Although there was a similar lack of congeniality between Charles and Diana and Tom and Doria, both couples had found a way to navigate around the shoals of disappointment to the extent that their children were able to have good relationships with both parents. Superficially, both sets of parents might have aimed for an absence of overt hostility, but only the Markles were successful in maintaining this consistently. This was largely due to Diana’s emotional state. If she was happily distracted by a lover, she and Charles would have a relatively civilised, indeed settled, relationship. Sometimes it was even affectionate, in the way a brother and sister who are not particularly close but have a basic fondness for each other, would behave towards each other. This was especially true throughout the second half of the eighties, when Diana’s affair with James Hewitt was flourishing. However, whenever her love life was not satisfactory, she would turn a fully loaded fusillade on Charles and blow serenity out of the water.
At times like these, everything was his fault. He had ruined her life by being the man he was and not being the man she had wanted him to be. But for him, her life would have been perfect. The scenes were traumatic for all concerned, including the children, for, while Charles was non-confrontational and would do everything in his power to avoid an argument, Diana was the antithesis. When she was spoiling for a fight, she made sure she got one and that everyone knew about it. She would scream the house down. She would be on the rampage for hours. She would hurl abuse and objects and always reduce herself to tears of frustration and hysteria. Because Diana was never faithful to any one lover, including James Hewitt and Hasnat Khan, the two men she later claimed she was truly in love with prior to Dodi Fayed, and because she was always on the lookout for the perfect man who would make her life complete, her love life was volatile even when it was relatively settled. There was always an unpredictable element as to what would set her off, for the triggers had nothing to do with her husband or even her lover’s behaviour, but her inner need to feel loved: and to feel that that love was something she could rely upon. Always careful to direct her eruptions in her husband’s rather than her lovers’ direction, this did not make for a stable or happy atmosphere at home. Then, when things settled down, she would revert to being serene, accommodating Diana who understood that she had to remain married to Charles and the best way forward was for them to continue leading separate but civilised existences, he with his mistress, she with her lover.
As Diana approached thirty, however, she began to question why she had to remain married to Charles. She was frank about wanting a loving marriage and a daughter. This introduced a whole new level of volatility into her family life. No longer was the trigger solely when she was dissatisfied with her love life. Now, whenever she was so satisfied with it that she fantasised about divorcing her husband and marrying whichever of the lovers she wanted to marry at that moment - the main candidates were James Hewitt, Oliver Hoare, and Hasnat Khan - she set about tearing the place apart in her quest for her liberty.
Diana had an advantage over Charles that neither Tom nor Doria had over each other but which Meghan shares with Diana. Both women, from early childhood, were products of broken homes. Both learnt from an early age how to navigate between opposing factions, how to play Peter off against Paul so that they would get what they wanted. Both were soft and sweet but both were also tough beneath the ostensibly vulnerable exterior. Both had developed the tactical abilities unique to the children of broken homes. They had learnt at an early age how to palliate, negotiate, and use whatever tools worked well for them, to achieve their goal: whatever that goal might be.
Although Meghan was brought up in a more superficially peaceable environment, Diana, for all her volatility, was a loving and obliging mother. She was also the ultimate authority figure in the Wales nuclear family. She was insistent that her children would grow up to be spirited. She decreed that they would not be so disciplined, the way other royal children were, that they would have the spontaneity drained out of them. Charles was not allowed to interfere and there was never any prospect of the Queen intervening.
Although titular head of the family, Elizabeth II, known in the family as Lilibet, was not its de facto head. That was the Duke of Edinburgh, whose role was consistently challenged and often undermined by Lilibet’s powerful mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Lilibet was therefore used to two dominant figures in her immediate family, her husband and her mother, neither of
