Meghan and Harry

by Lady Colin Cambell

  Showing that she could embody both Goneril and Regan, ‘When Johnnie Spencer showed Diana his draft list, she crossed out all the family who had not bothered to come to the weddings of her sisters! One day she will be very formidable.’ In fact, Diana was already formidable at nineteen, and she had used the occasion of her marriage to deliver messages to many of her husband’s circle, as well as to the world in general, in much the same way that Meghan and Harry did. She had even tried to prevent Charles from asking many of his closest friends such as Lord and Lady Tryon, and when he had dug his heels in, she had insisted that they could only attend the church service and not the wedding breakfast at Buckingham Palace. In doing so, she had made the point that they had been demoted, a tactic her son and his wife would deploy with people like the Inskips.

  People who noticed the parallels between the way Diana and her son and daughter-in-law behaved started asking the question: Will the axe be falling in a discomfiting echo of the way it had fallen on staff, friends and relations once Diana joined the Royal Family? In 1981, within months of being married, she had insisted that Charles get rid of his loyal valet, Stephen Barry. She then forced out his Private Secretary, the Hon Edward Adeane, son of the Queen’s former Private Secretary Michael, Lord Adeane, despite the fact that Edward Adeane had given up a highly successful career at the Bar to work for the Prince of Wales. She also shoved out her own Private Secretary Oliver Everett because he had kept on giving her briefing papers she didn’t want to be bothered to read, even though he too had given up a successful career as a diplomat to take up the post with her. Were the parallels with Diana coincidental, or should people steel themselves for an onslaught like Diana’s?

  The answer was not long in coming. Three days after the wedding, Harry and Meghan attended the garden party at Buckingham Palace celebrating Prince Charles’s 70th birthday in the presence of representatives of his many charities and associates. Meghan looked beautiful as she and Harry stepped out onto the lawn. They plunged in, glad-handing those who had been selected for introductions. She charmed everyone. Fifteen minutes into the event, she turned to Harry and said, ‘Harry, this is really boring. Let’s leave.’

  To his credit, he informed her that they would have to stay. ‘But Harry,’ she said, ‘this is so boring. We’ve done our bit. Everyone knows we’ve been here. Let’s go.’ Harry asserted that they had to stay, and they moved on.

  As mentioned in Chapter 1, I was having dinner with a scion of the aristocracy with impeccable palace connections the following evening. The main subject of conversation was Meghan’s desire to bolt once she had taken her bow and boredom had set in at the garden party. Formal events stultified her. If she could not be emoting she had no interest in being present. The individual who had overheard the exchange between her and Harry had been so gobsmacked that he could not keep it to himself. We all agreed that this was a very bad sign. Meghan had patently believed that it was enough for her to doll herself up, radiate delight and glamour as she posed for the cameras, then depart after fifteen minutes once boredom set in. She clearly did not appreciate that the civic duties of royalty and aristocracy involve meeting and greeting as many people as you can on occasions such as these. In our world, there are no short cuts. You either fulfill your duties to the full extent of your capacity or you are a failure. Much of the goodwill that is generated does not take place in front of a camera, but off it, when you’re interacting with people who have come great distances to meet you, sometimes at considerable expense and with great inconvenience. She clearly did not understand the difference between a movie star’s appearance and the reality of a royal appearance. ‘She thinks life is a photo op,’ the scion said. ‘She has a lot to learn,’ I added. It then emerged that ‘they’ve started taking bets at the palace as to how long the marriage will last. Most people opt for two years, the optimists say five.’ A third party gave it eighteen months, while I refused to bet at all. Aside from not possessing enough knowledge to make an informed guess, I also hoped ‘she will realise how important a role she has been assigned.’ I wanted her to live up to it. I saw it for what it was, a unique place in history.

  The conversation concluded with the information that the recently created Duke of Sussex had gained himself a new nickname at the palace. He was now known as Blow Jobs Harry because people there were convinced that his brains had been addled through mind-blowingly good sex. ‘It would be touching if it wasn’t so dangerous,’ a royal cousin told me. ‘His eyes follow her around the room as if he’s a devoted puppy and she’s the most marvellous master that ever existed.’ It was David and Wallis (the Duke and Duchess of Windsor) , or Bertie and Elizabeth (Albert, Duke of York, King George VI and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Duchess of York then Queen Elizabeth) all over again. Yet Harry had stood up to Meghan when she wanted them to shun what he knew to be their duty though she hadn’t understood the importance of it. That in itself was a promising sign. It meant that where his duty was concerned, he might fulfill it, and moreover might encourage her to do likewise. As long as that continued, there was hope for Blow Jobs Harry and Me Gain, as people such as the writer David Jenkins, partner of former Vogue Editor Alexandra Shulman, had already started calling the newly minted Duchess of Sussex.

