

Alumnae include Tyra Banks, Lucy Arnaz, Mary Tyler Moore, and Diane Disney, as well as several girls who have gone on to make their names in the entertainment industry.

In fairness to Meghan, she is a creature of Hollywood. The values there are different from those of palaces. Fantasy and self-promotion are not frowned upon, nor is exaggeration, all of which are viewed as valid tools for ‘getting your message across.’

Just as how the young Meghan felt the issue of her race impacting more acutely upon herself than those around her realised, so too was Harry aware from an early age of the disparity between himself and his elder brother.

Unlike Harry, who found stability when he left school and entered the Army, Meghan’s experience of entering the real world after graduating from university was one of struggle and strife.

Tyra Banks and Vanessa Williams had not found their colour a problem, but then, both women were spectacularly beautiful.

Although she loved the camera, and already knew what to do with it to maximise herself, it simply didn’t love her enough for her to become another Marilyn Monroe, Gina Lollobrigida, or Sophia Loren. Great female stars were either stunningly beautiful or outstanding talents like Meryl Streep, while Meghan, for all her hopes, ambition, and attributes, was neither.

Meghan refused to give up, no matter how dejected she became at times. She firmly believed that she was special, that she was better than others perceived her to be, that she was so bright and resourceful that she would able to convert any opportunity into something more major once she got her foot through the door.

You don’t have to be a great beauty to be acknowledged as beautiful. All you have to be is astute enough to maximise your assets: stylish enough, photographed enough, praised enough, for the general public to associate you with beauty. Diana, Princess of Wales was a case in point. A reasonably good looking woman with a nose too large, a mouth too small, cheekbones too flat, but good eyes, good colouring, good clothing, good hairstyle, and sufficient exposure for familiarity to breed acceptance of the illusion as reality, a stylish and attractive woman was accepted as the beauty she was through repetition and expert packaging.

All creatures of Hollywood know about Warren Beatty Odds. They apply as much to success on screen as to actors working their way through their address book until they hit upon the girl who will say yes to a last minute date.

auditions. It also set her apart from the other hopefuls. She felt it was a ‘classy’ thing to do, and by this time Meghan was well on the way to developing a ‘classy’ persona. Some people found her demeanour ‘sophisticated’, while others regarded her as ‘pretentious’ and ‘full of crap’, in an early indication of the way Meghan would divide, and has continued to divide, opinion. Although

the producers of Suits sang her praises publicly, another Hollywood producer told me that Meghan Markle was not ‘well regarded in the industry,’ but now that she is the Duchess of Sussex, ‘people who wouldn’t give her the time of day’ are now happy to consider doing business with her.

In Canada, Meghan had been discovering that being bi-racial was more advantageous than it had been in the US. Canadians are much more relaxed about issues like race and status than Americans, and aside from using her race in a way she had never done before, she began using her sex through the blog to branch out into areas where race, gender, and activism could be utilised positively.

‘Prince Harry is worried about Ms Markle’s safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her. It is not right that a few months into a relationship with him that Ms Markle should be subjected to such a storm. He knows that commentators will say this is “the price she has to pay” and that “this is all part of the game”. He strongly disagrees. This is not a game - it is her life and his. ‘He has asked for this statement to be issued in the hopes that those in the press who have been driving this story can pause and reflect before any further damage is done. He knows that it is unusual to issue a statement like this, but hopes that fair-minded people will understand why he has felt it necessary to speak publicly.’

Her failure to appreciate these important differences would lead her down a very slippery slope. Had she tried to understand what she was dealing with, and why it functioned as it did, she might have stood a chance. But in her ignorance she lost the ability to cope.

Britain has more national newspapers than any other country on earth. There are too many to enumerate, but aside from the ones listed above, the most popular are the Sun, the People, the Star, and the Mirror. No other country has a freer or more vigorous press, and none has as many titles fighting for a share of the available readership. The result is that competition is fiercer than it is in any other territory in the rest of the world.

