Little did anyone know at the time, but in refusing to join forces with Harry, the Queen and Prince Charles had triggered unforeseen consequences. Thereafter, Harry and Meghan would be looking for ways to break the back of their critics. And they didn’t care if there were constitutional consequences either, for they were in the process of working themselves into the uniquely contradictory position of being royalty when they wished to swathe themselves in that cloak, and private citizens when that mantle suited them better.
By this time, the mainstream public were beginning to pick up on some of the concerns that were feeding the rumours at grassroots level. ‘She isn’t even a good actress,’ the Nigerian who alluded to stoning said. ‘If you’ve seen Suits, you’ve seen the act. Sometimes she’s acting out a scene from one episode, sometimes another. There’s nothing real about that woman.’ I pointed out that Meghan might merely be projecting how she genuinely feels, and was silenced with, ‘Then someone ought to tell her to stop all the projecting.’ With that, I had no argument, though I could see how her admirers would be disappointed if she stopped beaming them her subliminal messages.
Matters of sartorial taste aside, the real danger was what would happen if the wider public came to believe, as a vociferous segment of the internet commentators and the press did, that Meghan was faking a pregnancy. Because the palace were alert to the danger, there were teams of people working behind the scenes to shut down some of the internet sites and shut up the more extreme commentators.
Buckingham Palace has traditionally had a very competent bureaucracy. They may be colourless compared with savvy, aggressive American media management specialists like Sunshine Sachs, but they do know their business, and they go about it quietly and efficiently. The courtiers who run the monarchy direct not only royal operations but the Royal Family itself. All royal diaries are agreed six months in advance. If the Queen is doing something in Aberdeen that warrants press attention, the remainder of the family undertakes pedestrian duties that will not make the papers but will address the needs of the community the royal is serving. The same rule applies across the board. One royal does not steal another’s thunder. Doing so undermines the whole system and defeats the long term goals of the monarchy, which are to further various initiatives in a meaningful way so that the public appreciates what is being done in its name. The only person who ever bucked that system before Meghan and Harry started to was Diana. She used to compete, at first with her husband, then, in the run-up to her separation and thereafter until her death, with the entire Royal Family. ‘She delighted in causing discomfort up at Balmoral,’ the diarist Richard Kay said, giving away only part of the reason for her mischievous behaviour. The truth is, Diana liked being the centre of attention. She was also competitive and addicted to the attention she got from the press, and the only time she was satisfied was when she rather than any of the other royals was the item of the day.
Although no one at the palace yet suspected that Meghan might be Diana’s reincarnation, they did feel that there were discomfiting resonances between the two women. Both were troublesome in that they did as they pleased, refused to take direction, and had a talent for whipping up controversy. ‘The bad old days are back,’ a courtier said during the pregnancy. ‘We waste so much time dealing with the fallout from all that’s going on around the Duchess of Sussex that some of us have time for little else. There’s a sinking feeling of déjà vu.’
One consolation was that the rumours surrounding the falsity of Meghan’s pregnancy would come to a natural end once she gave birth. There was an established regimen for royal pregnancies and births, and these would silence the doubters. Royal mothers-to-be invariably used Court gynaecologists and obstetricians, leading men in their field whose reputations were beyond reproach. There would therefore be no doubt as to who was carrying the baby, or who had given birth to it, once it was delivered so transparently.
The birth of royal babies used to require the presence of the Home Secretary, who would remain in attendance throughout labour until the infant was born. This custom had arisen following the birth in 1688 of James, Prince of Wales, son of King James II and Queen Mary of Modena. Because James II and his consort were Roman Catholic, once they had a son to supplant the
