Meghan and Harry

by Lady Colin Cambell

  It was relatively easy for Harry to burn his bridges with William, because he was now one half of a couple who were both at one remove from everyone else. Meghan has always been one of those women who backs up her man fully, who displays loyalty so utterly that she always takes his side against everyone and everything, with the result that there were elements of an ‘us against the world’ posture. One only needs to look at the almost identical black and white photographs she had both husbands pose for following their weddings to see that she has a vision of her husband and herself, arms intertwined, their backs to the world, as they jointly gaze upon a distant but unseen horizon, entwined together but apart from everyone else.

  This ‘us against the world’ attitude has powerful appeal to men who want to shelter and protect the woman with whom he is involved, which is why Alpha males are ideal partners for women who want to be protected. And Meghan is undoubtedly a woman who wants to be protected. Such a dynamic has great appeal for the couple involved, but it can trigger concern in loved ones, especially as how there are elements which can be evocative of paranoia. As the couple becomes increasingly detached from the world around them and they become more and more intertwined with each other, loved ones can begin to feel that they are becoming unhealthily wrapped up in each other. The couple might then become hyper-sensitive to what seems to them to be attacks upon their relationship, but are in fact mere attempts to maintain a healthy equilibrium, which is what happened when William tried to get Harry to take things more slowly.

  No one likes to lose a loved one to a burgeoning romance which has exclusionary overtones. It is therefore understandable that William would have been concerned that he was in danger of losing the brother he loved, as indeed he did. While cynics may take the view that Meghan set out to detach Harry from his family and friends, Harry was always going to be susceptible to a powerful, dominant woman because he was the Mama’s boy of just such a woman. For all her warmth and affection, Diana was obsessively jealous, possessive and dominating. She was also a very strong personality. Like Meghan, she appeared to be soft and sweet and vulnerable when in fact she was all of those things as well as all of their opposites. She could be charming, captivating, and fun, just like Meghan. In fact, there were so many similarities between the two women’s characters, personalities, modus operandi and performance, that it was almost inevitable that Harry would quickly and irrevocably fall under Meghan’s spell. There is nothing more appealing to a Mama’s boy than a woman who is like his mother. It is said that most men marry their mothers, and while I would dispute the accuracy of such a blanket statement, the truism is that men who love their mothers gravitate towards women who are like their mothers. They are the most devoted of spouses, because there are few things more potent that a man replicating his mother in adulthood.

  To understand Meghan’s hold over Harry, and why he was so eager to place his fate in her hands, one has to appreciate how his mother primed him for just such a woman. Diana was a very contradictory personality. For every virtue, there was a corresponding vice. She could be warm and kind and natural and affectionate then, when she wanted to turn, she would be cruel, cold, and vengeful. She was extremely manipulative and definitely did not hold by the maxim that ‘charity starts at home.’ She frequently cut out friends and family for little or no reason then, if it suited her, picked them up back again as if they were a toy. As a child, she had been badly damaged emotionally by her parents’ divorce. It left the most dreadful imprint upon her, and was responsible for much of the misery that dogged her into adulthood.

  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. Being as powerful a personality as she is, she also has the ability, whether she wishes to or not, to instil real fear in men who fall in love with her. If they are anything less than completely enthusiastic about providing her with the response she requires, she will let them know that they were letting her down. In a variety of ways, the mature, post-Trevor Meghan has made her men aware that they’d better give her what she wants if they want to keep her. Trevor’s failure to give her the breaks she wanted from him taught her never to ‘sell herself short again’, as she told a friend. In Meghan’s scheme of things, couples are meant to fulfill each other’s requirements. Her talent ever since the collapse of her first marriage has been to make them want to, or, as Harry put it, ‘what Meghan wants, Meghan gets’.

  The psychotherapist Basil Panzer once said that men are much more fascinated by women who challenge them than those who don’t. They think they want all sweetness and light, but in reality what they want is some of that and being kept on their toes at the same time. Meghan, like Diana, learnt the art of variable reinforcement. In common with her mother-in-law, Meghan also possessed a cold fury when she did not get her way that made it impossible for others to disagree with her and maintain a pleasant relationship in which adults agree to disagree, while also maintaining a healthy degree of personal autonomy. Those who did not please her were in danger of losing her, which could create a terror of losing her in people - not only men but parents and friends as well - with whom she was involved.

  Although Diana could equally instil the terror of loss in those with whom she was involved, hers was anything but a cool technique. She used to get so caught up in her own emotions that she would have to disentangle herself before she could detach herself from someone. This meant that Diana’s relationships seldom ended without a bang, while Meghan, who was far more self-possessed, had perfected the art of terminating hers so silently that there wasn’t even a whimper when she dropped the axe. Yet the parallels between the two women’s modus operandi were so pronounced that onlookers feared that Harry, familiar since childhood to the terrible consequences of going against his mother’s will, had been so primed that Meghan has been able to obtain a hold over him that has made her power invincible. Whether that is a fair assessment only time will tell, but what is undoubtedly certain is that Meghan is the dominant partner in their union, and she tolerates no threats from any quarter.