Diana would have survived that car crash had she been wearing a seat belt. She was also responsible for the press following her that night. She had telephoned journalists before leaving Sardinia to tip them off about her arrival in Paris. She continued tipping them off once she arrived in that city. If you are being chased by people you have encouraged to chase you, you surely bear responsibility for creating the chase.

Of course, Harry was only twelve when his mother died. He was too young to have a mature judgement about her as an individual. By his own account, when he met Meghan he had still not worked through the trauma of her death.

Princess Grace of Monaco, for instance, was such a close personal friend of the former women’s editor of the Evening News, Gwen Robyns, that she used to stay with her at her flat in London when she wanted to escape from palace life in Monaco.

The Royal Family had actually known of Meghan and Harry’s relationship before the press did. When it became apparent that it was developing into something more than a three night stand, the palace did what it always does. It launched its own investigations into Meghan’s background the way it always ascertains the back story of everyone who becomes a close associate of any member of the Royal Family.

Buckingham Palace announced Harry and Meghan’s engagement on the 27th November 2017. The news was greeted with genuine enthusiasm publicly. There was even more excitement than when William became engaged to Catherine Middleton.

Although the public were never privy to this, anger amongst the relations turned to fury when it emerged that Harry and Meghan had not filled St. George’s Chapel to capacity. Aside from the hundreds of empty seats in existence, there were the hundreds of charity workers, strangers all, who had been asked. But most offensive to the many relations who had been overlooked was the presence of celebrities Harry and Meghan barely knew. ‘Pray tell,’ said a cousin who would ordinarily have been present, ’why are we not there but George and Amal Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, and the Beckhams are? The invitation list smacks of a career move.’

Wounded feelings and poor judgement were about to make what the press had already dubbed the Markle Debacle into something which was not only damaging and destructive but would cause unnecessary damage and pain to all the parties involved.

Although she had endeared herself to the Prince of Wales by smoothing out some of the ruffles in his relationship with Harry, and the Queen liked her because she likes anyone who is bright, vivacious and has a sense of fun

According to people who know her well, Meghan displays many of Diana’s personality traits. This includes the positive ones as well as the negative. Diana isolated Charles from all his friends in the early days of their marriage, and Meghan was already shaping up to be the sort of person who would be so engaging that Harry had little time, energy or desire for anyone else. Meghan never forgives nor forgets a slight, real or imagined, which was classic Diana, and, like the mother-in-law she never knew, when she decided to charm, she would charm, but when she decided to discard, she would drop someone as if they were a leper in Biblical times.

To the hundreds of millions of people who watched Harry and Meghan marry at St. George’s Chapel on the 19th of May 2016, theirs was a fairy tale come true. The bride looked so beautiful, so demure, so modest, so radiant, while the groom seemed so happy, so handsome, so proud. She was the apex of femininity, he of masculinity. Theirs was not merely a love story, but one with a message, the most important part of which was that the glass ceiling had now been removed for people of colour. The formerly marginalised could now aspire to anything.

She was now a royal highness, and not just any old royal highness either, but a fully paid up member of the most prestigious family on earth: the British Royal Family.

She had worn no hat when the custom is for royal women to wear hats on such occasions, especially when accompanying the Queen; 2) She had worn black and white, which are two of the royal mourning colours, along with mauve; 3) She had worn a French designer, not a British, which was in breach of the protocol whereby British royals wear British designers to drum up support for British trade when on royal duties. While it had been just about acceptable for her to wear a wedding dress from the French couturier because its designer was British, the same did not hold true for everyday attire.

There were one or two examples which demonstrate the mistake she was making. On one of the few occasions upon which she wore a multi-coloured print on a cream background rather than her inevitable black or grey, the dress was made from a transparent material lined on the body but with sheer long sleeves and a square neckline front and back which was so scooped that there was barely an inch between the bodice and the sleeve. In one fell swoop, she had breached two dictats: 1) you do not wear transparent sleeves during the day except with formal morning wear; they are cocktail wear, to be worn only after sundown, and 2) you do not wear necklines that are so scooped out during the day, unless the fabric of the garment is clearly daytime attire, such as opaque cotton.

