The Sunday cover for the Mail did not include any photos of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling’s wedding, despite the “hype” and the fact that senior royals were in attendance, including King Charles, Prince William and their spouses. Instead, the Mail on Sunday’s cover included a photo of the Duchess of Sussex and an excerpt from a new book by Catherine Mayer. The book is called Divide & Rule, and it’s about royal women. The published excerpt is probably a chapter or the introduction, and the Mail’s headline was “The warning signs everyone missed that Meghan marrying into the Royal Family was doomed to end in disaster.” I’ve read Mayer’s columns and heard her commentary before – she’s not part of the deranger group, nor is she reflexively anti-Sussex. Her commentary is often critical of all royals, so… it is what it is. Reading through this excerpt, it sounds like Mayer (who is British) is trying to America-splain things to a British audience. That’s one of the biggest points of this excerpt – that Meghan was simply too American to ever go along with the unhinged royal institution (I’m paraphrasing). Some highlights:
Diana’s death: I remember the day Diana died in 1997. After a colleague woke me with news of a car crash in Paris, I headed to Buckingham Palace. A hotel worker pointed to the building and told me: ‘They killed her.’ Over the following days, that accusation gained currency, but few meant it literally. Anger centred on perceptions that the Royal Family hung Diana out to dry.
Meghan & Harry’s engagement: Everybody looked set to win – the Windsors finally edging towards the diversity of the populations they are meant to represent; a contented Harry saved from a downwards spiral; and Meghan, Princess of Power, handed not a sword but a global platform for those causes.
Racism: In her first Netflix series, Meghan recalled as a child seeing Doria subjected to racial abuse and mistaken for her nanny. Doria in turn revealed that she had warned her daughter that fascination with her dating Harry was ‘about race’. Race was a factor. So too was a misunderstanding of Planet Windsor. Meghan’s claim that she had not googled Harry before their first date attracted scepticism, but no matter how many hours, days, weeks or years an outsider spent trawling the internet, it could not convey the weirdness and complexity of palace culture. ‘How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother?’ Harry mused in the same Netflix show.
Too American: It is tempting to think that if Meghan had shut up, closed down, worn nude tights and deferred as if her life depended on it, she might have made a go of things. But look more closely at California, the place that shaped her, and you realise that was never going to happen….Californians pride themselves on doing things differently. Hard-nosed entrepreneurialism coexists with multiple strands of spiritualism. Positivity is considered, well, a positive. So are career choices and behaviours the British disdainfully label ‘attention-seeking’.
Meghan’s 2019 comments to Tom Bradby: Another sign that Meghan might not mesh smoothly with the buttoned-up Windsors could be detected during the Sussexes’ official visit to South Africa. When Tom Bradby inquired how she was coping with the pressures of royal life, she replied, ‘Thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m OK.’ Back home, such an oversight would be unthinkable. She went on to muse that ‘it’s not enough to just survive something, right? Like, that’s not the point of life. You’ve got to thrive, you’ve got to feel happy.’ This simple, seemingly uncontroversial idea would shake the monarchy, dislodge Harry and send both of the Sussexes to the place that nurtured it.
Meghan’s critics: To those who clamour for Meghan to be expunged from public life like a latter-day Anne Boleyn, I’d ask one question: what exactly has she done to earn such hostility? The Sussex Squad suspects her critics of misogyny, racism or an admixture of the two, misogynoir. Detractors say Meghan has earned their contempt by inflicting reputational damage on the monarchy. It is not my intention to minimise the seriousness of the bullying allegations against Meghan, but rather to ask critics whether, in light of the wider context of Windsor failings including Andrew’s behaviour, what we know – or think we know – about her explains the strength of the animosity towards her. Might other factors be at play too? Does her voice grate? Is she simply too Californian, too politically correct, too new-age-y for British tastes? Perhaps resentment towards Meghan stems from her snagging a prince and then forgetting to be grateful.
The Sussexes’ half-in offer: Princess Anne offers an object lesson too, combining her sporting career and equestrian businesses with service as a working royal. A hybrid model can succeed, and not all ideas that bend or break with tradition destabilise the monarchy. ‘Yes,’ said an insider when I pointed this out, ‘but that depends on the royal in question.’ Anne is staunch and sensible, Harry his mother’s son. Meghan would not have respected boundaries. Left to their own devices, they risked becoming more Andrew-and-Sarah than Anne-and-Timothy. That analysis, widely shared by family and officials, meant the institution spent less energy on helping the Sussexes expand their role, and more on containing them.
The Windsors never wanted to harness the Sussexes’ popularity: Harry and Meghan, in turn, continued to misread their situation, assuming that courtiers were misrepresenting them to the top decision-makers – the Queen, Charles, even William – who would surely see the merit of their case if given the chance. After all, the Sussexes connected with younger and diverse populations across the realms, demographics left cold by other Windsors. The monarchy needed them. There were, however, other issues at play. The prospect of change loomed large, with Elizabeth soon to pass the crown to Charles, already in his seventies and expected to reign for, at most, a couple of decades. The paramount concern of these principals and their officials was to smooth the way for the next two kings and their consorts. In this context, the volatile, limelight-stealing Harry and Meghan appeared not jewels in the crown, but risks.
The comparisons between Meghan & Diana: ‘Meghan is no Diana,’ a palace insider muttered to me recently. If this sentiment chimes with you, think about the venom directed at Diana, like the Sunday Mirror column about her written the day before her death, which hit newsstands the next morning. ‘It’s a pity Gucci don’t make designer face zips,’ wrote Carole Malone. ‘Then when Diana was on the verge of opening her ill-informed mouth and causing an international incident (an increasingly frequent occurrence these days), she could just keep her trap shut.’
I cracked up at Mayer basically saying “sure, racism was a factor” and then in the same breath, arguing that Meghan probably should have done more research. Like, what are we really saying here? That Meghan would have been more prepared for racist abuse if only she had done more research into Harry’s (racist) family? How is that Meghan’s fault?? “If only Meghan had been more prepared for how racist we are” is the argument being made by a legitimate royal historian. Mayer’s points about why the Sussexes’ half-in solution was rejected are interesting – the offer was rejected basically because the courtiers have no imagination, but also because Harry & Meghan misread their situation. They believed they would be seen, institutionally, as assets with a hand to play. When really, the institution wanted to be rid of them completely.
This drives me crazy: “Detractors say Meghan has earned their contempt by inflicting reputational damage on the monarchy…” Mayer is correct in that Meghan’s critics argue that Meghan’s exit from the UK, Meghan’s freedom and Meghan’s Oprah interview “inflicted reputational damage.” I would argue that the Windsors themselves were the ones inflicting reputational damage, and Meghan merely pointed it out.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
