Royalty historian David Starkey put his finger on it when he noted that Meghan and Harry’s union is “the first globalized royal marriage.” She is “international in a way that no other royal has ever been; and her entry into the royal family will redefine her as much as she will redefine it, moving them one step closer to their people.”
Yes, Meghan Markle is different from every royal bride in the history of the British monarchy. A biracial, childless divorcée in her mid-thirties, she is a college graduate with a double degree; and a self-described self-sufficient go-getter whose dual careers have in many ways prepared her for the spotlight, as well as for the public duties that will be required of her—as much as anything can truly prepare someone to become a member of the royal family if they are not born into it.
But Meghan Markle is something else that no other royal bride has ever been. She is a standard-bearer for all young women who have been told that it’s impossible to “have it all.”
Meghan completely embodies the incredible, utterly American female spirit of the “roll up your sleeves and get to work” We Can Do It! of the Rosie the Riveter poster on the wall of her childhood bedroom.
When it came to her racial identity or whether she was expected to decide to be an actress or a humanitarian, an independent woman or the wife of a prince, Meghan has never been either/or, but always fiercely, proudly both.
To all young women, especially those little girls, some of whom may be biracial, Meghan’s life story thus far proclaims from the mountaintops that they don’t have to choose between one parent or the other. They can be a glamorous actress and a powerful political activist and be just as successful in both endeavors. They can care just as much about flower arranging and fine wines as building wells in the dusty villages of Rwanda and helping adolescent girls in India—all to promote education and a lifetime of economic potential for every girl in the world. And P.S.: it isn’t such a long shot to marry a foreign prince too, even when you’re an American.
From now on a lot of girls from Staten Island to the San Fernando Valley will have their eyes on little Prince George of Cambridge!
Meghan has also been a role model for other young women and some not-so-young women by reminding all of us of the mantra she developed after too many casting directors told her she wasn’t black or white enough to book a job or that she was “too” white or black to get the part. You are enough, she told herself. It was a message she spread through the gospel of The Tig and in the articles she penned online and for print magazines. “I never let my relationship [with Prince Harry] define me,” Meghan told a prominent periodical. In February 2017, under a post titled “Be Your Own Valentine,” she reminded women that they did not need to define themselves by others or live their lives through them. They needed to take the time to honor themselves. “I think you need to cook that beautiful dinner when it’s just you. Wear your favorite outfit, buy yourself some flowers, and celebrate the self-love that often gets muddled when we focus on what we don’t have.”
Harry and Meghan’s story is that of two children whose parents separated when they were very young and who lived separate lives with each parent and a third life with both parents.
It’s the story of a boy who lost his beautiful and glamorous mother—the most famous woman in the world—when he was on the cusp of adolescence and needed her most. He spent decades trying to find himself, and often found himself at the center of scandal instead.
From Harry’s own revelations about sorting out his mental health issues when he was in his late twenties, he had to come to terms with his mother’s tragic death, get past his anger, and process his mourning for her before he could heal. How could he have a healthy relationship with anyone when he was so emotionally wounded? Therapists like to tell their clients “you can’t love someone else until you love yourself.”
And how could Harry be open to finding The One until he found himself? Playboy princes make great tabloid fodder but radioactive husbands.
At the time of her engagement and wedding to Prince Harry, Meghan was the same age as Harry’s mother Diana was when she died.
Somehow it seems appropriate to give Diana the last word, because Harry has wanted her to be a part of his journey with Meghan from the start. It was why he repurposed two of his mother’s diamonds into Meghan’s engagement ring. Diana, who consulted spiritualists, psychics, and mediums and who once shocked the former Buckingham Palace press secretary Dickie Arbiter by telling him that she’d always known she was being watched over by the spirits of her ancestors, would surely believe that she is indeed looking down on Harry and Meghan from some astral plane.
Diana once said that “royal firstborns get all the glory, but second-borns enjoy more freedom. Only when Harry is a lot older will he realize how lucky he is not to have been the eldest.” In many ways, because William has always had his life mapped out for him, Harry has had more freedom to define his role within the royal family. At times it’s been as much of a curse as it’s been a blessing.
