Meghan and Harry in 20/20 Hindsight

I think it’s absolutely wonderful that Meghan Markle and Harry Windsor managed to find each other in this big crazy world and unite in a marriage obviously fueled by love and mutual admiration; it took incredible courage on both sides. It was so clearly a Cinderella story which captured the imagination of any romantic on either side of the pond.

I don’t use the Cinderella analogy lightly, because its plot underlies so much of the public perception about the union and its aftermath: we have the weird dynamics of the bride’s poorly blended step-family as well as the subtext of Meghan being, like Cinderella, a parvenu intruder into the established ritual and decorum of the British ruling class

The fairy tale doesn’t cover the subsequent details of how Cinderella was accepted by her royal family and the public, except to assure us that all ended well and they lived “happily ever after”. We don’t know if her envious step-sisters published tell-all memoirs, or if the morning town crier labelled her a “Pinocchio Princess” or if the assemblages in the town square gossiped about her being an uppity social climber. We don’t know if, like Meghan, she tipped over the royal apple cart and caused a lot of spoiling fruit at the bottom to be revealed.

Meghan Markle certainly did not meet the parameters of the expected spouse of the younger prince. I have to imagine that most people probably foresaw a fiancee along the Lady Cecily Montgomery-Maldwyn from Truffleshire sort of mold — someone from Harry’s own social circle and caste, who would embrace a future of ribbon cuttings and hospital visits with cheerful fortitude, while all the time remembering that as a second tier royal, she must not ever endeavor to pop out too obviously or enthusiastically from the background in family photo shoots or outshine anyone associated with the actual line of descent (let’s not even talk about making them cry).

We already have lots of modern examples of the out-of-the-running-for-the crown royals either becoming the equivalent of costume extras at fetes and events or chafing and rebelling and becoming more or less scandalous leading to more or less miserable, a la Princess Margaret followed a generation later by Prince Andrew. I think Prince Harry knew he was going to have a tough row to hoe when he determined that he wanted to cement his relationship with Meghan and make her part of the royal family. I believe Meghan when she says she wasn’t exactly clear on how difficult it would be for her to transition from American commoner to British royal. She was following a path trod by only one other and fairly disastrously (Wallis Simpson), but at least she wouldn’t be causing any abdications. At the end of the day, the Windsors are really just a family underneath it all, right?

But actually, that’s not the case for the reigning clan of the remnants of the Empire. Aside from daily intimate and personal interactions in their private world, they also function as two dimensional representations of British History, walking mascots of lost grandeur, majesty and power. They are a major engine of British tourism and industry, similar to Goofy and Mickey and Minnie and Donald walking around Disneyland, creating memories and good will in a make-believe world with castles and twirling teacups. The major job of all the Royals is to engender good-will and to avoid controversy.

I don’t think it takes a great leap of imagination to think that Harry and Meghan, in terms of charisma, had a large possibility to overshadow and eclipse the very nice, but let’s face it, more mundane William and Kate. Did that annoy and even frighten the people who oil the cogs of the monarchy? Could they harbor a desire to see the Harry and Meghan bonfire tamped down and even quenched? Is that why Meghan engendered so much negative press and why she and Harry have been cast as “the bad royals”?

As to whether racism towards Meghan existed or not and by whom, all I can say is that in reading almost all The Daily Mail stories about them, there was a truly shocking and ugly undercurrent of overt racism in the comments towards Meghan. I also recall when a member of the extended royal family chose to prominently wear a “blackamoor” brooch to a luncheon with the Queen and Meghan. These things happened in public, who knows what was going on privately.

Now here’s where the 20–20 hindsight comes in. Why would either Harry or Meghan, either singly or doubly, think that someone like Meghan — a mostly self-made independent actress, blogger, social media influencer, committed do-gooder — would thrive in an atmosphere requiring her to diminish and censor herself and to become a rose on the wallpaper in background, surrounded by keepers?

I wonder why they both didn’t realize from the get-go that their marriage could be a great success and a giant step in the modernization of the monarchy if they had rejected most if not all of the over-produced royal claptrap from they day they announced their engagement. Anyone could have predicted that Meghan’s envious and bitter step-sibs would have found anyway they could to rain on her parade, as they did. It’s a shame the palace handlers left her father to fend for himself when the paparazzi predictably descended upon him. Why did their wedding have to become the media and celebrity circus it became, not at all a reflection of a couple who found love in a tent in Africa? In retrospect, Meghan and Harry would have been far better served by a small private wedding surrounded by only the people they cared about and who cared about them.

I think they could have renounced being front-line royals much sooner and begun the real work of reducing and modernizing and re-inventing both the monarchy and themselves in a pro-active way — something that they chose to happen, as opposed to something that happened to them.

But, oh well. However they got to where they are — there they are. I wish them well.