  A case in point was Harry’s reaction to William’s suggestion that he should take things at a more measured pace. His reaction had been so adverse that the brothers fell out in a wholly unnecessary way. Catherine was caught up in the crossfire. Meghan could now appeal to Harry’s protective instincts as she capitalised upon the family’s reservations about the speed with which the relationship was hurtling towards permanence, detaching him further from his old support network. Rather than loosening Harry’s connection to Meghan, William’s intervention had tightened it. In doing so, Meghan’s influence over Harry had increased. This caused concern not only within the family but amongst the courtiers, all of whom only wanted a marriage if it would work, but were nervous of one that might not. Then Harry brought things to a head by asking to see his grandparents and told them that he wished to marry Meghan.

  Any family, confronted with the possibility of a union which had the hallmarks of becoming problematic, would try to delay the ultimate commitment in the hope that time might bring insight and it would collapse under the weight of its unsuitability if that turned out to be the case. Both the Queen and Prince Philip had a good relationship with Harry. Philip is known within royal circles for being an accommodating pragmatist who will always try to find a way that reconciles royal duty with personal urges. In his eyes, there would be no better outcome than Harry and Meghan pursuing their relationship without matrimony until all the doubts were cleared up. And if they
were not, Harry could still remain with Meghan, but without the ultimate commitment.

  Harry knew that his grandfather was of a generation and persuasion in which marriage was not only about personal fulfilment but also about dynastic obligation. In the past, paramours had been people’s private business. A man could sleep with whomever he pleased, but marriage was another matter entirely. Issues such as duty to the nation and the family, as well as suitability, must be factored into any marital equation, and if you could not guarantee a positive outcome, you must resist the urge to marry. History was littered with awful warnings, such as the marriage of Prince Philip’s cousin Princess Ena of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII of Spain, which ended in predictable misery and helped to undermine the Spanish Crown. But when a man gets the bit between his teeth, and wants to marry a woman, caution doesn’t always prevail.

  It has been widely, and I gather accurately, reported that, when Harry brought up the subject of marriage to his grandparents, Prince Philip, already up-to-speed about why Meghan Markle would find it impossible to fit into the role of royal duchess without a personality transplant, pointed out to him that ‘we step out with actresses; we don’t marry them.’ This was not snobbishness on his part. The qualities that make an actress successful are the absolute opposite of those which make a good royal duchess, and there was no doubt in his mind that it would be unfair to both Meghan and the monarchy to expect her to fulfill a lifetime of royal duty with a fully developed personality at odds with the requirements of the royal role.

  What has not been reported is the remainder of the conversation, which came to me via two different sources, one a close friend of the Queen, another a prince. Harry, desperately in love with Meghan and willing to do anything to keep her, discounted his grandfather’s suggestion with the intensity of an addict being threatened with deprivation. He informed his grandfather that he would be marrying Meghan no matter what.

  In fairness to Harry, Meghan also wanted to marry him. She had also closed her eyes and ears to all warnings, such as given by Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne, about why she would find it impossible to make the adjustment from television actress to royal duchess. No one had actually envisaged a scenario in which she could marry Harry and, rather than adjust to her new situation, she would convince him to create a new one that suited her better, by abdicating their royal roles. So the three participants to the conversation had imagined only one possibility, namely Meghan adjusting to the royal role, when in fact there existed an alternative, Meghan and Harry abandoning their royal roles and inventing new ones for themselves.

  A material fact in agreeing to the marriage was Harry’s place in the line of succession. Harry, the Queen and Prince Philip were aware that he would shortly be slipping down to sixth place once the Duchess of Cambridge’s third child, due in April 2018, was born. This position was crucial, for, following the repeal of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, which was replaced with the 2013 Succession to the Crown Act, Harry was peripheral in the true meaning of the word. The likelihood of his succeeding to the throne was now so remote that withholding permission for any marriage, even one which might be problematic, would seem like an act of spite, or worse, prejudice.

  The Queen likes consensus and is always extremely well briefed as to what is going on in the world as well as within her own family, so when Philip’s interdict raised the temperature, Elizabeth II intervened with the intention of lowering it. Harry did not even let her finish what she saying. He cut her off mid-sentence with the imprecation that he was ‘going to marry her and if you don’t like it, you’ll just have to suck it up.’ The Queen had never heard the expression before, nor indeed had I until the conversation was recounted to me, but I fully identified with her comment that ‘I didn’t need any explanation as to what it meant. As soon as I heard it, I knew.’

  That, however, was not the end of the matter. The prince who recounted the conversation to me said that Harry then issued the coup de grace by telling his grandparents that they would be accused of racism unless they agreed to the marriage. Of course, Harry knew only too well that Meghan’s race was not a negative to the family, but a positive. But the public would not know that, so this was his ace in the hole. Faced with what the Queen’s grandmother Queen Mary called ‘a fine kettle of fish’, Elizabeth II and Prince Philip had no option but to give way to their determined grandson. ‘We all only hope to God it doesn’t turn out to be the catastrophe everyone fears it will be,’ the prince said.’