When Harry was eight years old and William ten, Diana gave them the proverbial talk about the birds and the bees. A blushing Harry fled the room, but one suspects he did hear his mother’s marital advice, because William certainly did. Diana told her sons, whether or not your bride is royal, “if she is the person you truly love, then that’s all that matters.”
It’s as delightfully old-fashioned as it’s thoroughly modern.
May Harry and Meghan live happily ever after.
Acknowledgments
Because current events have moved at supersonic speed, I have a village to thank for the spectacular haste with which this book had to be written and produced. First, to my agent, Irene Goodman, who believed me from the start when I told her that Harry and Meghan would get engaged and that their very coupledom was newsworthy. To my editor and fellow fan of all things British monarchy, Rachel Kahan; to Jen Hart, queen of Morrow paperbacks; and to the phenomenal art department and my PR team at William Morrow, Anwesha Basu, Bianca Flores, and Amelia Wood. To Margaret Evans Porter, my C of E Sherpa and fact-checker, for her astute suggestions; and whose eagle eye caught me drifting from royal weddings into Four Weddings and a Funeral, saving me from a disastrously laughable Freudian slip of the fingers. To Elizabeth Kerri Mahon and Kirsten Erickson McElroy for keeping me posted on the steady stream of news flashes from both sides of the pond as I wrote like the wind. Thanks to Susan Wald for her spot-on “acorn” remark. To Teri Gilman for her long and exhaustive hours of genealogy research; and to Jordan Auslander for helping to delve into the mystery of whether Meghan might have had a Jewish ancestress. To my grandparents for encouraging me to become an Anglophile, an actress, and an author. To my royal-watching mother from Beverly Hills, who as a starry-eyed teen avidly followed Princess Margaret’s ill-fated romance; and who also permitted me to wear her souvenir tiara from Harry’s grandmother’s coronation onstage; and to my father, my real-life Robert Zane: thank you for getting it. And—always—to my husband, Scott: not only for providing perspective on the in-country experience in Afghanistan but for being kind, patient, loving, and supportive, no matter what. Scott and I share a wedding day with Meghan and Harry, so I have a feeling that they too will forever be just as lucky in love!
Selected Bibliography
Below is a list of volumes used to research this book, as well as suggested reading for those who wish to delve deeper into other Windsor marriages and the royal affairs and marriages of past British dynasties. It’s also a reading list for those who wish to know more about how far the British monarchy has come with regard to the issue of divorce, as well as the topics of marriage to Catholics and the royals of the past who had romantic relationships with prominent actresses.
Andersen, Christopher. William and Kate: A Royal Love Story. New York: Gallery Books, 2011.
Aronson, Theo. Princess Margaret: A Biography. London: Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 1997. [chapter 23 copyright 2001]
Bedell Smith, Sal
ly. Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life. New York: Random House, 2017.
Birmingham, Stephen. Duchess: The Story of Wallis Warfield Simpson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981.
Bradford, Sarah. George VI. London: Penguin Books, 2011.
Brand, Emily. Royal Weddings. Great Britain: Shire Publications, 2011.
Brown, Tina. The Diana Chronicles. New York: Doubleday, 2007.
Cawthorne, Nigel. Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens of England. London: Prion, 1994.
Coxe, Howard. The Stranger in the House: A Life of Caroline of Brunswick. London: Chatto & Windus, 1939.
David, Saul. Prince of Pleasure: The Prince of Wales and the Making of the Regency. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998.
Denny, Joanna. Katherine Howard: A Tudor Conspiracy. London: Portrait/Piatkus Books, Ltd., 2005.
Feuchtwanger, Edgar. Albert and Victoria: The Rise and Fall of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006.
Fraser, Antonia, ed. The Lives of the Kings & Queens of England, revised and updated. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Fraser, Antonia. Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
Fraser, Flora. The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Heald, Tim. Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled. London: Phoenix, 2008.
