Finding Freedom

by Omid Scobie

  Christmas at Sandringham was as regimented as Sunday roasts were casual at Anmer Hall. The schedule began with members of the royal family arriving in order of seniority (after the Queen had settled in earlier in the week), with Prince Charles and Camilla arriving last, on December 24.

  As with every aspect of the event, arrivals are carefully orchestrated. Family members are dropped off at the front entrance, where chauffeurs and valets are waiting to ferry luggage and gifts through the side entrance. While luggage is carried upstairs, Christmas presents are placed in the red drawing room, on a big trestle table marked off into sections for the Queen, Prince Philip, and every other family member. Then guests are assigned bedrooms in the 270-room “Big House,” as it is called, and handed a timetable for meals and events. Shortly after 4:00 p.m. of Christmas Eve, the family gathers for afternoon tea.

  The chefs had spent days preparing the many elaborate meals to be enjoyed by Sandringham’s guests. There was Christmas lunch of turkey; sage, onion, and chestnut stuffing; roasted potatoes; mashed potatoes; parsnips and Brussels sprouts; and flaming Christmas pudding with brandy for dessert. The head chef himself carved the two turkeys in the royal dining room. It was the one time of the year when the head chef was invited into the dining room and rewarded by the Queen with a glass of whiskey to toast the holiday. (The second chef went upstairs to the nursery to carve a third turkey there. Children weren’t allowed to join the adults until they could conduct themselves properly.) The evening buffet on Christmas Day was even more elaborate, according to the former royal chef Darren McGrady, whose spread of lamb chops with mint, cold poached salmon, foie gras en croute, oxtail, a side of pork, roast chicken, smoked turkey and roast York ham, mixed salads, new potatoes, and borscht is still on the menu today. Sweets were also plentiful, with traditional mince pie, brandy butter, and vanilla ice cream.

  Following teatime on Christmas Eve—where the family was served freshly baked scones, two types of sandwiches, pastries like chocolate éclairs and raspberry tartlets, and a big cut cake—everyone would gather in the red drawing room to exchange gifts.

  The family followed the German tradition of giving gifts on December 24. The children received typical Christmas presents, such as the huge fire engine set George received one year, a tricycle for Charlotte, and wooden toys for Louis. (When William and Harry were children, Prince Edward bought them pump-action water guns, which the boys, who came racing into the kitchen, used to spray all the chefs soaking wet.) But the adults all frowned upon lavish presents for one another. Instead, Christmas was an occasion for inexpensive and sometimes humorous gifts.

  One year, Harry reportedly gave the Queen a shower cap emblazoned with the phrase “Ain’t Life a Bitch,” which she loved. Another time he gifted his grandmother a Big Mouth Billy Bass singing toy that was said to sit proudly in Balmoral, her Scottish retreat, and provide the Queen with great laughs. Kate, rumored to have made her grandmother’s chutney her first year at Sandringham, once gave Harry a “Grow Your Own Girlfriend” kit. More recently, goodies from the perfumier Jo Malone have reportedly been a favorite gift of the Duchess of Cambridge.

  Prince William once gave his grandmother a pair of slippers emblazoned with her face. Princess Anne bought her brother Prince Charles a white leather toilet seat, supposedly because he collected them. For her father, Prince Philip, who loved to barbecue, she got a pepper mill with a light on the end, to easily see the meat grilling as it grew dark.

  The overwhelming seven outfit changes in twenty-four hours that Sarah Ferguson described of her Sandringham experience was the least of Meghan’s concerns. Although Meghan was a trained actress, this was an audition like no other, and she wanted to impress her future royal relatives. To that end, Meghan’s biggest challenge was finding the perfect novelty gifts to amuse her new extended family. At least one of her gifts was a huge hit—a spoon for William that had “cereal killer” embossed on the shallow bowl end of the utensil.

  Christmas Eve dinner was a decidedly more formal affair. The attire was black tie and dinner consisted of dishes such as shrimp and Sandringham lamb, with tarte tatin for dessert.

