Of course, not everyone everywhere shared this viewpoint. There have always been, and presumably always will be, people who are racist. They will not have been happy with Meghan’s inclusion in the Royal Family. But they were sufficiently few and far between to be of no consequence. Moreover, it is a crime in Britain to discriminate against someone on the grounds of race. Hate crimes are rigidly enforced by the authorities, so the racists will have found themselves baying into the abyss, ignored by all but a few like-minded bigots. In fact, they were both voiceless and powerless and would never become a factor, though their existence would confuse the American press into thinking that Meghan was a victim of racism in Britain when nothing could have been further from the truth.
It is fair to say that, the racist minority aside, practically everyone welcomed the marriage, mostly on racial grounds, and no one at Court wanted the behind-the-scenes difficulties to leak out, lest they colour the public’s opinion and acceptance of Meghan. Her father’s non-attendance was a blip which was managed as well as it could have been, and the day itself went off without a hitch. According to Nielsen Social, 29 million Americans and 18 million Britons watched the wedding, while the BBC estimated that 1.9 billion people tuned in worldwide.
That night, the bride ratified her style credentials by wearing a classical white silk crepe halter neckline evening dress by Stella McCartney to the black tie reception at Frogmore House. Situated on the Crown Estate, Windsor, in Windsor Great Park, it is a five minute drive from the castle. Harry drove Meghan there in an ice-blue E-Type Jaguar which coordinated perfectly with the large emerald cut aquamarine ring belonging to his mother Diana: this Meghan wore on her right hand. It was, according to people who attended it, a great party, with a wonderful atmosphere, and the couple seemed very much in love. ‘Not since the early days of Prince and Princess Michael’s marriage have I seen a royal couple so in love,’ a friend said. ‘They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. It really was very touching.’
One would have hoped, after such a brilliant start, that the couple would continue to be as feted and admired as they were on their wedding day. Everyone I knew was rooting for them. They even made the mature and, some would say, ‘woke’ choice of not going on honeymoon immediately. Meghan and Harry both let it be known that they were deeply committed to their work, which would revolve around charitable and humanitarian activities. Being in their mid to late thirties, and, having been living together prior to the marriage, they hardly had need of a honeymoon the way a young couple starting out life together would.
Yet, four days after the wedding, I was having dinner at the house of an influential aristocrat with impeccable palace connections when I heard a report that filled me with foreboding. The day before, Meghan had joined Harry and Prince Charles and Camilla at a garden party at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the Prince of Wales’s patronages in recognition of his 70th birthday. What had taken place then, which I will cover later on in this work, was so shocking as to lead all of us to conclude that Meghan was utterly unsuited to the role of royal duchess, and that it would be a miracle if the marriage worked out. None of us envisaged that she and Harry would be resourceful enough to find a way of moving beyond their royal status and that they would remain a couple while forging a non-royal way of life in the United States of America. But if what had happened was true - and it was - there was little doubt that she was no more suited to royal life than Angelina Jolie would be to competitive boxing.
It was hardly surprising that they would lurch from one controversy to another, in the light of Meghan’s unsuitability to royal life, and Harry’s blanket support for her. His failure to ever enlighten her as to where she was going wrong only ensured that she went from unintentional blunder to unintentional blunder. For every foot that they put right, they put four feet wrong. To those of us who wanted Meghan to remain in Britain as a fully-fledged member of the Royal Family, sprinkling her gold dust as she went about her royal duties and furthered the cause of racial unity throughout the country and the Commonwealth, this was a tragic outcome which could so easily have been averted had Harry enlightened his wife rather than supporting her in a path that would ultimately cause both of them misery and result in their departure. All he needed to do was handle things slightly differently. He could easily have been more instructive, making her aware that she was creating antagonism when it was obvious that she wanted approbation. Then the outcome could have been so different.
As it was, Meghan’s conduct was inadvertently creating so much friction and attracting such criticism that it was soon leading the couple and their supporters to question whether the basis was racist. This was not a happy state of affairs for the couple or for any monarchist, though it would prove to be a welcome bludgeon for republicans, anti-monarchists and left-wingers who want to change the social order.
Despite this negative outcome, the problems arising out of Meghan’s failure to adjust to the British way
