Meghan will neither have foreseen the offence she was causing, nor have realised that she was trampling on sensitivities, though in reality she and Harry were belittling staff and making them feel devalued. As far as she and Harry were concerned, she was their victim; they were not hers. How could they be, when they were there to serve her, and they had failed to do so?
What Harry ought to have known, and Meghan could not have, was that most people at Court work for ridiculously low sums. The rewards of service to the monarchy are all non-financial and what is important to them isn’t measured in practical coinage but in terms of the regard their employers and fellow employees have for one another. This was, in actuality, the clash between the straightforward transactionalism of the California way of life and the far more subtle and obtuse royal way, but it also shows why each side regarded itself as entitled to its feelings. The values and traditions of the Old World were now colliding with the requirements and expectations of the New, and though no one knew it at the time, this clash of two different and sometimes incompatible cultures would only worsen, creating problems but also opportunities for all sorts of interest groups, not the least of which were the press, various political entities, and even the couple themselves.
Before the marriage, therefore, the rumblings about Meghan and Harry’s behaviour and how they were rubbing people up the wrong way, had begun. The public, of course, remained unaware of any of this. The hope in royal circles was that Meghan was suffering from pre-wedding nerves, that Harry was playing macho man to impress his wife-to-be, but that things would settle down once they were married. That Meghan would dampen down her Californian ways and that Harry, who was rapidly alienating admirers and gaining a well-earned reputation for throwing his weight around in a wholly unacceptable manner, would revert to the right-on, lovable bloke he had been up to then. No one foresaw that Meghan and Harry were on a roll, that they would spark each other to ever greater heights, that they would not buckle to any opposition, that they regarded those who stood in their way as needlessly obstructive, and that, if they didn’t get their way, they’d decamp. Certainly no one in royal circles could ever have envisaged a scenario where, within eighteen months, female MPs, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the author Hilary Mantel would be adding their voices to those who claimed that Meghan’s failure to adjust to royal life was down to racism, while she and Harry went about moving from the restraints of royalty to the freedom of global celebrity entrepreneurism.
Throughout Britain, in particular in royal, aristocratic, media, political, populist and ethnic circles, people wanted the marriage to be a success. Although in royal and aristocratic circles there had been initial reservations about the suitability of the union when the couple first got together, owing to the celerity with which Harry and Meghan had committed themselves, and the fear that each of them might have been blinded by their desires and might not be well suited for the long haul - the last thing anyone wanted was yet another divorce - once it became apparent that Harry was determined to marry her, the whole Royal Family, and the Court, fell into line. Meghan’s virtues were focused upon, not only in terms of her undoubted intelligence and determination, but also her sweetness of manner, her charm, vivacity, sense of humour and last, but by no means least, her heritage. The fact that she was a good looking, stylish, glamorous, photogenic, mature woman with an interest in philanthropy was one thing, but what sealed things in her favour was her ancestry. Not only was she an American, and a well-educated one with a patina of sophistication, but she was also a woman of colour. The Queen, who is well known to be a wit, said to a friend, ‘Mr Corbyn will find it much more difficult to get rid of us now that Meghan’s in the family.’ This conveyed a welcome degree of truth as well as humour, for Meghan’s bi-racial identity made the monarchy both reflective and representative of multicultural, multiracial Britain in a way that a white, 37 year old, California-born actress who had been a cast member of a popular television series could never have been.
The British press and general public, as well as the political establishment, also embraced Meghan’s mixed-race heritage. There had been other mixed-race unions in other royal houses and the general feeling was that it was high time the British Royal Family caught up with their Continental cousins. The Queen of Denmark’s second son had married a Eurasian woman. The Ruling Prince of Lichtenstein’s second son had married a Panamanian-born American of colour. Prince Rainier of Monaco’s nephew had married a West Indian of colour. Two of the Archduke Geza of Austria’s sons had married three Sub-Saharan Africans. The Queen had
