Although it was not tactically wise for Harry and Meghan to admit that they too liked the lifestyle of the super-rich - he has gone to some pains on several occasions to explain away his use of private ‘planes as necessary for the protection of his wife and child, as if they are any safer on a private plane than they would be on a commercial flight - the reality is that both of them - she especially - are like just about everyone else. They enjoy the delights of that way of life. And while he displayed no interest in it until she came into his life, her frank lust for the best, richest, grandest, most sumptuous and comfortable that the world has to offer was already an established feature of her personality long before they met.
Prior to becoming a duchess, Meghan was completely frank about her appreciation of the finer things of life. On her blog The Tig she dedicated much time and space into honing the joys of wealth, luxury, and fine living. She also displayed how willing she was to enjoy the simpler pleasures of life as well. In an interview with Vanity Fair, she even advanced the theory that ‘most things can be cured with either yoga, the beach or a few avocados.’
Nowhere in her past writings nor her subsequent conduct did Meghan indicate possessing the attitude of a Duchess of Gloucester, a Countess of Wessex or a Princess Alexandra, all of whom are classically royal princesses joyfully and charmingly fulfilling each year hundreds of unglamorous royal engagements which never make the newspapers, but which nevertheless reward ordinary men and women for their civic service. These women embrace the dullness that Meghan was so eager to avoid during her first public engagement as a royal, when she suggested leaving the Buckingham Palace garden party after fifteen minutes. These royal women are in tune with royalty’s need to acknowledge the efforts of ordinary people apolitically, and to do so in environments not deemed newsworthy by the press or worthy of Instagram postings. It is understandable why an emotive activist like Meghan had no interest in doing the bread and butter stuff that has no emotional reward and will never make it into the papers or onto the net. Diana did not want to like doing bread and butter stuff either, and at the first opportunity, she ceased doing it. So Harry had a precedent which made Meghan’s distaste for the mundane acceptable to him, and though he resisted acceptance at first, once the marriage got underway her deep unhappiness at having to do things she didn’t want to reached him, and he gradually began to support her position of what one courtier calls ‘dereliction’.
That is not to say that Meghan is lazy. She is not. But, like Diana, she prefers the dramatic stuff. She understands how important glamorous photo ops are to her legion of followers, but she also relishes popping into soup kitchens and visiting survivors of disasters such as Grenfell Tower or encouraging women who are struggling against domestic violence. She is wonderful at letting them know that she feels their pain and always leaves those she has visited with a smile on their faces.
Like Diana, Meghan’s feels that her talents are unique. She has been as vociferous as her mother-in-law was in making everyone know that her natural gifts should not be wasted on the ordinary activities which she dismissed as ‘petty stuff’. She indubitably had some excellent ideas, such as creating a fundraising cookbook for the survivors of that disastrous fire, but at Buckingham Palace it was an accepted fact of life that the bread-and-butter duties which Sophie Wessex and the eighty-something year old Alexandra were happy to do was essential for all royals, Meghan included. She could not expect to cherry pick her way through royal tasks, dumping the boring ones on the other royal women while reserving only the emotionally-satisfying and glamorous ones for herself.
The reality is, anybody who isn’t cut out for the meat and potatoes business of everyday royal life, will struggle with the mundanity of political life as well. Should Meghan have even a passing chance of achieving her goal of becoming President of the United States of America, she will have to learn to take the rough with the smooth, the dull with the exciting, the boring with the stimulating, and not expect that she can somehow be spared the onerous bits while always benefiting from the gratifying highs. She might well succeed in the mixed commercial and humanitarian lifestyle that she has opted for - all leavened with much downtime with Harry, Archie and their friends, for she has always liked her pleasures, which is one of the reasons why she was happy to spend hours shooting the breeze with film crews while waiting for her three minutes of screen time - but a brightly-shining star like her will never succeed either as a royal or a politician unless she finds a way to tolerate the ordinary, unexciting, unemotional, dull requirements of life such as lunches with mayors, untrumpeted visits to worthy institutions, and the momentary meetings and greetings with countless strangers who will gain a high from meeting the luminary they admire, while she, the brightly shining star, will not.
Despite her failure to adjust to the royal world, Meghan has undoubtedly been successful in other areas. This success came about because she acted the part ascribed to her with a remarkable degree of élan. But she also believes it’s not enough to survive: ‘You must thrive.’ And since she didn’t like the lines or the limitations of the role that were being given to her, she did a
