During his whistle-stop visit to the city, former president Obama joined Harry at a city center hotel, where a suite of rooms had been rigged up into a makeshift radio studio. The prince conducted a twenty-minute interview with the former president about life after the White House, and their relaxed chat became the centerpiece of Harry’s debut as a guest presenter on BBC Radio Four’s Today program in late December.
As the games came to an end, Harry told the cheering crowd, “You have delivered the biggest Invictus Games yet, with the most incredible atmosphere, making our competitors feel like the stars they are.”
At the closing ceremony, Harry gave Meghan a kiss on the cheek as they watched Kelly Clarkson, Bryan Adams, and legendary rocker Bruce Springsteen play the games out. Standing beside them in the VIP enclosure was Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, who had flown from Los Angeles to see her daughter and, it was now universally assumed, to inspect her future son-in-law.
It was time to dust off the morning suit.
12
Tea with Her Majesty
It was the most important audition of her life. No rehearsal, no script, no second takes. This was live and improvised. When she was driven through the gates of Buckingham Palace on an overcast, drizzly Thursday in October in a black Ford Galaxy with darkened windows, she was about to give the performance of her career. Even though she has often said that she is not a woman who gets nervous, she could be forgiven for being a tad dry mouthed. She was about to meet the Queen for afternoon tea. Gulp. Of course, she had Prince Harry by her side, holding her hand, telling her it would be fine, just be yourself. Still, it was tea with the Queen of England.
There was a touch of cloak and dagger about the affair, which did little to quell the nerves. The Ford Galaxy nosed in so close to the sovereign’s entrance that Harry, Meghan, and their Scotland Yard bodyguard were able to slip inside unnoticed.
They were then escorted along the seeming miles of red carpet to the queen’s private sitting room, which overlooks the palace gardens by Constitution Hill. So discreetly did they arrive and depart that even senior palace servants were unaware of their visit until a few days later.
If truth be told, Meghan had quietly anticipated this moment. A few months before, she had taken a secret excursion to Rose Tree Cottage, a little slice of England nestled in Pasadena in the suburbs of Los Angeles. It sells a plethora of British goodies, but the centerpiece of owner Edmund Fry’s emporium is the serving of afternoon tea. Meghan has visited several times, not only to buy English gifts but to take afternoon tea. Perhaps there had been just a little rehearsing, after all.
In a city dominated by coffee and to-go cups, Rose Tree Cottage brings a soupçon of English refinement. It is where Meghan learned to crook her finger as she sipped her Earl Grey from her cup and saucer, necessary skills to remember after she dropped a curtsy to her future mother-in-law. However, the offering of thinly sliced sandwiches of cucumber and egg mayonnaise, the selection of small scones and cakes, and Her Majesty’s own Queen Mary blend of tea, with the option of coffee for the American visitor, tell only part of the story.
Afternoon tea is a chance for the Queen to catch up on the Upstairs gossip from her ladies-in-waiting, the Downstairs chatter from her senior servants, and to see members of her family. In times past, Princess Diana—when she hadn’t brought the boys with her, which was often—used these informal occasions to tackle the Queen over her eldest son’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. As she sipped her tea, the princess was looking for sympathy—vainly, as it turned out. The topic was much too emotionally unsavory for her regal mother-in-law, so the matter was dropped.
Though the encounter with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry was much less fraught, there was still an air of tension about the occasion. This was perhaps inevitable. As the fifth in line to the throne, the prince had to obtain his grandmother’s formal permission to marry. It was by no means a foregone conclusion. She could say no. She’d done it before. Then what?
For centuries the royal houses of Europe have been defined by bloodline and breeding. In Queen Victoria’s day, English princes and princesses could only marry their German counterparts. That changed during World War One, when in 1917 George V not only changed the family name to Windsor but allowed his offspring to marry English aristocrats. Down the decades, even this edict has been considerably diluted.
For the most part, the queen’s brood have married commoners, though not divorced commoners. An Olympic horseman, an equerry, a photographer, the daughter of the royal polo manager, and a public relations executive have all joined the royal family without a title between them. Only Lady Diana Spencer was from a traditionally aristocratic family—and look where that got them. The House of Windsor has been sustained by commoners, not by bluebloods. In fact, the same could be said of most of the royal houses of Europe. Meghan’s divorce was no longer a concern, as it had been for the previous American to marry a royal, and neither was her biracial heritage.
Any possible uncertainty about the outcome of this meeting lay not with Meghan, but with the man she wanted to marry. He is the one who has been if not on trial then under close scrutiny.
If he had come to see Grannie a few years earlier, when he had an unenviable reputation as an angry drunk with poor judgment, it would have been doubtful that the Queen would have agreed to him marrying a divorced mixed-race American actor. “It would have been a grim, unhappy confrontation,” observed a former senior royal official, just as it was when she had to put her foot down in 1955 over her sister, Margaret, marrying Group Captain Peter Townsend, who was divorced. If anything, Harry’s transformation over the last few years has, together with the popular union between Prince William and Kate Middleton, secured the future of the monarchy. Harry’s impeccable behavior when representing the Queen abroad and his commitment to the Invictus Games have been shrewdly watched and assessed by the sovereign. As a courtier told me: “The queen trusts her grandsons. She has confidence in them in a way that she never has had with her eldest son. They have really established themselves as being in touch with the public. William and Harry have star quality, believable and authentic heirs to the monarchy.”
