Royals at War

by Dylan Howard

  In October 2016, after four months of discreet dating, between London and Toronto, the inevitable happened. Meghan spoke later about how, thanks to military-level evasion, duplicity, and discretion, the couple had managed to avoid the spotlight. It had given them time to bond, get to know each other, and connect on a deeper level. It had also been invaluable for Meghan to get a sense of the world she would be a part of, should she decide to pursue the relationship. It’s still up for discussion just how much Meghan was prepared for the unimaginable assault on her privacy and life that being with Harry brought. Unlike most young couples meeting and falling in love, Meghan and Harry had to be up front with each other. Harry had explained in detail to Meghan how her life would change. Meghan’s friends, according to an interview she gave ITN’s Tom Bradby in 2019, advised her to drop Harry, simply because loving him required turning her life upside down, not least abandoning her acting career. But all things considered, they had come to an understanding by the time they were tipped off that the press had finally tumbled to the romance and London’s Daily Express newspaper was about to splash an exclusive about Harry’s new love. They were in this for the long haul. The night before the Express’s front-page story came out, the couple, who was in Toronto, quietly marked the moment with a glass of wine and a toast. Harry sighed and told Meghan: “Our lives will never be the same again.”

  “HARRY’S SECRET ROMANCE WITH A TV STAR,” blared the front page of the Daily Express on the morning of Monday, October 31, 2016. The Daily Express, a midmarket tabloid that had never quite gotten over the death of Diana, gleefully informed its readers across the land, making them splutter in shock over their breakfast tea, that the third in line to the throne was now in love with “ … the daughter of an African-American mother and a father of Dutch and Irish descent.”

  “They are taking each week as it comes and just enjoying each other’s company,” prattled the paper’s source. “But it’s fair to say … there’s a definite chemistry between them. Harry has been desperate to keep the relationship quiet because he doesn’t want to scare Meghan off. He knows things will change when their romance is public knowledge … at the moment they are just taking it a step at a time and seeing how things develop.”

  There was some irony in the paper printing that Harry was “desperate” to keep the relationship quiet because he knew how things would change when they went public. The day after the paper printed the story, Meghan opened her front door to find the world’s media massed outside her house. Harry, with an expertise honed over a lifetime, had managed to give the press the slip and head back to London. But for Meghan, a new reality had dawned.

  The headlines were relentless, as was the inevitable social media meltdown. Meghan might have been the star of one of a TV show in the States, but her profile was considerably lower in the United Kingdom, where she was seen as just another American starlet. Now she was shacked up happily with Harry on the grounds of Kensington Palace, cohabiting in the tiny Nottingham Cottage and living in bliss with the third in line to the throne.

  Of course, in addition to contending with the world media, Harry had another task—to meet with Meghan’s parents. Then there was the rather prickly matter of his own family, for whom the words “American” and “divorcée” would arouse bitter memories of Queen Elizabeth’s uncle King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.

  More concern was felt in the Palace when the full extent of the dysfunctional Markle and Ragland families was revealed.

  The couple had visited Los Angeles together in summer 2016, where Meghan introduced Harry to Doria. “She was bowled over by how down-to-earth and humble he is,” revealed a source.

  “Doria is very much a people’s person and so isn’t impressed by someone putting on airs and graces, and thankfully that couldn’t be further from Harry’s personality.”

  Meanwhile, Meghan’s more delicate parental relationship, with her father, Thomas, also necessitated a nerve-racking meeting for Harry. They started to communicate in summer 2016, according to Meghan’s half-brother, Thomas Jr.

  “My dad knew about [the relationship] from the start,” he told the Daily Mail. “He goes [to Toronto] once every couple of months—Meghan and her father are very close and they stay in close contact. He’s pretty happy about Harry and he’s extremely proud of her [Meghan]. They have an amazing relationship, they’re very close and they always have been.”

  Prophetic words indeed.

  ***

  Unlike the Royals, when the media discovered that Meghan’s extended family of half-siblings on the Markle side had had rather colorful lives, their delight was unconfined. Meghan’s half-sister Samantha (formerly Yvonne), now afflicted with MS, wasted no time in painting herself as a bitter and jealous woman. In November 2016, she began the first in a series of media appearances and interviews about her half-sister, with whom she had barely spoken in a decade. “I didn’t feel a separation from her until I was in the wheelchair. The higher profile she became, she never mentioned me,” she claimed. Announcing to The Sun newspaper that she was busy working on a book called The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister, Samantha told the paper that Meghan was “selfish” and a social climber who was unsuited to being part of the Royal Family. “Hollywood changed her,” she sniped. “I think her ambition is to become a princess. It was something she dreamed of as a girl when we watched the Royals on TV. She always preferred Harry—she has a soft spot for gingers.” (Trevor Engelson himself was strawberry blond.)

  Meghan’s half-brother, Thomas Markle Jr., was more measured in tone when it came to the media, although he had a similar run of bad luck. In Oregon, where he worked as a window fitter, the father of two was no stranger to the authorities, mainly for alcohol-related mayhem.

