And where the wedding was concerned, she knew exactly what she wanted, and they both intended that she get it.
‘Harry and Meghan were throwing their weight around in the most extraordinary fashion,’ a royal said. ‘Their conduct did not bode well for the future.’
‘It’s our wedding and we want it done our way,’ Meghan said, but since Harry had little or no input beyond repeating the mantra, ‘What Meghan wants, Meghan gets,’ no one was deceived into thinking that her use of the plural first person pronoun meant anything but the singular. The invitation list was the first of the many traditions that were jettisoned at Meghan’s command with Harry’s full backing. Hundreds of people associated with charities were invited, which ratified their credentials as humanitarians who think in terms of charity. They also weighted the list heavily in favour of every celebrity she had ever crossed paths with and was still speaking to. Some she had barely met, others only two or three times, but she and Harry asked them all and they all came, adding glamour to the occasion while embarking on what Andrew Morton observed was a clever career move, for once they had been asked, they were thereafter in the couple’s debt.
Marrying into the British Royal Family was not an everyday occurrence. It was a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. For Meghan’s family, it was more than that: it was a source of great pride that had turned into worldwide humiliation. Prince Philip especially understood how painful it is when relations are not asked. His three sisters had been excluded from his own wedding because their husbands had been German officers during the war, which had ended only two years before his wedding. This had caused him pain and Princess Gottfried von Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the Margravine of Baden, and Princess George of Hanover tremendous embarrassment. Meghan and Harry, however, were indifferent to the effect of their actions upon her family. As far as they were concerned, she had a new family, one which he was now gravitating towards. This was not the royals, who by this time they were already resiling away from despite Harry’s comment over the radio that she had bonded so well with his relations that they were substitutes for the family she had never had. No, this new family was the many showbiz or celebrity-related representatives from a life which seemed to have begun, with few exceptions, only after Meghan had gained her role in Suits. This new family included what Meghan and Harry called her Suits ‘family’, all of whom were out in force at the wedding, as well as friends like Jessica Mulroney, Markus Anderson, Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King, and Amal and George Clooney.
To everyone at the palace, Harry and Meghan’s management of the invitation list seemed inappropriate as well as dangerous. Royal and aristocratic weddings are not occasions for the bride and groom to ratify their humanitarian credentials before the eyes of the world or to include celebrities who are actually thrilled to be admitted to royal circles and are not ordinarily asked to such family occasions but to other, less personal, events, like premieres and parties. Weddings are meant to be celebrations of union, with all branches of the bride’s and groom’s families being asked, as well as all close or longstanding friends. By excluding her family, Meghan and Harry had not only harmed them, but themselves as well, Meghan herself especially, for the conclusion most people would draw would be that Meghan more than Harry bore primary responsibility for the exclusion. The one thing the palace didn’t want was someone entering the Royal Family as damaged goods, but as Harry and Meghan’s wedding was not a state occasion, no one at the palace had the right to intervene.
There was another dimension to Meghan and Harry’s approach which also seemed destructive. To justify the exclusion of Meghan’s relations, they had also neglected to invite what one royal, who expected to be asked and was not, called ‘the wider cousinage’. This caused no end of offence, all of which was totally unnecessary, especially as how there were hundreds of available seats in the chapel. Although everyone put a good face on it, it rankled. The Duke and Duchess of Kent’s grandchildren Lady Amelia Windsor, Lord Downpatrick and Lady Marina Windsor were but three of the many glaring omissions. So too were all the European royals. Although Harry’s marriage was not an affair of state, hence why no heads of state or government were asked, it was a family affair. Everyone in royal circles knows how important such occasions are as bonding exercises. On a human level, they were even more important to the royals who had lost their thrones. Such occasions as marriages and big birthdays are a rare form of ratification of their once-glorious and now lost status. Confusing family occasions with social networking events or career moves not only deprived these people of a meaningful opportunity, but also led many to conclude that Harry and Meghan were being heartless.
What was also viewed as cruel was the way some of Harry’s oldest and most loyal friends were brushed aside. They had been true to a fault. People like Tom ‘Skippy’ Inskip had taken flack for Harry when he had been caught taking drugs. Tom had allowed the press to pillory him unfairly, accepting blame that was rightly Harry’s, remaining silent to save his friend’s skin. It was beyond belief that Tom
