New Money is therefore both more demanding and less hardy than Old. What Old Money accepts unflinchingly, New Money regards as a personal assault on its right to be comfortable at all times. Meghan’s conduct, with its insistence on her personal comfort being considered before anything else, showed that she was an archetypal evocation of the New Money school of learned softness. It also explained why she saw nothing untoward with frank acquisitiveness and pronounced materialism. New Money is materialistic in a way that no other class in society is. It uses not only itself, but others, to get what it wants. It is ruthless in a way Old Money seldom is. It thinks money is more important than it actually is, that cash can buy what it cannot, and that money is a magic stick rather than a means of exchange. It too often thinks people have a lower value than they do, and that anyone and anything can be used by them without damaging consequence. Usually, it learns the error of its ways in the second and succeeding generations, by which time it has been absorbed into the Old Money set, replicating its values.
Although Meghan is the exception that proves the rule, Old Money people are generally very comfortable to be with as long as you understand what their values are. They have codes of conduct which stretch back to the beginnings of civilisation. They have invisible boundaries which regulate their conduct and wellbeing from the cradle to the grave. New Money and Real Money are far more exciting. Their very lack of knowledge of these invisible boundaries makes for a freedom that is refreshing until you realise that you’re at sea with someone who doesn’t know how to paddle the boat. Prince Charles’s former butler Grant Harrold once said in my presence that he much prefers working for Old Money rather than New, because people with Old Money treat their staff better than people with New. There are reasons why expressions such as ‘rough diamond’ or ‘not polished’ used to be used. New Money people simply do not have the awareness that comes with a heritage stretching back generations. But now that so many of the Old Money people have lost prominence and so many of the New Money people have joined the feast, there has been a relaxation of the rules, which has loosened up behaviour and allowed cross pollination between different social groupings. It is this influx that has allowed even No Money people to take seats in the banqueting hall. Hence why Meghan not only gained access but was welcomed with open arms.
To all intents and purposes, prior to her marriage to Harry, Meghan would have been categorised as a No Money person. While she had made reasonable money following her success in Suits, she did not have enough to even buy and furnish a decent sized house such as she and Trevor used to rent, and maintain a reasonable lifestyle, which is the acid test between New Money and No Money. She really was Cinderella at the ball. This provides a partial explanation for why she regards financial independence as being so important. It must be remembered that Meghan’s success came late in life. She’s only enjoyed it for the last few years. Before that, she was dependent upon men for a roof over her head and the wherewithal to have a half-way decent existence. This dependence on men also explains why she became such an advocate of feminism once she made enough money to stand on her own two feet. Her appreciation of wealth and her left-wing sympathies can also be explained by her antecedents. With her father and mother, she led a petit bourgeois existence while being schooled with children from sometimes infinitely richer backgrounds than hers. With Trevor Engelson, she enjoyed a significant upgrade, but it was still only a bourgeois existence. Even in Canada, her house was in a resolutely middle class area. Although she got glimpses of a grander way of life, it was only when she married Harry that she actually transited from middle to upper class.
Changing both class and country at the same time is not an easy or straightforward proposition. Inevitably, there has to be a period of adjustment if you are going to make the transition successfully. What worked well in one environment might not in another. In America, where class and classiness have distinctly different connotations from Britain, Meghan’s demeanour came across as ‘classy’. This was why she had been given the role of Rachel Zane in Suits and why she had acquired the followers she did with The Tig, where she was able to present herself as an arbiter of style, taste, and discernment, and be accepted as such by her two million followers. In Britain, however, where ‘classiness’ is something else entirely, Meghan’s heightened appreciation of all things material or superior affected the way people reacted to her. They recoiled from her overt materialism and a demeanour which she might have thought was classy but which they regarded as pretentious. The lashings of charm which she deployed to convince people that she was a nice, regular person were also counterproductive; often her manner struck recipients as superficial over-eagerness to please. This got people’s backs up the way it did the critics of Elephants Without Borders, whose dismissal of her performance had one common thread: insincerity.
