The palace had been down this route before and they had no desire to do so again. Diana, Princess of Wales had been a fame junkie. If a day went by when she was not in the news, she could become depressed and find some way of inserting herself back into the narrative. At the very moment that she was bemoaning how the press were pursuing her, how she could get no surcease from their unwanted attentions, and how no one must let the press know that she would be attending this or that event, she herself would violate her own privacy. There is a very entertaining description, in former Conde Nast International president Nicholas Coleridge’s memoir The Glossy Years, of Diana attending a luncheon at Vogue House under the most secretive of conditions. As Coleridge is walking her out to her car at the end of the meal, they are papped. He wonders who on earth could have betrayed their trust. Upon making enquiries, he discovers that Diana herself had rung up the press to inform them that she would be leaving Vogue House at such and such a time.
There were many different variations on this theme, several of which were known to Buckingham Palace, if only because Diana tried just about every trick in the book to ensure that she remained a figure of interest to the press. She was so resourceful that her tactics are still regarded as the ultimate manual for press manipulation. The idea that Meghan might develop into another Diana ‘filled them [everyone at the palace] with terror’, according to a princess who is a close friend of mine. Their reasoning was simple. Fame-hungry people are only satisfied when they are thestory of the day. Scandal and controversy must inevitably form a major part of the narrative, otherwise there is no story for the press to report upon. Fame junkies will therefore do the most bizarre things which they would never have done otherwise, had there been no press about to report on their activities. It’s what playing to the gallery is all about, and it rattles all sensible people.
If Meghan truly wanted to be the most famous woman on earth, as her brief stated, that must mean that she is a fame addict. A fame addict is like any other addict. Addicts do not play by the same rules as ordinary people. One of the first warnings the friends and relations of alcoholics receive in Al Anon is, ‘Never get between an alcoholic and his bottle. If you do, you’ll always end up the loser.’ Addicts are notoriously ruthless in achieving their fix. Because the palace understood the consequences of Meghan’s brief as it was reported back to them, there was real fear that she would deliberately stoke the fires of controversy in a quest to achieve her objective. ‘You don’t become the most famous woman on earth by being a dutiful duchess,’ a courtier said. ‘You become the most famous woman on earth by creating drama, chaos, controversy, call it what you will. You only need to look at what made the Princess of Wales and Elizabeth Taylor so famous to see that that degree of fame is a five-word letter spelt h/a/v/o/c.’
Because only time would tell whether Meghan really was as fame hungry as her brief suggested, the question remained unverified. What was beyond doubt, however, was that she had a gift for scripting her own narrative. Two days after the baby’s birth, she and Harry presented him to a select crew of cameramen and journalists at Windsor Castle. They gave a brief interview while Harry held the baby, swaddled in white from head to toe, with only the tiniest glimpse of his nose and mouth visible. Gayle King voiced the complaint of everyone everywhere when she said on CBS’s This Morning that the baby’s face wasn’t visible. The ‘very proud mother’ and ‘over the top, giddy Dad’, as she called Meghan and Harry, radiated joy but failed to provide the baby’s name until later in the day, when they announced that he would be known as Master Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. They also posted on their Instagram page a black and white photograph of his presentation at Windsor Castle to the Queen and Prince Philip in the presence of Doria Ragland, who had been staying with them at Frogmore Cottage since April. His great-grandparents were plainly thrilled with little Archie, as they ought to have been, for he is undoubtedly an adorable baby and he was the first member of the British Royal Family who was indubitably mixed race, though the Queen and Prince Philip are descended from one, and possibly two, women of colour in the forms of Madragana of Faro and Philippa of Hainault, while Harry and William undoubtedly have Indian blood as a result of their many-times Scottish great-grandfather Theodore Forbes’s progeny Katherine Scott Forbes, the daughter of his Indian mistress Eliza Kewark. Prince William even gave blood to stand up the supposition, which plainly shows that he is proud of his mixed race heritage.
Archie’s name showed that Harry and Meghan’s gift for surprise had not deserted them. The baby’s name broke every rule in the royal book and was as maverick, unexpected, untraditional, and woke as could be. Royal children have always been named after