  In January 2017, he was arrested and charged with menacing, pointing a firearm at his girlfriend, Darlene Blount, and for the unlawful use of a weapon, after a drinking session at his apartment got somewhat out of hand. According to reports, the window fitter “grabbed a gun and pressed it to Blount’s head, in an attempt to get her to leave the home.” Speaking to the press the day after, his ex-wife Tracey Dooley, who had to come and bail her former husband out of the drunk tank at 3 a.m., charitably defended him. “Tom has had a little fame and publicity since Meghan started dating Prince Harry,” she said. “He wants what’s best for her. He is so happy and proud for her. They used to be very close but there has been some separation over the years. When he called, he sounded very sad and asked if I would help to get him out of jail.”

  Later that year, police were called again to the Markle Jr. home to intervene in a “domestic violence call.” This time, Darlene was charged with fourth-degree assault and had to spend a night in the cooler at Josephine County Jail before being released. It wasn’t the first time she had been charged with assault. Meghan retained a discreet silence. Harry was getting to know the in-laws all too well. As were the world’s media.

  The global media hysteria around Meghan and Harry was uncovering all sorts of titillating, juicy titbits. For instance, it was soon discovered that Meghan’s racier scenes on Suits were available on pornographic websites, some real and some more explicit, clearly faked. They speculated on when Meghan’s relationship with Cory had actually ended and whether it was the presence of the Prince in Meghan’s life that had ended it. Columnist Rachel Johnson, sister of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, elected in 2019, referred to Meghan’s mother as being a “dread-locked African-American lady from the wrong side of the tracks,” whose daughter’s potential children could inject the Royal bloodline with “rich and exotic DNA.” Meanwhile, as the persecution of Meghan and her circle intensified, Harry consulted with his family’s advisors and tried to arrange private security for his girlfriend (who, very nobly, refused). While she was on-set at Suits, extra protection was drafted in to ensure the safety of the show’s main star. That situation had become near-impossible too, following the revelation about Harry. Meghan knew that she could not continue playin
g Rachel Zane for much longer.

  After a few weeks in which every possible scrap of information or gossip relating to Meghan was splashed online and in print around the world, Doria and Thomas and their families were plagued with reporters, and seemingly everyone who had ever met Meghan was offered eye-watering amounts of money to spill the beans. Some succumbed to the lure of the checkbooks, such as Meghan’s estranged best friend, Ninaki Priddy. Priddy had fallen out with Meghan after the marriage to Trevor collapsed. Rumors flew around their circle as to why. Ninaki always maintained she was disgusted at the way Meghan had treated her spouse. Others claim, despite no corroborating proof, that a suspicious closeness had developed between Trevor and Priddy.

  THIS IS NOT A GAME

  The media onslaught prompted an unprecedented reaction from Harry, via the offices of Kensington Palace. In a furious statement, it was made clear that the Prince was “deeply disappointed” with the media attention and explicitly warned the press to lay off. “He knows reporters will say, ‘This is all part of the game.’ He disagrees. This is not a game—it is her life and his.”

  The Royals didn’t issue such enraged directives to the press. It simply wasn’t done. The motto “Never explain, never complain” had held good for generations. But no longer. Harry, acutely aware how media intrusion had played a role in extinguishing his relationships with Chelsy Davy and another flame, Cressida Bonas, not to mention their part in his mother’s tragic death, had precious little patience with the press. He had to be constantly cajoled and persuaded into giving obligatory photo calls and press interviews, remembers Colleen Harris, the Clarence House press secretary during the Princes’ teens. And now, when he had met the girl of his dreams, faked porn pictures were being sniggered over in the tabloids, and a rather unpleasant subtext was emerging around Meghan’s mixed-race ancestry.

  As reaction to the news of the relationship rocketed around the world and the extent of the Markle family’s various peccadilloes became known, a certain degree of concern rose amid the courtiers and staff at the heart of the Firm. The fact that Harry had found love was a cause for celebration, true, but no one had expected someone like Meghan to bounce into the family. Meghan was American—and more noticeably, of mixed-race heritage. While the Queen is acknowledged to be above prejudice and bigotry, other senior members of the family have occasionally caused alarm with their statements and views. Americans are viewed with suspicion by the elder Royals.

  As for race relations, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, for instance, is a veteran in the art of foot in mouth. Over the course of a long and illustrious career of “plain speaking,” he has, at various times, warned a British student studying in China he would get “slitty eyes” if he stayed in the country much longer, congratulated another British student in Papua New Guinea for not having been eaten by the locals, asked a Native Australian if he and his fellow Aborigines “chuck spears at each other,” accused members of a Bangladeshi youth group of all being “on drugs,” and, on the fiftieth anniversary of his own Duke of Edinburgh Awards (a youth activity scheme), announced that all young people were “ignorant.”

  Perhaps it is unsurprising that Meghan was on her guard as she became acquainted with the senior members of the Royal Family.