For all the doubts about her motives, Meghan is proudly and openly arriviste. Initially, this lack of heritage was viewed by the British as a plus, the way it had been with Catherine Middleton and Sophie Rhys Jones. Britons like ordinary people making the grade to greatness as long as they don’t get all lah-di-dah and forget their roots. The worst possible message Meghan could have delivered to the British working class was that she was ashamed of those roots, yet this has been the precise message her cold-shouldering of her family conveyed. The fact that Meghan was foreign should also have helped Britons to warm to her, for most Britons take the view that Americans are so different that normal British rules cannot be applied to them. This gives the average American who moves to the United Kingdom a great advantage. Irrespective of the modesty of their antecedents, they are usually welcomed with open arms in a way no Briton with a similar social background would be. All they need to do is show that they respect British ways; they do not even need to ape them, though if they do, that is appreciated. A recent case in point is the television presenter Julie Montagu. A girl from a modest background in Sugar Grove, Illinois, she married the Earl of Sandwich’s heir Viscount Hinchingbrooke, and has gone from strength to strength with her natural, unaffected charm and down-to-earth manner. She has never tried to come across as ‘classy’, which is where Meghan went wrong right from the outset. Unbeknownst to Meghan, what had been her great selling point in the United States and Canada, would become a millstone around her neck in Britain. Had she been less self-consciously ‘classy’ as she set about asserting how discerning, indeed expert, she was in the finer things of life, she would have escaped the pejorative label of ‘common’ which Nicky Haslam so pointedly dismissed her with. Had she been like Julie Hinchingbrooke, or frankly North American middle class in her manner like Autumn Phillips, who married the Queen’s grandson Peter Phillips and made a very successful transition from being ordinary Canadian girl to distaff connection of the Royal Family, her lack of background would not have been a stumbling block. Autumn is valued as a fully paid-up member of the royal world, and will remain so even though she and Peter have parted. What worked for Autumn and Julie but prevented good adjustment on Meghan’s part was her reluctance to unbend and relax into the royal and aristocratic world by ceasing to be ‘classy’, by being just sweet and charming the way she had been in New York with Serena Williams or in Canada with the Mulroneys and the Trudeaus, instead of believing that once she became a royal highness, it elevated her beyond its natural level.
Meghan’s Uncle Mike Markle, who is fond of her and has tried to find an explanation as to why she not only withdrew from both branches of her family but is also so consciously ‘classy’, believes she has a chip on her shoulder, plainly born of the ‘greyness’ her identity caused her in her youth. Whether that is so or not, Meghan is certainly a complex individual with much sensitivity who, by her own account, had to swallow many a slight as she worked her way up the ladder. This might have resulted in her creating an outer skin which protects her feelings as it projects to the world the view of herself she would like people to see. Nevertheless, by projecting such a ‘classy’ exterior and ally
ing it to a consciously woke, left-wing, politically-correct activistic stance which made clear that she disapproved of much of what Harry’s friends and their world stood for, she alienated people who wanted to like her but sensed that she did not regard them as worthy of engagement with her. This made many people feel uncomfortable in her presence, causing them to withdraw, though she did hit it off with Charlie van Straubenzee’s wife Daisy Jenks, bonding over their shared love of shoes.
Of course, there is another interpretation which is worth considering as to why Meghan failed so utterly to make friends in Britain. She might well have decided from the word go, or from early on, that she wanted no part of Harry’s world. Although she was too canny to say so, the indications are that from well before the marriage, it was obvious to everyone - and would therefore have also been clear to someone as bright as Meghan - that she was unsuited to the role of royal duchess and that she was not fitting in comfortably to Harry’s personal world. Maybe it would never have been a good fit, if only because she and it were so alien to each other, but she certainly made enough of an effort between meeting him and marrying him to move from girlfriend to fiancée then to wife, strengthening the relationship with each passing day until they were an indestructible unit.
Because of the concerns as to how she would fit into his world, none of his friends or relations wanted him to marry her. Several of them, such as his brother William, his good friend Tom Inskip, his grandfather Prince Philip and his grandmother the Queen, tried to counsel caution. In each case, Harry resented the concern, which he took to be unwarranted intrusion and reacted against emotionally.
It is a testament to the strength of their attraction that within weeks of meeting Meghan, Harry was completely in her thrall, and has remained so. Patently, she wanted him too. She is extremely loving towards him, supremely tactile, and even people who dislike her and doubt her sincerity will acknowledge that she covers him with love. Those who admire the couple are convinced that they are ideally suited, while those who do not hope that she wants him for himself and not just for the springboard to greatness. Which is what many people in Britain of all colours, creeds and classes fear is her real motive.
CHAPTER 11
What makes Meghan and Harry’s story so interesting is how split perceptions are regarding them. Harry is more easily explained. The couple’s admirers think that he has found himself his ideal mate, that they are well suited and that they balance each other out perfectly. This view is shared even by astrologers. WASP America’s Astrologer Suprema, Mary Michele Rutherfurd, states that their charts are astonishingly compatible, down to such things as Meghan mothering Harry and Harry liking being mothered. Off this premise, which is ratified by the evident affection the couple has for each other, they will go on to have a long and happy marriage.
On the other hand, their detractors claim that Harry is Meghan’s useful idiot, a ‘pussy-whipped’ dolt who deserves the nickname ‘Blow Jobs Harry’ as he has fallen under the spell of a brighter but ultimately ruthless spouse who is using him and will discard him when she is through milking the situation for all she can get out of it. Theirs is a harsh assessment, but they maintain that Meghan is a lone wolf who disguises her motives with charm as she develops what Nikki Priddy called ‘strategic’ relationships for her own advancement and self-aggrandisement. They cynically believe that whenever she is ready to move on, she does it with such alacrity that it must raise doubts as to whether her connection with them was ever as deep nor as heartfelt as they thought it was. Until then, though, she is so wonderful that she seems too good to be true.
