Buckingham Palace announced Harry and Meghan’s engagement on the 27th November 2017. The news was greeted with genuine enthusiasm publicly. There was even more excitement than when William became engaged to Catherine Middleton. For all its overlay of tradition, British society had jettisoned snobbishness and embraced inclusiveness. Both engagements confirmed this. Catherine’s solidly middle class background and Meghan’s colour and class were seen as confirmation that the British monarchy had become like the American presidency. Anyone, irrespective of background, can aspire to it.
On the 20th April 2018, the Queen got her fondest wish when Prince Charles was named as her successor to the Headship of the Commonwealth. Several of the Commonwealth High Commissioners told me that there was little doubt that Harry’s engagement to Meghan had made the appointment easier for all the states involved.
Between the announcements of the engagement and of Charles’s appointment to succeed the Queen as Head of the Commonwealth, the most glorious cock-up concerning colour took place. Only Princess Michael of Kent, a woman universally deplored in royal circles, could have orchestrated something so pointlessly self-defeating. At the Queen’s annual luncheon party for all the members of the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace a few days before Christmas, she was photographed wearing a blackamoor brooch on her coat. She is not someone people in their right mind would aspire to emulate. She is vain and tiresomely affected. I would stake good money that she wore that brooch to garner the attention she seeks at every turn. Although she would later issue a statement claiming to be ‘very sorry and distressed for any offence caused,’ I for one could not help feeling that she had deliberately set out to knock the newcomer off the front pages: which she did. And while she did it with a flourish, it would be doing her an injustice if I did not point out that the brooch she was wearing cannot fairly have been regarded as possessing racist overtones, for it did not represent a Sub-Saharan black slave but a North African aristocrat. It was a Moretto Veneziano, as the figures are known. These originated in Venice and have been made there from the dawn of the Modern Age until today. Alberto Nardi, the Venetian jeweller who created the brooch, took strong exception to the way ignorant commentators in Britain and America jumped on the racist bandwagon to condemn an item of jewellery he had made, without even being aware of its cultural significance in its place of origin. ‘A whole lot of nonsense has been written, and I wish to defend an object that is rich in history and unique to Venice. The brooch depicts a Moorish Venetian prince.’ This was verified by the jewellery historian Anastazja Buttita, who explained, ‘The blacks in these pieces were essentially being depicted as aristocrats. And over the years, these objects became one of the city’s most important symbols, symbolizing to Venetians their openness to other cultures.’ Not only are such items not racist in origin, but they give off the most powerful message of inclusivity. Could Princess Michael have actually been conveying a positive message rather than the negative one she was accused of? If so, it would have behoved Meghan to note that it is always dangerous for public figures to ignore public misconceptions, even when they are more knowledgeable and in the right. She too would soon hurl herself into the pit of public disapproval the way the Princess Michael, who is as over-confident as Meghan and equally blind to the effect she has when choosing between her own desires and the sensitivity of others, did.
No sooner did the furore caused by Marie Christine Kent’s choice of brooch die down than Harry committed an equally injudicious faux pas. Sadly for him and for Meghan, his would have rather more devastating consequences. It began innocently enough, following a successful Christmas at Sandringham. The Queen had broken precedent. For the first time ever, a fiancée had been asked to join the Royal Family for the sacrosanct Christmas celebrations. Meghan could not say, as Diana had and Catherine could have but never did, that she was not welcomed with open arms before the wedding ring was on her finger. Not only was she treated by everyone as if she were already a member of the family, but the press had gone wild when she, Harry, William and Catherine had walked to church from the big house. The Fab Four were born that day, heightening expectations and raising Meghan’s stock exponentially. It now really looked as if she was on her way to becoming one of the world’s most famous women as well as a beloved part of the Royal Family.
On the 27th December, Harry guest edited BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He was not its first guest editor. In fact, the tradition of Christmas guest editors had begun fourteen years before. Nor was he the first royal editor. That had been Sarah, Duchess of York in 2004. William and Catherine had also been invited by BBC Radio 1 earlier in the year to speak about the Heads Together mental health campaign which they had started with Harry. This was now his opportunity to showcase ‘a range