  Perhaps the most high-pressured event of all for Meghan was the Christmas Day church service. The day started with the full English breakfast served to the men at 8:00 a.m. (The women traditionally took breakfast on trays in their room.) Then the family walked en masse a few hundred yards down the well-worn path to the tiny stone church St. Mary Magdalene, which the Queen attended every Sunday while at Sandringham. (The Queen arrived not on foot but in her maroon Bentley.) Hundreds of fans lined up along the path, many who had been waiting since three in the morning to catch a glimpse of the royal family.

  In a collared Sentaler camel coat with a chestnut Philip Treacy hat and chocolate suede Stuart Weitzman boots, Meghan could be seen quietly conferring with William, Harry, and Kate. They wanted to make sure she knew exactly what was going on and in what order.

  The crowds couldn’t have been more excited to see Harry with his new fiancée. Cameras braced and people cheered as William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan walked side by side. The “Fab Four” had arrived.

  William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan were a hit, and not only at Christmas. On February 28, 2018, the four reunited to make their first official joint engagement. The occasion on that snowy morning in London was the first Royal Foundation Forum, an opportunity to showcase William’s, Kate’s, and Harry’s goals across their core interests of mental health, underserved youth, the armed forces, and wildlife conservation. Upon marriage, Meghan was to become the fourth patron of the foundation, an umbrella organization for the young royals’ charitable initiatives started by William and Harry in 2009 to use as the main vehicle for their charitable giving.

  Growing up Windsor meant a life marked by two principal themes: duty and service. William and Harry’s grandmother had famously told the world on her twenty-first birthday, “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.” Her commitment to the monarchy and the commonwealth has always been unwavering.

  From the time both of the princes were little boys, William and Harry had learned, not just from their grandmother but from their parents as well, that there was no higher calling than service. Both young heirs realized the value of their birthright in harnessing change. The Royal Foundation provided the means to do that.

  “We are part of a respected institution with the timeless values of family, service, duty, and integrity,” Harry said at the forum in London, where all four sat together on a stage, taking questions from a moderator. “We feel a tremendous responsibility to play our part to effect societal change for the better. I’m incredibly proud my soon-to-be wife will be joining us. We’re pretty tied up with planning a wedding at the moment, but we’re really looking forward to working as a pair and as a four going forward, hoping to make as much of a difference where we can.”

  The Royal Foundation event gave Meghan an opportunity to forecast, for the first time, what her life as the newest member of the royal family might look like.

  When the conversation turned to her, she made an impassioned plea for female empowerment. “You’ll often hear people say, ‘Well you are helping people find their voices,’ and I fundamentally disagree with that, because women don’t need to find a voice,” she said. “They have a voice; they need to feel empowered to use it, and people need to be encouraged to listen.”

  This was a bold statement for the royal family, but not for this younger generation.

  Meghan envisioned a life on the front line, not on the sidelines, hoping to use her influence to make a difference. Almost three months after her public introduction at the Royal Foundation Forum, Harry and Meghan attended a Commonwealth Youth Forum event at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings and pledged their support to young people in the LGBTQ community, something that would have been unthinkable fifty yea
rs earlier. Harry was also appointed as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador by the Queen. With Meghan at Harry’s side, the couple hoped to highlight the work of young people and always champion those without a voice.

  In fact, over thirty Commonwealth nations still had anti-gay laws on their books. If anyone thought Meghan was prepared to set her values aside, they would be sorely mistaken. Her first days as a royal fiancée were already evidence that while she intended to respect tradition, she wouldn’t suppress her voice.

  The new generation of royals were all full steam ahead, but just like with all family businesses, the road was not always smooth. When asked during the Royal Foundation Forum if there were family disagreements living and working in such close proximity with one another, William, normally guarded about life behind palace walls, replied with surprising candor. “Oh yes.”

  “Have they been resolved?”

  “We don’t know!” Prince William laughed.

  Harry jumped in to say it was good to have “four different personalities” who “all have that same passion to make a difference.

  “Working as family does have its challenges; of course it does. The fact that everybody is laughing shows they know exactly what’s it like,” he said, joking that he couldn’t remember if all their arguments had been resolved, as they come “thick and fast.”

