As for Harry, I doubt that he will persist in sharing his suffering with the world except as and when it engenders the response they both require. He will doubtless come up with other strings to his bow as he sings for his supper and plays a tune that his and Meghan’s admirers want to hear. You can only share your grief so often before it becomes a bore. Moreover, Harry’s grief accounts for only a part of his mental health issues, as one royal told me. ‘Harry blames his mother’s death for things that have nothing to do with it. He’s not overly bright and the fact is, Diana messed him up from the word go by spoiling him rotten. She refused to acknowledge his place in the scheme of things, just as she refused to acknowledge her own. Many of his underlying problems have been due to this lack of boundaries. He’s never going to be healthy until he faces the facts. Personally, I don’t think he has the brainpower (to do so).’ There is, of course, another way of looking at Diana’s legacy. By encouraging Harry to believe that he, as a human being, was special, she released him from the bondage of his position and enabled him to function outside of the royal world. It took Meghan’s influence to show him how he could establish his own platform outside of the royal box, but he has been empowered by his mother as well as by his wife, and will make his mark in the world in a way he could never have done without their input.
The turn Harry has taken under Meghan’s influence is instructive. Prior to meeting her and becoming so empowered under her ministrations that he now feels that they are such potent forces that they can change the world, he used to have a degree of self-doubt born of the awareness that he was not a genius. Thanks to her confidence in herself and her encouragement that he shouldn’t let himself be ‘limited’ by all the ‘crap he was brought up to believe in’, he seems to have shed these inhibitions and now accepts her premise that they are both a lot brighter than the jeremiads who preach caution and the value of boundaries. They believe that the only thing they have to fear is fear itself, and since each of them is fearless in his and her own way, together they make a fearsome combination.
The boundlessness that Harry and Meghan share must be very exciting. It must also make for some amazing prospects for them to consider. Meghan’s boundlessness, unlike Harry’s, was inculcated from an early age. She was brought up to believe, especially by her father, that she is a force to be reckoned with and that she has an entitlement born, not of rank or privilege or even talent or achievement, but of her right to ‘have a voice’ by virtue of being herself. Patently, she knows her strengths, most of which are allied to determination rather than education or even information. Undeniably, her strengths are considerable. Critics such as Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne suggest that she might have so overused them that they are morphing into weaknesses. Meghan has given free rein to her desire to rule, to control, to call the shots, to achieve without the consent of others when they stand in her way or do not agree with her, as she has demonstrated time and again since she married Harry and decided to take on the royal establishment and beat them at their own game. She is firmly convinced that her way is the best way, that she is entitled to what she wants for no other reason than that she has a right to it as a result of being the individual she is, and that those who stand in her way should not be allowed to prevail. This suggests a woman who is fully empowered, who is a formidable ally as well as opponent, who should not be underestimated. Her critics say that she teeters on the brink of megalomania, that she has encouraged Harry to become more potent than is healthy for him, that he lacks her control or intellectual prowess and will therefore be more at risk than she ever will be. Potent though their strengths may be, they have aimed too high to be in a healthy place.
Meghan and Harry, however, espouse values and support positions which are popular with large swathes of people, and, as long as they continue to do so, and as long as she remains as measured and considered as she is, and as long as she persists in being the driving force in the relationship, the likelihood is that they will play the fame game successfully. Of course, this could change if she should enter politics, for there are huge differences between the fame and the political games, chief of which is that the former is mostly about front-of-house presentation, while the latter is frequently about what goes on behind-the-scenes.
Meghan’s story is instructive in how powerful supreme self-confidence can be. It might get you a place at the top table, but if it then creates such odium that you clear the room, as has happened in Britain, you’re hardly in a beneficial position. Meghan’s limitless self-confidence has so far resulted in relative wealth, approbation, and the recognition that she used to confess on her blogs that she hungered for. The royal setting was too small and restrictive for her. While her detractors might conclude that she is like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, the reality is, she saw that the setting of being a royal highness, a royal duchess, and a senior member of the most important royal family on earth, were simply too small for her ambitions and needs.