The final seal of approval came from the queen’s corgis. This normally irascible breed were friendly and welcoming when Meghan entered the queen’s sitting room. As Prince Harry said, somewhat ruefully: “I’ve spent the last thirty-three years being barked at; this one walks in, absolutely nothing.” They lay at her feet and wagged their tails. “Very sweet,” Meghan later told interviewer Mishal Husain.
During their one-hour meeting, Meghan witnessed at firsthand the genuine respect and love Harry feels for his grandmother. “She’s an incredible woman,” she said afterward.
With a flurry of barks and a final curtsy, Harry and Meghan bade their farewells, swiftly leaving the palace before the royal gossip factory was able to get into gear. Job done.
Not quite. Meghan still had to speak to her elusive father and bring him up to speed. Since his retirement, Tom Senior had become more reclusive, heading to Mexico, where he had bought an apartment in the popular beach town of Rosarito, ten miles south of the American border. He changed his mobile phones frequently and even moved on from one apartment because the widow of the recently deceased owner was becoming “too friendly.”
When she finally reached her father, she told him her news, warning him that the media would try to speak with him when the engagement was announced. Of course, he had already spoken with Prince Harry, so he knew what was coming down the pike. At some point Harry had asked the voice at the other end of the mobile phone for permission to marry his daughter. Not quite as traditional as tea with the Queen had been, but then there was not much about this romance that conformed to the conventional royal playbook.
But now that the ring was on the finger, there were other more delicate family matters Meghan needed to raise with her father. She made it clear that she wanted him to walk her down the aisle and give her away. It wa
s a big ask. Meghan realized just how shy and self-effacing he was and knew that appearing in such a public setting would be an excruciating ordeal for him.
Furthermore, it was by no means certain that, even if he wanted, he could walk the length of St. George’s Chapel. Memories of the day Lady Diana Spencer painstakingly walked down the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral with her father, Earl Spencer, who had suffered a severe stroke, struggling manfully to stay by her side, came flooding back. Physically Tom Senior was not in good shape, suffering from high blood pressure and a dodgy knee. Not only did he walk with a pronounced limp, but he was also in constant pain. Doctors had told him that he needed a full knee replacement. Not only was he considerably overweight, but he was a heavy smoker. His surgeon would not operate before he had quit smoking and lost a few pounds.
From his home in Grants Pass, Oregon, Tom Junior could feel his father’s agonizing dilemma. “My father worships the ground Meghan walks on. I know how proud he will be to take her arm and walk her down the aisle. But I also know how terrified he will be. If he doesn’t go, he will regret it for the rest of his life. He has to know that he is not representing his family he is representing America.”
If the walking down the aisle was a concern, the very thought of making a speech at the wedding breakfast in front of the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, and the rest of the royal family made him half-faint in trepidation. Meghan told him that if he felt unable to speak, she had no problem giving the speech herself. In any case, the bride’s speech is becoming an accepted fixture at regular weddings; why not make it a tradition at royal weddings?
There was also the tricky subject of her wider family. During a difficult phone conversation with her father, she told him that she didn’t want her half brother or half sister, Tom Junior and Samantha (formerly Yvonne) Grant, attending the wedding.
While her father may have felt that Meghan was placing him in a difficult position, it should not have come as any surprise. Ever since her romance with Prince Harry was revealed, Samantha had been sniping from the sidelines, doubtless jealous that her sister was enjoying the spotlight and wanting to garner attention for herself. She even used Tom Senior’s health to criticize her half sister, arguing that Meghan should pay back the money he had spent on her college education so that her father could afford the best possible health care.
Samantha and Meghan had never gelled as children; as adults they could have been living on different planets. Meghan wanted nothing to do with her. Several months before, for example, Meghan had given her father her new cell number, which he quite innocently had passed on to Samantha. In turn she sent Meghan a text saying that it had been years since they had spoken but if she wanted to resume the connection she would be happy to advise and guide her. Meghan was furious. Samantha was the last person she wanted advice from. Meghan’s mother, Doria, called her ex-husband and tore into him, telling him never to give out Meghan’s private telephone number again. “Well, she is her sister,” replied Tom Senior sheepishly.
With both families alerted, it was time for the happy couple to take a public bow. Their engagement was announced at ten a.m. on Monday, November 27, 2017. The news was released from Clarence House, the home of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. Harry’s father expressed his “delight” at the engagement. The bulletin continued: “His Royal Highness and Ms. Markle became engaged in London earlier this month. Prince Harry has informed Her Majesty The Queen and other close members of his family. Prince Harry has also sought and received the blessing of Ms. Markle’s parents.”
