One must never forget the human element. Harry is Charles’ son, William’s brother, the Queen’s grandson. They all love him. They were all fully aware that Harry would have been perfectly happy to remain as a working member of the Royal Family, involved with his charities and maintaining his military links, had he not married a woman who wanted to capitalise upon his royal status and strike out on her own with him. The words ‘financial independence’ inspired terror at the palace, for all the reasons previously articulated. No one who loved Harry believed that the desire for financial independence lay with him. He had been perfectly happy with his financial situation prior to marriage. Had he married Chelsy Davy or Cressida Bonas he would have remained content with what was on offer for a royal duke, rather than wanting to branch out and lead the life of a rich American entrepreneur. He had more than enough money for his own worldly needs as well as those of a wife who was content with the lifestyle of an ordinary royal duchess. Meghan, however, did not want that lifestyle. She didn’t want the boring bits or the hard work. She preferred the glitz and glamour of the entertainment world. In the year and a half that she and Harry had been married, they had been exposed to the A-list celebrity lifestyle of friends such as Elton John and George Clooney in a way neither of them had been before. Meghan’s appreciation of all things sybaritic had not changed since the days when she was confessing in The Tig how much she relished the perks of great wealth. She wanted that for herself, and Harry, eager as ever to please her, was prepared to go along with her ambitions.
Although none of the royals was happy with Harry and Meghan’s plan to have one foot in the royal camp in Britain, and another in the commercial market in the United States (Canada being acknowledged by all as nothing more than a convenient stepping stone), the Queen, the Prince of Wales and William were nevertheless prepared to work towards achieving a modus vivendi that would allow Meghan and Harry to leave the royal fold honourably and make their own way in the world with equal honour. They understood by this time that Meghan was a formidable personality who functioned completely differently from them. She was undoubtedly one of the strongest personalities anyone had ever encountered, as her good friend Serena Williams said while singing her praises. Backed up at all times by a husband whose mantra was ‘What Meghan wants, Meghan gets,’ the Royal Family would have no choice but to cope with the new way of functioning she and Harry were intent on creating. As Princess Margaret’s former lady-in-waiting Lady Glenconner put it, ‘Meghan didn’t stay very long because she didn’t realise that to be a royal is jolly hard work and quite boring at times. It’s not all fun and glamour. A lot if it is behind the scenes, so it’s not supposed to be flashy.’ Not only did Meghan want the glamour of a glitzier and more stimulating and exciting lifestyle, but, being a businesswoman, she wanted it to pay as well. This she and Harry intended to achieve by exploiting their royal status for financial gain while basking in the glory of royalty and burnishing the gloss with Hollywood-style celebrity without the boring business of meeting mayors and doing all the other low-key, non-newsworthy activities which are the daily chores of monarchies, but which bored Meghan as rigid as they had bored Diana.
How to reconcile what, on the face of it seemed irreconcilable was the challenge facing the royals. They were only too aware that Meghan, being American, was relished in the United States in a way that only a native royal could be. The positive response there to their stepping back had been overwhelming. Because Americans did not realise how imperative it was for the British Crown and the British people that Harry and Meghan’s departure be effected with as little damage to all concerned as could be achieved, American media coverage addressed none of the national concerns of the British. The American reports were essentially superficial, missing all the more nuanced dimensions with which the British were concerned, indeed often riding roughshod over these considerations.
There was also the misconception that Meghan had been the victim of racism and snobbishness. Snobbishness was simply ridiculous. Sophie Rhys-Jones and Catherine Middleton had also been middle class girls, and they had successfully made the transition to royal, so Meghan’s equally middle class background could not be the problem. Nor was racism. In fact, Meghan’s race had militated in her favour, so it was a cause of grievance throughout Britain that the fulsome welcome she had been given initially could be converted through ignorance of what had really gone wrong into accusations of racism against any of the many segments of the populace who had welcomed Meghan with open arms and hearts. Her failure to settle happily in Britain lay not with her race, but with her refusal to adjust to a new way of life: one whose lack of financial reward had left her distinctly unimpressed.
It should have been a simple matter for people on both sides of the Atlantic to acknowledge that a mature woman like Meghan, set in her ways and happy with herself, was almost inevitably
