As far as everyone in the royal circle was concerned, Meghan and Harry’s demands to be allowed to do as they pleased without very much regard for past practices did not bode well for an easy adjustment for Meghan as an individual or for them as a couple. In royal and aristocratic circles as in any other establishment, newcomers are expected to have some respect for the values and traditions of the world they are joining. This would be so whether the establishment is a company, a law firm, a television series, or anything else. Newcomers are not expected to demand fundamental changes to the lifestyle until they have had time to adjust to it and see what suits them. Everyone has quibbles over certain things, and is given latitude to ignore minor rules that are not fundamental to the existence of the institution, but the idea that someone at entry level will impose a new way of doing things on an old order is unthinkable. The idea that an establishment figure like Harry would consider it acceptable to expect everyone to fall into line as he and a newcomer like Meghan flouted tradition at every turn would never have entered into anyone’s head until it happened,, and when it did, it received the expected reaction. This is because there was a genuine conviction that the values adhered to in a royal or aristocratic lifestyle are laden with wisdom gleamed over hundreds and sometimes a thousand years of trial and error. The British actor Larry Lamb once observed to me and the late Elizabeth Steuart Fothringham, the chatelaine of two stately homes in Scotland, ‘There seems to be a rule or at least a guideline for everything in your lives, but I’ve come to realise that a lot of it makes sense. It’s the wisdom of the ages. Even the way you drink soup is practical. You scoop it up away from yourselves unlike all of us, but that’s so, if it spills, it doesn’t spill on you. I bet you’ve never realised how clever little things like that are.’
Aside from the practicality of many of the modes of behaviour, there is also the underlying code of conduct in which duty, honour, reliability, decency and all the other sterling virtues are living concepts to which one is expected to aspire. Nobility is not just a matter of rank, but a way of being, which is why one of the biggest insults in elite circles is to accuse someone of not knowing how to behave.
It therefore came as something of a surprise for Meghan to indicate, with Harry’s full backing, to many of the people she was now associating with, that she regarded their way of life, their values and their codes of conduct as way beneath hers. ‘She almost spelled it out that she was here to rescue us from our pathetic way of doing things,’ a courtier said. ‘She is so breathtakingly sure of being in the right at all times that she is beyond arrogant. I’ve never seen anyone in my life so entirely lacking in self-doubt. She is so upfront about it that she is beyond shameless. She walks into a room, takes over, tells everyone how she wants things to be, and sashays out expecting everyone to fulfill her demands. She is beyond dominance, beyond being a dominatrix. She fancies herself a force of nature, and a perfect one at that.’ And Harry considers her perfect.
One of the royals bore this out, stating, ‘She is so self-confident it’s frightening. I used to think Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) was the most self-confident person I’d ever encountered. Meghan puts her in the shade.’
It is here that we see the line going back into previous generations. Meghan is not the first of the powerful personalities to have been absorbed into the British Royal Family. The Queen Mother was the first. Admitted into the family as the Duchess of York in 1923, she was such a force of nature, so determined and strong-willed, so wily and effective an operator, that even Hitler felt compelled to describe her as ‘the most dangerous woman in Europe’. Her husband Bertie, better known to history as King George VI, was as besotted with and entranced by her as his brother David, then Prince of Wales and afterwards King Edward VIII and Duke of Windsor, was by Wallis Warfield Simpson. I knew the Duchess of Windsor slightly, but will save my comments regarding her for later. Suffice it to say that Meghan and Harry are continuing a long tradition of powerful women captivating the House of Windsor’s princes, many of whom seem to have a susceptibility for placing their fate in the hands of these women, each of whom has been treated as the Delphic Oracle by her prince. All three were frankly ambitious, but only two of them actually ended up getting what she wanted, the third living out her worst nightmare.
With hindsight, it is obvious that Meghan had an agenda where her wedding was concerned. She wanted it to be the most beautiful and glamorous occasion. It must be the perfect setting for her introduction to the world at large. It would establish her as a beautiful, desirable, ‘classy’ woman of style and taste, as someone who had everything, every virtue, from superficial style and beauty to profound depth of character. She was a jewel that the Royal Family was lucky to have in its Crown and the world must see this. She did not want any of her family, with