  Little did any of us know, but in less than two years, Meghan and Harry would chuck the royal way of life, stating that they wished to make themselves ‘financially independent.’ Since Harry had never given any indication of being financially driven prior to meeting Meghan, it seems safe to conclude that she was the driving force behind that decision, and that Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne had been right all along. Meghan Markle is a businesswoman first and foremost. While there is nothing wrong with that if that’s what you are, it does strike me as a significantly lower calling than being the altruistic and living embodiment of the hopes of billions of people.

  Maybe, just maybe, Meghan really had been truthful when she had said in her first blog that she wasn’t interested in fame for its own sake. Maybe her true purpose was a combination of activity and the rewards that go along with success. She had indicated that she loved the perks of celebrity: the primping, priming, promoting, titivating, and money. It wasn’t the money alone that counted, but financial recompense was an integral part of her reckoning. And since royalty is compensated for its activities by respect rather than being rewarded financially for them, the business of royalty, of duty done without financial profitability, wasn’t for her.

  CHAPTER 7

  In the immediate aftermath of Meghan and Harry’s marriage, no one had any idea that her ambitions exceeded the platform of royal duchess. Everyone in royal circles believed that she had acquired the greatest role of her life, that, being the actress she was, she would play it to the hilt. To quote her, she ‘hit the ground running’ following her marriage. She was an exemplary performer, and at first it looked as if her acting skills would be successfully deployed onto the wider stage that she had acquired along with the title when she became Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Sussex.

  Meghan has great charm. At first, as she performed her royal duties she came across as warm, kind, down-to-earth, sweet, modest, and eager to please. Her first post-marital engagement without Harry was to join Queen on the royal train to Chester in the northwest of England. The monarch had a full schedule of engagements, from unveiling a plaque declaring open the Hatton Bridge which crosses the Don River, to inspecting a group of Syrian refugees doing traditional craftwork, a dance performance by a group of local recovering addicts called Fallen Angels, performances of set pieces from a production of A Little Night Music, local primary school children performing songs alongside actors from the 2016 film Swallows and Amazons which was first published by Arthur Ransome in 1930, at which point the Queen unveiled the second plaque of the day before the two women headed into lunch at Chester Town Hall as guests of honour of the Chester City Council. They also went on a walkabout, the Queen working the crowds to the right while Meghan was instructed to walk to t
he left. Royal aides informed the press that Elizabeth II had asked her new granddaughter-in-law along specifically to show her ‘the breadth of work the Royal Family carries out.’ Meghan said how pleased she was to be there, and the Queen, notably undemonstrative as a matter of course, was unusually animated, smiling up a storm and laughing at Meghan’s asides when they were seated together.

  Although the press judged the event a great success, those who were more dispassionate queried Meghan’s boycotting of royal attire. The Queen was dressed in one of her typical outfits, a mint green Stewart Parvin coat over a silk floral dress with a matching Rachel Trevor Morgan hat and the inevitable white gloves, pearls and diamond brooch. Meghan wore an off-white Givenchy dress with a black belt, black clutch bag, and black shoes. While she looked chic, she did not look royal, and, to those in the know, she had broken several sartorial guidelines:

  1) 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.

  While it was some comfort that the press did not revile Meghan for the breaches, they did notice that she had ignored royal protocol for what was her introductory engagement with Her Majesty. This was hardly the way to garner praise, yet Meghan seemed so eager to please that she was given the benefit of the doubt. Behind the scenes, however, those of us in the know soon learnt that Angela Kelly, the Queen’s dresser, personal designer, and even more importantly personal friend, had rung Meghan up and informed her that the Queen would be wearing a hat, which was palace-speak for you are to wear one too. Meghan had informed her that she would not be wearing one, and that was that. Was this a sign of a policy of deliberate disregard on her part for the traditions of the institution into which she had married, or was it an unintended slight born of ignorance? Since Meghan was known to have always fulfilled the sartorial demands of the producers of her television shows and films when she was promoting a product on their behalf, could this be an early display of independence, and a message that she would not be abiding by the traditions of the monarchy but would be making up her own rules as and when she wanted? Recently, there had been so many little signs that she did not feel it necessary to be constrained by any rules of conduct but her own, chief of which had been her failure to curtsy to the Queen on her wedding day following the signing of the register at St. George’s Chapel.

