Royalty is not known for its surprises, its predictability and reassuring lack of Eureka moments being two of the features its supporters find so welcome in this age of hype and unpredictability. Glamorous to a fault, but in the estimation of her critics in too Tinseltown a way as opposed to the regality royalists require, Meghan was yet again in a black dress, this time a sleek, elegant, one-shoulder figure hugger from the award winning couturiere’s foreign atelier.
Her demeanour was pure Hollywood, that purveyor of glamour where bighearted immediacy cannot be bested though, to contrarians, it is a centre of artifice where everyone smilingly walks over the carcasses of their discards as they project apparently sincere hearts of gold along with equally real white veneers. Meghan could not have been more gracious or indeed loving towards Clare Waight Keller. As her friends have often said, she is a truly loving human being who never fails to give expression to her loving nature, though her critics decried her displays of affection with the jaundiced comment that they wished she could summon up something approximate for her father or the members of her husband’s family with whom she was now known to be on cool terms.
In reality, both sides had a point. Meghan had been declaring behind the scenes that she felt hemmed in by royal protocol. She thought it was ‘nonsense’, ‘cold’, ‘stiff’, and ‘inhibiting’. She wanted to be free to indulge the love she felt for people. She believed in ‘hugs’ and thought nothing was better at letting someone feel welcome than enveloping them in a huge embrace. She did not wish to be limited by dictats of how she should behave. Whether it was a friend, lover or stranger, if she wanted to show love to someone, she should be able to do it. She had made it clear that she would not be allowing ‘all that royal protocol nonsense’ to stand in the way of demonstrating how loving she was. Whether in private or in public did not matter, nor did whether she was functioning in an official or a personal capacity. Her heart was too big, her light too bright, for either to be hidden under a bushel. So she enveloped Clare Waight Keller in the most massive bear hug, all the better with which to let the critical world know that they were meanies and her display of affection signified a warmer heart and truer nature than they possessed.
Behind the scenes, Meghan had been greatly taken aback by the adverse reactions she had been generating. Like most actresses, she thrives on public acclaim and approval. The slightest criticism disconcerts her, so the level of hostility she had been receiving had rattled her to the very core of her being. Her response was to continue holding her course, projecting the image of the warm and wonderful woman she was, while also letting her friends leak stories to the press about how down-to-earth she was. Proof of this now surfaced in accounts of how she functioned as her own stylist despite being the worldwide style icon she had become, how she did her own makeup up to a professional standard even when she did not have her favourite make-up artist on hand, and how she often did her hair as well.
While such information added to her lustre with her fans, with her critics it was beside the point. They did not care about such superficialities; they were more concerned with the profundities. And, following Meghan’s appearance at the Royal Albert Hall, they had alighted upon a profundity of great importance. The Daily Express summarised this phenomenon best when it howled, Pregnant Meghan Markle shows off PROMINENT baby bump at Fashion Awards.
When Meghan had stepped out onto the stage to present the award, the hall exploding in cheers, what people noticed more than the award this latest royal was handing to the designer, or the hug she enveloped her with, or even how loving she was, was the dramatic way in which her pregnancy had progressed. In four short weeks, she had gone from flat as a pancake to what one journalist described as ‘the size of most women at seven months’.
Nor was Meghan content to let the immense and unexpected development speak for itself. It should have been obvious that she was so thrilled to be pregnant that she was mesmerised by the life within her. Being the sort of personality who must convey what she is feeling not only in word but indeed, before and after handing over the award, she clutched her belly. And continued clutching it. And clutched it some more. And some more still, her hands rooted to the bump in a display of such delight at the happy condition she found herself in, that she had to draw the whole world’s attention to it. There was something so frankly exultant about the display that it was akin to sharing a secret of which one is inordinately proud with the whole world.
Not everyone accepted such an ostentatious display in such a flattering light. To her critics, Meghan was simply confirming that she was actressy, attention-seeking, attention-demanding, and attention-creating. One fashionista told me that she had never seen such a ‘palaver’ before, and questioned whether Meghan was afraid that people would miss that she was pregnant if she didn’t clutch her belly like a lizard clinging to a tree, or did she fear it would jump off her body if she didn’t hang onto it? Some people unkindly asked whether she was so proud of having royal seed growing in her womb that she had to draw constant attention to her condition? Or was she so full of herself and her own importance that she had