  One especially telling incident occurred during the Royal Family’s Christmas lunch in 2018, when Meghan joined about fifty members of the family, including Princess Michael of Kent, wife of Prince Michael of Kent, Queen Elizabeth II’s first cousin. It was a big deal. This was Meghan’s first-time meeting with much of Harry’s family, and the rules had been broken for her. Usually, only married partners were invited to such an intimate gathering. But Meghan was at ease and relaxed, chatting with Kate, Prince William, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, and others. It was all copacetic until she was introduced to Princess Michael. The seventy-two-year-old Royal was wearing an eye-catching brooch on her coat when she arrived. Unfortunately, the accessory was a piece of Blackamoor jewelry, depicting Africans in subservient roles. Meghan and Harry registered the offending item but diplomatically said nothing about it. But despite her anguished protestations that the choice of brooch had just been a crazy coincidence, there is no denying Princess Michael has had previous form with ugly racist incidences. In 2014, she had allegedly told a group of black customers in a restaurant to “go back to the colonies,” after complaining that they were being noisy. Princess Michael vehemently denied the story but then made matters worse by pointing out that she was so open-minded, she had once even “pretended to be an African.” Again, Meghan kept a tactful public silence on the matter.

  But there was an underlying elephant in the room, no matter how effusive Meghan’s tinkling laughter, no matter how friendly William attempted to be, in his galumphing manner, or how chatty the Queen was. In December 1936, the King of England, Edward VIII, the uncle of the present Queen, gave up his throne and sovereignty over a global empire of half a billion people stretching around the world, so he could wed the woman he loved. In an era of deference, strict class hierarchy, blanket reverence from the media, and unquestioning loyalty from the overwhelming majority of people, this wasn’t just a shock. It was a constitutional and social crisis, unparalleled in modern times.

  The King had quit to be with an American divorcée, two words that, when combined, utterly shattered the staid British population’s collective composure. Wallis Simpson was seen as a déclassée social climber, an opportunist exploiting a weak man enthralled by her power. Power, so people nudged and whispered, that owed much to her rumored skills in the boudoir. In the early 1930s, speculating on the sex life of the Royals was not something that was done, but it was said Wallis had mastered certain … techniques, if you will, which sated and fulfilled the King’s more esoteric tastes, shall we say.

  Of course, little was known for sure at the time, as to exactly what may have been going on behind Palace gates and under the regal bedsheets, but it was a damned good news story, and the nation was agog. But the national mood of shock and horror went beyond the ingrained insularity and misogyny of the day. There was real anger at the King’s abdication, at what was seen as his dereliction of duty and the fact that he had been distracted from his God-given destiny by this … this … shameless divorcée from [whisper] America! Never, could a senior Royal be allowed to be swayed in such a way. Never, ever again,

  This event, which shaped the course of the royal story through the twentieth century, is one of the reasons the Queen’s long reign has been so stable. The Queen believes it is her destiny to fulfill the service of her people. She has reigned with dignity and all the conviction of a God-fearing woman, steadfast in her beliefs and unwavering in her faith. She will, of course, be the last Royal of our times to be cut from this cloth.

  ***

  Kate remembered the sly comments all too well. The snide remarks, the laughter that would abruptly stop when she walked into the room. Most of William’s friends were friendly, charming even, to her face. But she only had to hear a stifled snigger or a coughed “Doors to manual!” to know that she was the butt of the joke, yet again. For many of William’s friends, the nouveaux riches, upwardly aspirational Middletons were hilarious. Their meticulous designer fashion, Barbour jackets, Range Rovers, and the shabby-chic country home. The apartment in trendy Chelsea, the perfect social diary of upper-class amusements and events—from horse racing to garden parties, the whole clan immaculately and appropriately attired, trailing amiably after the strident Carole. The fact that Carole and Michael, as far as many of the toffs around William’s circle were concerned, were once cabin crew (not actually the case: Michael was a flight dispatcher) never failed to raise a sardonic braying chuckle or barbed comment. It was rumored that Camilla, a true blue-blooded British aristocrat, had found Kate’s family hilariously nouveau riche at first but then came down hard on the Middletons, subtly influencing William to instigate the split between himself and Kate in 2007.

  When Meghan came on the scene, Kate k
ept a diplomatic silence when her own gang began snickering at the brash, attention-soaking American. Rumors began floating around that Kate’s friends would get together for raucous screenings of Meghan’s pre-Suits made-for-TV Hallmark movies. These films, a common sight on the résumés of many TV actors and actresses, offer much in the way of unintended comedy, and Kate’s gang reveled in the cheesy dialogue and hammy acting that was required. It’s said that Meghan was even aware of the sniggers and took them on the chin, even when her cringeworthy lines were quoted back at her. (Obviously, none of those teasing Meghan would have publicly mocked Kate and William about the equally tacky TV movies pumped out by the likes of the Hallmark Channel about their romance.)

  “We are very excited for Harry and Meghan,” the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge said in a statement at the time. “It has been wonderful getting to know Meghan and to see how happy she and Harry are together.”