Within days of that story being published, the prevailing opinion in the British press was that Meghan had not only got her friends to purvey an absolutely false picture of her father and of her relationship with him, but that she had done so in the belief that he loved her so much he would never expose her. The inconsistencies and plain, plumb incredible premise of the People story was not lost on a more incisive and questioning audience in Britain, though they seem to have eluded the American readers and, even if not them, People magazine. The suspicion was that Meghan had deliberately orchestrated the whole story to deflect criticism of her conduct by courting public sympathy. While the American public might not appreciate that five friends of a royal duchess would never behave as they had, without her connivance, the British public was only too aware of how public figures manipulate the press, and had no doubt as to who had caused it to be written, and why. When Meghan failed to dissociate herself from the story, her silence confirmed the suspicion that she had been complicit. Had she not been, she would not only have carpeted her friends, but would also have dumped them. Time would tell whether the more cynical viewpoint was justified, but in the meantime Meghan’s admirers, especially in America, viewed any support for Thomas Markle Sr as yet more evidence that she was being bullied.
As the year progressed and so too did the couple’s own goals, Meghan and Harry found themselves more and more trapped by the exclusionary way they were dealing with those who disagreed with them. All royals need No Men. In a situation such as theirs, the advice was simple. If they wanted to avoid controversy, avoid controversial actions. Do not encourage friends to brief sympathetic publications like People magazine, and if you haven’t, take steps to dissociate yourself from the story and restore what little dignity had been left to your father, rather than colluding with your five friends’ stripping him of its remnants.
The British rebel against press manipulation in a way the Americans don’t. Meghan and Harry should have known that the immutable law whereby each action has an equal and opposite reaction applied as much to the press as to physics. While Harry and Meghan had no recollection of how his mother used to brief the press herself when she did not get her friends to do so on her behalf, British journalists had only too vivid recall on the subject. Meghan’s friends providing America with her side of the falling out with her father might convince readers on that side of the Atlantic that she was being protected by her friends against a bullying press in Britain, but in Britain the view was that she had simply taken a leaf out of her late mother-in-law’s manual of press manipulation. Rather than being convinced of her victimhood, they were now more convinced than ever that she was a pro-active manipulator who was using the press in exactly the same way that Diana had done.
Meghan now showed everyone why Prince Charles’s nickname of Tungsten fitted the strength of character her friends and foes both acknowledge she possesses. Harder than nails, tougher than boots, and anything but malleable, tungsten can withstand most pressures without buckling. Someone, who has known her for a long time and spoke to me under an assurance of anonymity, explained that ‘all those years of rejection [when Meghan was trying to make it] taught her to hang in there, to believe in herself, to ignore what anyone else says and stick to her guns. It took her years to make it, but she stayed true to her vision of herself. She’s doing the same thing now. She thinks the palace crew are a bunch of no-hope suckers. All she needs to do is stay true to her vision and everything will come right in the end.’
It is hardly surprising that Meghan would, with a belief like that, hold her line no matter how rough the ride was becoming. Her track record also showed that she had a real talent for turning everything, whether it be an opportunity, a setback, or anything in between, to her advantage. This would become more and more apparent as she and Harry pulled further and further away from their royal moorings. In the meantime, there could be no doubt, from the comments they both made about how inept the palace were at exploiting their undoubted gifts to their full advantage, that they both disdained the advice and opinions of ‘the palace crew’.
From the disdained crew’s point of view, the issues looked radically different. To them, there were no relevant analogies between an actress stubbornly waiting for her big break and a royal duchess who had started out her royal life with the attitude that she knew better than they did what was in the monarchy’s best interests, was persisting in denigrating the wisdom and experience of advisors who have been in the game longer than she had, was stirring up unnecessary controversy to the detriment of her royal position, and who continued to let them know that she had nothing to learn from
