Another complaint about the newlyweds was that they had become heavy going. Conversation was no longer the pleasure it had been before they had discovered each other and set out on the journey to reshape the world. Gone were Harry’s light banter, Meghan’s giggly wit and girly charm. On the few occasions they actually gave anyone space to enter their magic circle, their conversation was intense and leaden. While Meghan could still be personable with her own friends, with Harry’s she created a chasm of disinterestedness deepened by her flamboyant wokeness, and he mirrored her.
To people who knew Harry’s parents, Meghan was doing with their son and his friends a variation of what Diana had done with Charles and his. Diana had been a metropolitan babe who had found country life boring. Charles and his friends had been country-lovers. Although she was more of a naturalist than Diana - for instance, she used to fish with her father - Meghan was so pointedly anti-everything that the royal world represented, that people feared that she intended to detach Harry from his roots. And he seemed to be so completely under her spell that there was no point in trying to intervene, especially as how everyone who had previously tried to intercede had been frozen out.
‘Everyone who cares about him simply hopes that Harry won’t be too hurt if things go wrong, which, by the look of it, has become an increasingly likely scenario,’ one of his friends said.
The old Harry had ceased to exist and a new Harry had taken his place, but, despite the reservations his circle now had about the effect his marriage was having upon him, in the wider world, he and Meghan had become global superstars. She was revered as a style icon while he was admired for being the down-to-earth charmer that he had once been. Word had not yet got out that his personality had undergone a change. Her untraditionally British and, in British terms unsophisticated, demeanour was not apparent to her admirers, even while style arbiters such as Nicky Haslam started to condemn her as ‘common’. This was ironic, because Meghan considered herself ’classy’, little realising that in Britain anyone who is too self-consciously ‘classy’ is automatically dismissed as being anything but.
It is possible that Meghan did not appreciate that she was behaving in a way that would trigger opposition. Display of willingness to be harmonious as opposed to the overt assertiveness which some interpreted as aggressiveness, would have won her supporters instead of gaining her detractors. Softly softly might have bought her and everyone around her time to make the adjustments necessary to a positive accommodation, but, by declaring that she intended to ‘hit the ground running’ when she became royal, then doing it with the expectation that everyone should appreciate her different ways, without her appreciating that others too had a point of view and there might be room for mutual respect rather than everyone having to defer to her superiority, made waves where a more gentle approach would have created something more constructive.
Meghan is indubitably strong-minded and upfront about her beliefs. She expects others to admire them and brooks no opposition. She is also a very sensitive person who basks in the appreciation of others and withdraws when she fails to get it. Then she nurses her wounded feelings as she takes deep and personal offence at not receiving what she regards as her just deserts. Someone who knows her well told me, ‘If you don’t appreciate her, she doesn’t waste time trying to win you over. She excises you. She has no time to waste on what she calls naysayers. She’s on a mission to change the world, as she sees it for the better, and to achieve what she wants, and if you don’t sympathise or agree with her, she can’t be bothered to waste her time or energy on you.’ While her supporters regard this as proof of her strength and integrity, such decisiveness does not always make for a smooth ride. By ‘hitting the ground running’ at the time of her marriage, she was not only asserting her postures, positions and beliefs, but also managed to get the backs of many people up by riding roughshod over them. Forces of nature who advocate change and militantly declare their intention to alter scenarios others might want to remain intact inevitably face a backlash. It would not be long in coming as Hurricane Meghan, as she was sometimes called at the palace, blew through the corridors of power with Harry’s full backing.
Within months of their marriage, it was apparent to both Harry and Meghan that their desire to initiate profound change was not being received with the enthusiasm they had imagined it would be. Meghan’s naiveté as to how real power actually works amongst institutions which possess it, and Harry’s expectations were not so easily explained away. He had spent his whole life as a royal. He should have understood that reform cannot be sudden or dramatic, and certainly not as frequent or ‘impactful’ as they now both desired it to be. Impactful was one of Meghan’s favourite concepts, and he had adopted it along with her zeal for constant change. Neither of them could see that constant and relentless alteration had the potential to precipitate instability. They regarded themselves as humanitarians who should, on a daily basis, seek out areas that needed improvement, shine a light upon them, and set about implementing the modifications they deemed