  Soon it emerged that Meghan had indeed chosen to devise her own protocol where attire was concerned. Despite being undeniably stylish and chic, her choice of colours was more New York Seventh Avenue than House of Windsor or, come to it, Houses of Orange, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Bernadotte, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg-Nassau, Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gluckstein, Bernadotte, or Grimaldi. As she appeared in public more and more, it was as if she were starring in her own interpretation of a sit-com in which a chic American woman decides that she is too stylish to be bothered to respect the sartorial mores of the institution into which she has married. Not surprisingly, the British press noticed. They knew only too well that royal women usually wear coloured garments so that they will stand out in a crowd. It is deemed polite that you make yourself visible to those who have taken the trouble to come to see you. It is one of the many minor and unspoken protocols, based upon consideration, under which all royal women function. It is a form of respect for the public, and disregarding the protocol disrespects both the public and the sentiment behind the custom.

  Although colour suits Meghan, her concept of chic is very French bourgeois: a mode of attire that crossed the Atlantic seventy years ago and has become engraved on the hearts and minds of those fashionistas whose taste is circumscribed by safety and a reverence for any colour as long as it is black. She was seldom seen in anything but a mourning colour, black being her favourite, but grey and white also featuring as variables.

  It was only a matter of time before Meghan’s choices began attracting press attention. Although she was so beautifully presented that practically everything she wore looked wonderful on her, and anything that wasn’t couture sold out so rapidly that the Meghan Effect became a phenomenon, she was nevertheless building up a bank of hostility which seemed counter to her efforts. She so obviously cared about looking as good and as glamorous as she could that it was inconceivable she would deliberately seek to bring criticism down on her head. Yet some of her choices so flagrantly breached the rules of what constitutes acceptable attire for women of rank that she either had bad advice or refused to take any at all. For instance, her tendency to wear cocktail attire during the day meant that she was either ignorant of what was acceptable attire in certain situations and at certain times for a woman of her station, or then she cared more for looking good than she did for dressing with appropriate respect for the customs of her adopted land, and was thumbing her nose at British customs at the very moment she wanted everyone’s approbation for her beautiful she looked.

  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. But again her handbag was an evening bag: now a black silk clutch that was luckily more discreet than the gold metal chosen the month before.

  To the sartorially knowledgeable, what made this faux pas even more undesirable was that Meghan had chosen to attend church in cocktail wear. The occasion was celebrating the centenary of the founding of the Royal Air Force on the 1st April 1918. It had started off with a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral commemorating the many members of the RAF who had endangered or sacrificed their lives for the nation. Princes Harry and William being helicopter pilots, the event had personal significance for them. Following the service, there was a flypast of 100 aircraft over Buckingham Palace. The Royal Family watched it from the balcony, Meghan enjoying pride of place immediately beside the Queen
.

  One princess said, ‘I only hope the press doesn’t notice her breaches of the dress code. We don’t want them criticising her. I gather she is extremely sensitive to criticism. In fact, she requires constant adulation. Presumably that’s why Harry keeps his mouth shut.’ I could not help pointing out that Harry might well have remained silent through ignorance, for prior to Meghan’s arrival in his life, he had invariably looked unkempt. Fashion was clearly not his forte.

  Unfortunately, Meghan’s inappropriate attire was not the only thing exciting comment. The cognoscenti also noticed that she had no idea what constituted good British form when greeting strangers. Again, it was hoped that the press would not pick up on her approach. Whenever she was greeting strangers, she would inform them how pleased she was to meet them. For a plethora of good reasons, the standard greeting has always been, ‘How do you do?’ Firstly, it is friendly and neutral while covering a multitude of possibilities without opening you up to criticism. While that might seem reserved to those of a more effusive nature, the reason why it has always been standard is simple. You cannot know that you are pleased to meet people until you have met them. You are therefore laying claim to a sentiment you do not yet possess if you tell them how pleased you are. This is at best insincerity and is tantamount to hypocrisy, as in the original meaning of the word, which is lack of critical faculty. Avoiding insincere and hypocritical conduct is a matter of principle as well as policy, for a) insincerity is a mark of bad character and b) hypocrisy is indicative of weakness as well as duplicity. If you really want to stretch the boundaries and show strangers how warm and friendly you are, it is acceptable to say, ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ though the old standard royal questions such as ‘Have you travelled far?’ or ‘Have you been waiting long?’ are equally cordial without running the risk of overstepping the mark and inadvertently descending into either insincerity or hypocrisy.