  “But,” Harry said, “we are stuck together for the rest of our lives.”

  12

  A Problem Like Samantha

  The trouble began with Samantha Markle. Meghan’s romance with Harry had hardly been public a full twenty-four hours when her half sister sensed an opportunity. Never mind that she hadn’t seen her estranged half sister in more than a decade.

  Samantha—who had changed her name from Yvonne and dyed her hair a fresh shade of blond—was Thomas’s eldest child from his first marriage to Roslyn Loveless. Thomas had met Roslyn in Chicago when he was working at the local news station as a nineteen-year-old; she had been just eighteen. The two were pregnant and married within the year. Thomas Jr. followed two years later. After splitting up in 1975, Roslyn headed off to New Mexico with Yvonne and Thomas Jr. As teenagers, the children had briefly moved back to California to be with their father. They had not stayed.

  Partly due to their seventeen-year age difference, Meghan had crossed paths with her half sister only twice since growing up, the most recent time being when Thomas asked her to travel with him to New Mexico for twenty-four hours to attend Samantha’s college graduation in 2008. That was the occasion of the one picture of the two sisters that would be shared across countless news outlets.

  A trusted confidant shared, “The reason why the press keeps running the exact same picture is because that’s all that exists. If there were more, Samantha would have sold them.”

  With the handful of snaps she had from Meghan’s youth, Samantha reached out to The Sun with her story about how snagging a royal had been the actress’s lifelong ambition.

  “It was something she dreamed of as a girl when we watched the royals on TV,” Samantha said. Though the sisters had scarcely interacted since Doria decided to leave Thomas when Meghan was just two, in Samantha’s version, the sisters were close enough to share their crushes with each other. Meghan apparently confessed to having one on the younger prince. “She always preferred Harry,” Samantha claimed. “She has a soft spot for gingers.”

  That was harmless enough, but Samantha went on to paint Meghan as a manipulative climber, carefully plotting each move from TV star to dedicated philanthropist to Harry’s girlfriend. Worst of all, she accused Meghan of keeping her out of the picture because of Samantha’s 2008 multiple sclerosis diagnosis, which had left her confined to a wheelchair.

  “Her ambition is to become a princess,” said Samantha, who was paid handsomely by The Sun. “Her behavior is certainly not befitting a royal family member.”

  As Harry and Meghan’s relationship ramped up, so, too, did Samantha’s press. When Meghan embarked on her weeklong humanitarian trip to India in early 2017, taking part in talks about women’s healthcare and feminine hygiene on behalf of World Vision, Samantha slammed her for not doing more. When Meghan wrote an essay for Time about the stigma surrounding menstruation, Samantha made her own publishing announcement. “Excited about my book,” she tweeted, ‘The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister.’ ”(Three years on and the book, has yet to see the light of day.)

  While Samantha’s media blitz didn’t transform her into a household name, the notoriety was accompanied by cash. Samantha knew that to maintain a steady supply of the latter, she needed to keep the stories coming. So, as Harry and Meghan’s relationship blossomed, so, too, did Samantha’s presence in Meghan’s narrative. A confidant explained, “In the beginning, what Samantha was trying to create was this Kate and Pippa dynamic, like close siblings, but that’s not the case. Meg didn’t grow up with Samantha. She barely saw her.”

  The actual truth was a lot less salacious and not uncommon for blended families. With an almost-twenty-year age difference between them, the half sisters had simply never been close.

  Samantha’s brother, Thomas Markle Jr., was largely positive about his half sister in an initial January 2017 interview sold to The Sun, where he explained his arrest for waving around an unloaded gun during a drunken fight with his girlfriend, Darlene Blount. The window fitter said he hoped he hadn’t brought shame to Meghan and that his actions wouldn’t have him excised from the royal wedding guest list.

  But a year or so later, when a gold-imprinted wedding invite hadn’t made its way to his Oregon home, he picked up on his sister’s narrative that Meghan was nothing but an opportunistic social climber desperate to raise her station in life.