Her detractors claim that no one who is sincere makes such a show of being extravagantly loving and self-abnegating the way she does. Some of them even disparage her acting ability, stating that she consistently behaves in such an extreme, over-the-top, hyper-emotionalistic, actressy way, even as she is covering Harry with love, that she comes across more as a parasite clinging to a tree than someone who is sincere emotionally. They say that she substitutes effusiveness for profundity, and that her main talent is not even her acting ability but her energetic ruthlessness. Rather than praise her for the consistency which is one of her more pronounced characteristics, they regard it as proof that her whole life is an act. Off that hypothesis, it doesn’t matter whether she is behind a camera, in front of it, or even in front of an audience of one; as long as there is someone to play to, she does so from a script (which might be written for her when she is in front of the camera, but at all other times she writes herself), projecting an image that is self-serving for the duration the act works in her favour. They believe that she uses people to achieve her goals, and that her interest in others lasts only as long as their presence provides her with the opportunities and rewards she requires from them. They do not accept that her independence of spirit is a quality; they regard it as evidence of something altogether more ominous.
Despite their scepticism, her critics cannot avoid conceding that Meghan develops intense relationships, some of which last for years, and that the people with whom she is involved invariably sing her praises for the duration of the relationship. Although she does have a pattern of ghosting people when relationships sour, her supporters feel that this is not because she is the ruthless opportunist her detractors regard her as being, but because she is a sweet, sensitive soul who prefers terminating relationships with a minimum of fuss and unpleasantness rather than sullying herself with the unpleasantness of explanations and recriminations. Irrespective of your take on the merits of her exit strategy, there can be no dispute that she has the ability to convince those with whom she is involved that she is a warm, sincere, self-denying individual who thinks only of others and never of herself, though she also expects men to make and keep her happy.
So many people to whom I have spoken have used the same words to describe Meghan that a pattern emerges. She is bright. She is opinionated and passionate in expressing her beliefs. She can be vivacious and charming. She is devoted, radiating warmth, interest, and care. She is energetic. She has a truly sweet manner and strikes people who like her as vulnerable. She is high-octane and functions at a fever pitch emotionally. She is both sensational and sensationalistic. She can be huge fun. She can be enthusiastic to the point of freneticism, but people who like that about her believe that she is delightful and sincere, though others who prefer people functioning in a lower key hear the clanking sound of an empty vessel making a lot of noise. She is very exacting and demanding. She is so upfront about what she wants that her admirers regard this as a commendable virtue indicating honesty and integrity, though her critics view it as a deplorable vice suggestive of insensitivity and bumptiousness. She is so open about being ambitious, so proud of the relish she has for the things of this world, that she comes across as honest to those who sympathise with her worldliness, while at the same time turning off others. Like her or loathe her, she is charismatic. She draws you in, and those who relate to her find her wholly convincing, while those who do not accuse her of having the feigned sincerity of a practised actress or true phoney. The two most frequently used phrases to describe her are ‘strong’ and ‘hard as nails’, but people who do not take to her also consistently say ‘there is something about her that is slightly off’. When I tried to nail down why they felt like that, they often could not articulate anything specific, though they all ended up saying that she somehow doesn’t ring true. As one of Harry’s friends said, ‘He thinks she’s so good that she’s true. I think she’s too good to be true.’
In private, Meghan complained bitterly about her critics. As Harry has confirmed in his postings, they both found it extremely painful to her to be doubted the way she often was. I am told they really struggled to understand how so many people could fail to recognise how self-evidently well-meaning and wonderful Meghan is. This created a feeling of being unfairly martyred, and they blamed not only the ‘nasty’ people who thought like that, but anyone who provided them with a platform. This fed their hatre
d of the press, which one royal told me ‘borders on paranoia’.
Reconciling the opposing perceptions of Meghan is well-nigh impossible. To those who know and love her, she is almost the ‘angel’ her mother calls her. Rather more controversial is the opinion of a psychologist to whom I spoke. While her admirers consider her an extremely sensitive person whose every thought and feeling are governed by a sweet-nature and a good heart, he concluded that descriptions of her correlate with sociopathic as well as narcissistic tendencies. Meghan has pronounced charm, charisma and social skills, all of which narcissists and sociopaths possess in greater measure than the average person. But what tipped the scales for him as the decisive factor was her propensity for wanting sympathy. People with sociopathic tendencies evidently possess a greater need for sympathy than the general population. As one in every twenty five individuals falls within this spectrum, and few of them typify the popular view of murderous crazies while many are high flyers in high functioning roles, sociopaths, or people with sociopathic tendencies, proliferate far more than the public realises. In his opinion, Meghan’s interview with Tom Bradby was a dead giveaway not only of her hunger for sympathy but also of another sociopathic trait, namely lack of insight into how inappropriate her requirement of having her needs fulfilled, even in disproportionate circumstances, can be.
Meghan and Harry Page 42