Within minutes, dozens of reporters, photographers, and TV crews assembled outside Kensington Palace for a photo call at the Sunken Garden. At two in the afternoon, on a bitterly cold, windy day, the happy couple emerged and walked arm in arm down to the side of the pond. Harry looked more nervous than his bride, and Meghan stroked his arm reassuringly. They answered a couple of shouted questions, and the prince told the throng that he knew she was the one the first time they met and described himself as “thrilled, over the moon.” Meghan smiled and said they were “so very happy.”
As they walked away, Meghan rubbed his back as if to say, “well done.” The couple walked arm in arm back to the palace for a twenty-minute interview with BBC reporter and campaigner Mishal Husain. The forty-four-year-old mother of three, who had been named Broadcaster of the Year at the 2015 London Press Club Awards, first caught Meghan’s eye for her campaign to win equal pay for women working at the BBC, and she and Harry handpicked her to undertake their engagement interview.
The televised conversation began with the couple describing the moment the prince proposed, saying that they were in Nottingham Cottage, roasting a chicken, when he got on one knee and asked her to marry him. “Just an amazing surprise, it was so sweet and natural and very romantic,” said Meghan, who confessed that she said yes before he had finished the proposal. They recalled that they had met one another through a mutual friend on a blind date in July 2016, and after two back-to-back meetings Meghan had agreed to join him on a safari holiday in Botswana. At the time Harry had never heard of Suits or the California actor, and she admitted that she didn’t have much of an idea about Harry.
This had helped rather than hindered the development of their love affair. As Meghan observed: “Everything that I’ve learned about him I learned through him as opposed to having grown up around different news stories, or tabloids, or whatever else. Anything I learned about him and his family was what he would share with me and vice versa. So for both of us it was just a really authentic and organic way to get to know each other.” It helped to cushion the shock they both experienced with the level of media interest once the romance became public.
Nurturing their relationship had been their priority, and the couple described how they had made a promise from the start to make their long-distance relationship work. “It was just a choice, right,” said Meghan. “I think that very early on when we realized we were going to commit to each other; we knew we had to invest the time and the energy and whatever it took to make that happen.”
It helped to navigate the bumps in the road that virtually from the start the couple saw themselves as a “team” with a shared vision of how they wanted to make a positive difference in society. Their mutual commitment was, Meghan observed, “what got date two in the books.”
She recalled: “It was one of the first things we started talking about when we met was just the different things that we wanted to do in the world and how passionate we were about seeing change.”
As with his brother’s engagement interview, the spirit of their late mother hovered over the occasion. On that November day in 2010 the focus was on Diana’s own engagement ring, which William had carefully carried with him before he proposed to Kate Middleton during a holiday in Kenya. This time small diamonds from Diana’s jewelry collection decorated Meghan’s engagement ring, which was dominated by a conflict-free diamond from Botswana, the country where they fell in love. They were incorporated into Harry’s design so that she would be there to “join us on this crazy journey.”
Just as William had said in his own engagement interview, Harry, too, felt his mother’s absence on these special days. The prince was clear about how she would have responded to her American daughter-in-law. “They’d be thick as thieves, without question. I think she would be over the moon, jumping up and down, you know, so excited for me.”
Certainly there was a real sense of destiny for Harry about his romance with Meghan. As he admitted: “The fact that I fell in love with Meghan so incredibly quickly was sort of confirmation to me that everything—all the stars were aligned, everything was just perfect. It was this beautiful woman just sort of literally tripped and fell into my life, I fell into her life.”
Meghan’s engagement interview was worlds away from the shy, blushing days of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles and his comment “whatever loves means,” which skewered his romantic reputation forever. It was also differe
nt from the more formal and conventional affair when Prince William and Kate Middleton faced the cameras. Then, a visibly, and understandably, nervous Kate deferred to William in her responses. Not this time. Meghan was warm, affectionate, and supportive, more at ease with the media than her royal fiancé. “A breath of fresh air” was a common view.
The rapturous reception to the news of the engagement suggested that this indeed was a popular match and that the country, beset by Brexit angst, still loved a good romance. Naturally the Queen and Prince Philip were “delighted,” especially as the match cemented the monarchy’s acceptance for generations to come. Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge were “very excited” while the Duchess of Cornwall described Meghan as a “star.” “America’s loss is our gain,” she said.
Prime Minister Theresa May commented that the engagement marked a “time of huge celebration and excitement,” while Barack and Michelle Obama “wished them a lifetime of joy and happiness together.” The king of Twitter, President Trump, remained silent about the first American since 1937 to marry into the royal family. Meghan’s parents said they were “incredibly happy” for their daughter, while her TV father, actor Wendell Pierce, gave Harry his blessing.
As for her screen lover, Patrick J. Adams, he joked on Twitter: “She said she was just going out to get some milk.” He later added his genuine thoughts: “Your Royal Highness, you are a lucky man and I know your long life together will be joyful, productive and hilarious.” There was one victim in a day of smiles and laughter. While she had been able to bring Guy, her beagle, to London to live with her, her second dog, Bogart, a labrador-shepherd mix, was deemed too old to travel. He had been sent off to spend his final days with Meghan’s friends.
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