  The family’s great fear was that, aside from Meghan’s unsuitability for the royal role, she loved what she could achieve as a result of being Harry’s wife, and that, rather than love of him, was her motivation. Although they hoped that their doubts were unfounded, her track record made them unsure, which was unfortunate, for they had been sure that Catherine loved William and Sophie Wessex loved Prince Edward. They hoped that with time their fears would be dissipated.

  Ironically, the one unexpurgated consolation, acknowledged by everyone within the family and at the palace, was Meghan’s bi-racial identity. It was the single most important aspect of her identity that overrode all the reservations created by her dominating personality, political inclinations, and past conduct which had generated such mixed reports. As the prince told me, ‘Had Meghan not been a woman of colour, they would never have allowed the marriage. It was the only thing that was unreservedly in her favour.’ It reinforced the diversity of British society and was viewed as an updated version of Queen Elizabeth’s statement when the Germans bombed Buckingham Palace during the war: ‘I’m glad; now I feel I can look the East End in the face.’

  With the die cast by Harry’s determination, everyone tried to be positive. Meghan definitely had many virtues. She was beautiful, stylish, vivacious. She was bright and energetic. She had a good work ethic. She was good company if you agreed with her. She had set out to charm Charles and the Queen, and to an extent she had succeeded. Everyone hoped that such misgivings as had arisen would be laid to rest when she became a member of the Royal Family. ‘The Queen and Prince Charles were particularly delighted with her virtues, not the least of which was her colour,’ a European royal told me.

  To show how welcome Meghan was, the Queen even included her in the Sandringham Christmas house party in 2019. Although everyone did their utmost to make her feel welcome, although she responded with the charm and grace which she possesses when she wishes to respond positively, there was nevertheless an undercurrent emanating from her that some people picked up as disdain or disapproval. One of the British royals told a European counterpart that she made it clear that she disapproved of hunting and shooting and would therefore not be hanging around to participate in the traditional Boxing Day shoot. ‘I suppose it’s to her credit that she has the strength of her convictions, but what worries me is this: Why can’t she be like my cousin’s wife, who would sooner die than kill a fly? She doesn’t make a point of disapproving of us. She has her ways and we have ours. We all rub along happily despite our differences of opinion. I’m just worried that someone who is so dogmatic that she makes it clear that hers are the only opinions worth having isn’t going to fit into our world, or indeed, into any world at all where anyone disagrees with her. What gets me is the underlying disrespect she seems to have for anyone who doesn’t agree with her. I hope I’m wrong, but I can’t shake the feeling that young Harry’s picked up a right little madame. I only hope Havoc isn’t her middle name.’

  Havoc comes in many forms and is precipitated by many things and, in the run-up to the wedding, the white side of Meghan’s family proved a rich hunting ground for the British tabloids. The black side of the family was deemed to be off limits, not through any humanitarian sentiments, but because the British public would have attacked the press for being racist. But the Markle family was seen as rich pickings, to be got at at every turn. Tom Jr, Samantha, Tyler and his mother Tracey were all made to look ridiculous, their every action picked to pieces as the tabloids competed with each other to r
elate how un-English, how working-people American they were. What hicks. There really was no excuse for such conduct. It was unedifying and unconstructive, but the price you sometimes have to pay for a free press is injured feelings. These are infinitely preferable to politicians who can’t be called to order owing to a toothless tiger which has lost the ability to inflict damage when it bites, but that did not help the unfortunate Markle family. All of them were pilloried in varying degrees, very occasionally with some merit, but largely without any whatsoever.

  Embarrassing though the Markles found the way they were being represented in the British tabloids, it was nothing compared with the way they now started to portray Tom Sr. He has rightly stated that they made him look like a slob, like white trash, like a drunkard. They hounded him day and night for the six months from the announcement of his daughter’s marriage until the week before the wedding, when he fell out of view following his heart attacks. Tom Sr has spoken on television about how embarrassing it was to be made to look like a dolt in front of the whole world.

  From morning till night, his every action was observed, his ever movement commented upon and decried. Harry and Meghan’s advice to him was as impractical as it was impersonal. ‘Don’t talk to the press at all,’ they said. When, at the beginning of the couple’s romance, Doria had been given the merest hint of what Tom Sr had been having to endure for months, Harry had waded in, specifically complaining about the tabloids’ treatment of his future mother-in-law. Now that his father-in-law to be was being dished up an even more intensive dose of the same poison, he was left to fend for himself with what was really ineffectual, even silly, advice. If they did not realise how unrealistic it was to tell him not to talk to the press when every day his every action was dogged by them, they should have. If you are a man on your own, living in a house in the middle of a populous town, you are exposed as you come and go on a daily basis. You can’t stay holed up like a bear in its den. Whether you want to be or not, you are accessible. Even if you don’t speak to the press, they will still follow you, photograph you, and make you look ridiculous if that is their intention. Which it clearly was, even when he did something as innocent as shop for food in his local supermarket.