Hewitt, James. Love and War. London: Blake Publishing, Ltd., 1999.
Hibbert, Christopher. Edward VII: The Last Victorian King. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007.
——. George IV: The Rebel Who Would Be King. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007.
——. Queen Victoria: A Personal History. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
——. Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985.
Higham, Charles. The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 1988.
Holme, Thea. Caroline: A Biography of Caroline of Brunswick. New York: Atheneum, 1980.
Irvine, Valerie. The King’s Wife: George IV and Mrs. Fitzherbert. London: Hambledon and London, 2005.
Ives, Eric. The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
James, Susan. Catherine Parr: Henry VIII’s Last Love. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing, 2008.
Joseph, Claudia. Kate: Kate Middleton: Princess in Waiting. New York: Avon Books, 2009.
Junor, Penny. Charles: Victim or Villain? New York: HarperCollins, 1998.
King, Greg. The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson. New York: Citadel Press, 2000.
Lamont-Brown, Raymond. Alice Keppel & Agnes Keyser: Edward VII’s Last Loves. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1998.
Larcombe, Duncan. Prince Harry: The Inside Story. London: HarperCollins, 2017.
Leslie, Anita. Mrs. Fitzherbert. New York: Scribner, 1960.
Mattingly, Garrett. Catherine of Aragon. New York: Book-of-the-Month Club, 1941.
Moody, Marcia. Harry: A Biography. London: Michael O’Mara Books Ltd, 2014.
Morton, Andrew. Diana, Her True Story [A Commemorative Edition with New Material Including Her Own Words], revised 25th anniversary ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997/2017.
Munson, James. Maria Fitzherbert: The Secret Wife of George IV. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2001.
Nicholl, Katie. William and Harry: Behind the Palace Walls. New York: Weinstein Books, 2010.
Plowden, Alison. Caroline and Charlotte: Regency Scandals. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2005.
Shawcross, William. The Queen Mother: The Official Biography. New York: Vintage Books, 2010.
Starkey, David. Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. New York: Grove Press, 1991.
Williams, Neville. The Tudors, ed. Antonia Fraser. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Williams, Susan. The People’s King: The True Story of the Abdication. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Wilson, A. N. The Rise & Fall of the House of Windsor. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Wilson, Christopher. A Greater Love: Prince Charles’s Twenty-Year Affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. New York: William Morrow, 1994.
——. The Windsor Knot: Charles, Camilla and the Legacy of Diana. New York: Citadel Press, 2002.
About the Author
Native New Yorker LESLIE CARROLL is the author of twenty books in three genres (as well as a contributor to a twenty-first book with an essay on how she met her husband while he was serving in Afghanistan). Among her published titles are a series of five nonfiction volumes on the loves and lives of European royalty. She also wrote the text for an illustrated coffee-table book on a thousand years of British royalty commissioned by Sterling, the publishing arm of Barnes & Noble. Her titles have been translated into eleven languages; and some of her novels have been optioned for TV and motion pictures. Leslie is considered to be one of America’s experts on European royalty and is a frequent media presence whenever the House of Windsor marks a milestone. She flew to London for the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, and provided numerous eyewitness interviews that day for print and radio, from The Wall Street Journal to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, among others. Leslie has had multiple appearances on the Travel Channel, Rick Steves’s travel show, and Canada’s History Channel series as an expert speaking about various controversial royals. The Chicago Tribune has described her historical nonfiction as “an irresistible combination of People magazine and the History Channel.” A professional actress who had a survival job for years as a real-life Rachel Zane, Leslie is also an award-winning audiobook narrator, specializing in bringing historical fiction alive for the listener. On her paternal grandmother’s side, she is a descendant of Nathan Marcus Adler, Chief Rabbi of the British empire during the reign of Queen Victoria. Visit her at www.lesliecarroll.com.
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Copyright
AMERICAN PRINCESS. Copyright © 2018 by Leslie Carroll. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
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Digital Edition APRIL 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-285944-0
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-285945-7
Version 03172018
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