Worse was to follow when Meghan joined the Royal Family for her first appearance on the balcony at Buckingham Palace following the Trooping The Colour ceremony at Horse Guards Parade in 2018. Although she wore a beautiful pale pink Carolina Herrera dress with huge covered buttons that screamed couture, it sported an off-the-shoulder neckline as if the dress code had been cocktail or evening attire, not formal day wear. She complemented the dress with a fetching Philip Treacy hat of the same colour, though her choice of handbag was also unorthodox: a white Carolina Herrera clutch bordered in gold metal. One does not wear gold accessories in the day. They are regarded as vulgar and inelegant, or what the interior designer Nicky Haslam would dismiss as ‘common’.

A month later Meghan was back in cocktail wear during the day on the Buckingham Palace balcony, wearing yet another couture dress by yet another foreign designer. Yet again the dress, by Dior, was beautiful, but once more it was, in British terms, inappropriate for the occasion. It was of black silk with a bateau neckline: a style that is only ever worn after dark or with informal attire such as beachwear, except for wedding dresses. Her hat was another stylish concoction, mercifully by another British milliner, this time Stephen Jones. B...

That Christmas, the newlyweds joined the rest of the Royal Family at Sandringham for their first Christmas as a married couple.

The Daily Express summarised this phenomenon best when it howled, Pregnant Meghan Markle shows off PROMINENT baby bump at Fashion Awards.

It was therefore contrary to all known custom for Harry and Meghan to decide that they would not be revealing the names of her medical team.

Bad as that was, Harry and Meghan then decreed that the baby would not be born in a hospital, but at home. There had been no home births for two generations.

The royal world is not a platform for personal achievement or the realisation of personal ambitions, but a fully-established and functional organ of state. Popes, prostitutes and princesses should not aspire

If Meghan truly wanted to be the most famous woman on earth, as her brief stated, that must mean that she is a fame addict. A fame addict is like any other addict. Addicts do not play by the same rules as ordinary people. One of the first warnings the friends and relations of alcoholics receive in Al Anon is, ‘Never get between an alcoholic and his bottle. If you do, you’ll always end up the loser.’ Addicts are notoriously ruthless in achieving their fix. Because the palace understood the consequences of Meghan’s brief as it was reported back to them, there was real fear that she would deliberately stoke the fires of controversy in a quest to achieve her objective.

Meghan and Harry would later claim that their inspiration for the name came from the ancient Greek word Arche whose primary and secondary meanings are ‘beginning’ and ‘origin’ with the tertiary meaning being ‘source of action.’ It is this third meaning which they have stated led them to call their son Archie.

From Harry and Meghan’s perspective, all they wanted was the freedom to indulge their tastes and values and, where they thought appropriate, to update the monarchy.

Within a month of Archie’s birth, Meghan burst back onto the scene, displaying the remarkable aptitude she has for generating interest. A very slender and flat bellied Duchess of Sussex turned up at Wimbledon to watch her friend Serena Williams play tennis.

Instagram became their platform of choice. They would drip feed news as and when they wanted. This would give them total control and cut out the hated tabloids, so, on privacy grounds, they refused to allow Archie to be photographed by the press, but posted an ‘artistic’ black and white picture of his feet in her hand.

What Meghan and Harry were in effect doing was undermining the press by trying to cut them out and deal directly with the public through social media.

The palace had known, for a year before Meghan and Harry’s bombshell announcement in January 2020, that they were making plans to achieve what they would later call ‘financial independence’ by entering the commercial world. This was something no member of the Royal Family who was publicly funded had hitherto done, and that the possibility existed that Meghan’s ultimate aim was to enter American politics, which was also incompatible with her royal status.

As far as the public were concerned, 2019 ended on a high note for Meghan and Harry. They had announced that they were retreating from public view to spend six weeks away on a much needed break, which would be, in keeping with their previous demands for privacy, entirely private.