  “Meghan Markle is obviously not the right woman for you,” he wrote in an open letter to Harry published in In Touch. “I’m confused why you don’t see the real Meghan that the whole world now sees, Meghan’s attempt to act the part of a princess like a below C average Hollywood actress is getting old.”

  Like Samantha, who accused Meghan of shunning her because of her illness, Thomas Jr. leveled an even more hurtful accusation that she had used “her own father,” leaving him forgotten, alone, and bankrupt.

  That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Thomas, an Emmy winner, had been plagued by money troubles from the time Meghan was a small child, and this had contributed to his breakup with Doria, who herself juggled a variety of jobs, including designing clothes, and running a small gift shop before obtaining a Master of Social Work from the University of Southern California in 2011 and earning her social work license in 2015. Thomas declared bankruptcy once in 1991 and then again in 1993. But what made that unusual was that in 1990, he won $750,000 from the California State Lottery. (According to family, he used Meghan’s birthday as part of the winning number combination.) With his winnings, he bought Samantha a car and helped finance a flower shop opened by Thomas Jr. According to his son, however, the bulk of his father’s earnings went into a jewelry business, which a friend convinced him was a good investment but later failed. A year on, when he filed for bankruptcy, Thomas’s total personal property was valued at $3,931. Bighearted Thomas wasn’t a bad person—just bad with money.

  Very early on, Meghan had the ambitious goal of getting to the point where she could provide financially for herself and her parents—taking on that heavy psychological burden at an age when most kids are more concerned with Abercrombie & Fitch than living on a budget.

  She kept true to her ambitions and started sending her father money as soon as she landed a job on Deal or No Deal, earning $5,000 for seven episodes—a steady paycheck she gladly shared with Thomas to cover bills and other living expenses. She loved him and had faith that he just needed a little help to get back on his feet, even if he would often make the same financial mistakes over and over.

  Meghan and her inner circle were furious with Samantha’s and Thomas Jr.’s absurd claims. As one confidant pointed out, neither her half sister nor her
half brother cared when they hadn’t been invited to Meghan’s first wedding to Trevor. “They probably didn’t even know she got married, because they were never in contact,” the friend said. “It’s such a joke. Of course, they care now that she’s marrying a prince.”

  More than once Meghan asked her father to intervene with Samantha and make her stop selling stories to the media—which Thomas once tried to do.

  “You know what you’re doing is hurting your sister?” he told Samantha, or “Babe” as he mostly calls her.

  “All Meghan needs to do is contact me herself to put an end to it,” she replied.

  Thomas relayed this back to Meghan, but she never reached out to her half sister, convinced she would probably tape the call and sell it to a tabloid. Meanwhile, their father felt caught between his daughters. A family source said, “He loves them equally, and he didn’t want to push either away.” And yet, that was exactly what Samantha felt her father was doing. “Sam has always felt he picks Meghan over her, despite how hard she tries,” the source said. “Thomas doesn’t have to spend holidays alone, but he chooses to, despite getting invites from Sam and Tom Jr.”

  Meanwhile, Harry couldn’t believe how badly Meghan’s family members were behaving. It was hard for him to watch the effects on his fiancée. She was frustrated and angry at the things Samantha and Thomas Jr. were selling to the papers. Even more frustrating was the fact that she couldn’t just throw out a statement or jump on Twitter to defend herself. She had to stay quiet while they attacked her. Members of the royal family have long been expected to live by the mantra, “never complain, never explain.” As a longtime Buckingham Palace aide candidly put explained, “You shut up and ride it out.” Meghan would try not to read the press, but often aides brought items to her attention when they needed to ask her if something was fact or fiction. Sometimes those aides themselves were the focus of her half siblings’ attacks. At one point, Thomas Jr. started sending demanding emails to Katrina McKeever, the Kensington Palace deputy communications secretary, in which he detailed the need for financial aid because, he claimed, the press attention prevented him from getting work. Jason and his team found the situation “surreal,” but they also felt great responsibility to guide Meghan through the chaos.