It was amidst this extremely dubious background that the birth of the baby was first announced on the Instagram account that the Sussexes had started the month before. The announcement was simple, stylish and effective in a ‘classy’ way as befitted the mother from Hollywood who had recently announced to someone in the presence of a deeply insulted onlooker, ‘I’m here to show ‘em how things should be done. They’re just not classy enough.’ Certainly the account was a lot more stylish than anything any other royal had hitherto thought up, and so too was the announcement. It was nothing like the dull, conventional notice posted on an easel in a plain frame later that same day behind the railings of Buckingham Palace, when the Queen and the Royal Family announced how pleased they were that the Duchess of Cambridge, later altered to Sussex, had been safely delivered of a boy, with mother and baby both doing well.
Meghan and Harry’s Instagram announcement rocked with updated glamour and contemporary chic. ‘It’s a BOY!’, the communique rang out, the white lettering of the words tastefully contrasting with the royal blue background, beneath the stylishly regal ducal coronet and the intermingled H and M initials of the couple in Meghan’s own calligraphic handwriting at the top of the page. Underneath those three dramatic words, was another, equally emphatic, and surprisingly revelatory hint of those aspects of the Sussex identity which were being highlighted: ‘Their ROYAL HIGHNESSES the DUKE and DUCHESS of SUSSEX are OVERJOYED to announce the BIRTH of their CHILD.’
To those in the know, this slick, highly-professional, hyper-glamorous and attention-grabbing presentation was only to be expected. According to Liz Brewer, socialite doyenne of the British aristocratic PR world, whose information came from someone at Buckingham Palace’s Press Office, and according to a European prince whose information came from a British royal, Meghan had flown to LA shortly after the baby’s conception with the specific objective of employing the best Instagrammers in the world. The brief she gave them was straightforward enough:
I need you to create the world’s number one Instagram account for me. It needs to end up having more followers than any other Instagram account on earth;
I want to be bigger than Diana, Princess of Wales;
I need you to make me the most famous woman in the world.
If Meghan was naive enough to think that the palace wouldn’t hear about her plans, she was mistaken. There is very little that happens in the royal world that the palace doesn’t get wind of, usually sooner rather than later. As long as she functioned within royal parameters, no one objected to her ambitions, though the feeling was that it is always safer to err on the side not being too driven, excessive ambition being somewhat suspect in royal circles since the days of Lady Macbeth and certainly something to be avoided since Charles I lost his head to the axe in 1649.
Although Meghan’s well-wishers, myself included, would have liked her to set her sights lower, she has always been astonishingly open about her objectives and ambitions, including to the professionals she briefs. As Nelthorpe-Cowne has stated, Meghan told her that she and Harry intended to ‘change the world’, which she actually interpreted as meaning that Meghan wanted to ‘rule the world’. While that might seem an exaggeration of Meghan’s aim, the admission that she and Harry felt they could change the world showed that they both had no issues with confidence and that they were eager to wield influence above and beyond what royals are expected to possess in this democratic age. She also told her media people that she wanted to break the internet, and would later on that year be disappointed when the Vogue magazine issue which she guest edited failed to achieve that objective, despite her specific instructions that her American media representatives, Sunshine Sachs, should strive to achieve that objective.
For all her forthrightness, Meghan did not seem to appreciate that articulating such ambitions, when you’re a member of a royal family, might be acceptable in the United States, but in Britain they leave the listener wondering whether you really have any understanding of what your role should be. It is no more appropriate for a royal duchess to want to break the internet, to be the most famous woman in the world, or to have the largest Instagram following, than for her to want to pose nude in Playboy magazine or become the Pope of Rome. Each ambition is equally undesirable, for the reasons which follow.
The royal world is not a platform for personal achievement or the realisation of personal ambitions, but a fully-established and functional organ of state. Popes, prostitutes and princesses should not aspire to certain degrees of recognition, for, in doing so, they denigrate their proper function and disparage the institution of which they are a part.
Once the palace were informed about Meghan’s brief to her people in LA, they naturally worried that she might inflict damage upon the monarchy as she set about achieving such contemporary and inappropriate ambitions. Nowhere in her brief had there been the typically royal concepts of duty, obligation, unsung public service, or any of the other driving forces behind the monarchy. If the information as reported back to them really was as stated by the well-placed source - and there was no reason to doubt it, as it came from an impeccable quarter - Meghan’s objectives seemed to them to be fame for fame’s sake. This was truly frightening to them, for everyone of rank and status knows that the pursuit of fame as an end in itself is invariably destructive. Partly, this is because positive publicity never gives sufficient column inches to fame-hungry people. The only thing that keeps the flame of fame flickering brightly is variability. The narrative has to have twists and turns, negativity and positivity, drama and conflict, controversy and unpredictability. Without these elements, the level of fame each individual
