Why a royal engagement could be on the cards for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
ANALYSIS: An engagement could be ‘imminent’ between Suits star Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, according to a royal biographer.
Royals
Don't miss out on the headlines from Royals. Followed categories will be added to My News.
WHEN news broke almost a year ago that Prince Harry was dating actress Meghan Markle, royal watchers were of a voice that this would be just another fling before the former tearaway young Windsor finally settled down.
On paper, she was all wrong: three years older than Harry, Markle was a divorced American with a huge social media following, racy images of whom were obtainable by anyone with access to the internet.
But a series of telling recent events and Markle’s anticipated debut on his arm at next week’s Invictus Games in Toronto, has many tipping that the fifth in line to the throne — whose 20s were marked by scandals and who has been particularly unlucky in love — is finally
ready to settle down.
“I do think an engagement is imminent,” says Duncan Larcombe, who has written a biography of Prince Harry and has documented his life for more than a decade.
“I would have said almost a year ago no chance, totally unsuitable and one of Harry‘s flash in the pan relationships.
“But at this time, almost a year on, all the signs are right.”
The most visible of those sign’s is Markle’s appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair’s October issue, in an interview in which she touched on her relationship with her “boyfriend”, and confirmed: “We’re two people who are really happy and in love”.
To some the magazine cover was considered extremely unorthodox for a potential member of the Royal family, with many old hands tittering that it was inappropriate and chatter that the Queen — who has yet to meet Markle — disapproved.
SUITS STAR: Patrick J Adams quits social media over Markle’s romance with Harry
Others believe the interview was not only sanctioned by Buckingham Palace, but that it was the precursor to a looming announcement.
Either way, it was the perfect vehicle for Markle to show her mettle and declare she has no plans to be intimidated by the pressures of public life. This princess in waiting is doing things her own way.
MARKLE’S IDENTITY STRUGGLE
The signs Markle intended to make a difference were there early.
At the age of eleven, the Californian schoolgirl was so peeved by a detergent advertisement declaring “Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans”, that she decided to do something about it.
Markle said the slogan had boys in her classroom yelling out: “Yeah, that’s where women belong. In the kitchen.”
MEET THE FAMILY: Prince Harry ‘introduced girlfriend to the Queen’
So she wrote a letter of complaint to then First Lady Hillary Clinton and celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred. Not only did the company change the tagline from “women” to “people” she was praised on a local news network.
Markle — whose mother is African-American and father is white — has told of how she struggled at times with her racial identity as she grew up in a mainly white neighbourhood in LA, where some neighbours assumed her mother was her nanny.
In an essay for Elle Magazine, she described a seventh grade English class census.
“You had to check one of the boxes to indicate your ethnicity: white, black, Hispanic or Asian. There I was (my curly hair, my freckled face, my pale skin, my mixed race) looking down at these boxes, not wanting to mess up, but not knowing what to do,” she wrote.
“You could only choose one, but that would be to choose one parent over the other — and one half of myself over the other. My teacher told me to check the box for caucasian. ‘Because that’s how you look, Meghan,’ she said. I put down my pen.
RELATED: Why Meghan Markle will never become a princess
“Not as an act of defiance, but rather a symptom of my confusion. I couldn’t bring myself to do that, to picture the pit-in-her-belly sadness my mother would feel if she were to find out. So, I didn’t tick a box. I left my identity blank — a question mark, an absolute incomplete — much like how I felt.”
Markle said her father’s response to the story “always stayed with me: ‘If that happens again, you draw your own box.’”
HOW HARRY MET MEGHAN
Since then, Markle has combined extensive charity work and activism with acting, and it was over a love of Africa that she and Harry are said to have first bonded.
After high school, Markle studied a dual major of international relations and theatre at the Northwestern School of Communication in Illinois, a time when she also got her acting break on General Hospital.
It was at Northwestern that she and fellow student Trevor Engelson became a couple, and the pair went on to build a life and home together in Los Angeles. Markle juggled bit parts on shows such as CSI with bartending and writing wedding invitations in calligraphy, and
the two married in 2011 in Jamaica.
A few months earlier, Markle landed the role that would make her famous: as ambitious lawyer Rachel Zane in legal drama Suits.
While neither Engleson nor Markle have ever commented on what led them to split less than two years later, numerous reports have cited the pressure of a long distance relationship. To shoot Suits, which has just celebrated its 100th episode, Markle moved to Toronto, while
Engelson built his own career in Hollywood, where he is a noted TV and film producer and talent agent.
“It put a strain on the relationship. Trevor was in LA making movies, Meghan was in another country five hours’ flight away and it simply took its toll,” a source was quoted telling the Daily Mail.
Until her romance was revealed last October, Markle’s well-tended Instagram — she has almost two million followers — documented a stylish but quiet life where she has made a home in Toronto. She had met Prince Harry in June 2016 at a party in London’s ultra cool Soho
House, but the pair managed to keep their relationship secret for four months.
Markle told Vanity Fair the pair hoped to keep as much of their relationship as private as possible.
“I’m sure there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but I hope what people will understand is that this is our time,” she said.
“This is for us. It’s part of what makes it so special, that it’s just ours. But we’re happy. Personally, I love a great love story.”
GILDED LIFE
Fairytales tend to end around the point the commoner catches the heart of a prince heart, with her joyous steps into a gilded life holding little continuing interest for readers.
But nobody knows better than the sons of Diana, Princess of Wales, that there is little truth to this classic narrative.
Prince Harry has spoken repeatedly about how challenging it was to have a proper relationship in the Petri dish of palace life.
“Harry has always talked about being unable to have a proper relationship because of what he has described as ‘the baggage’ that comes with dating a prince,” said Larcombe, who was for a decade Royal Editor at The Sun.
“The fact is that Harry is one of the most famous people on the planet and therefore he so much as looks at a girl and it causes this global media frenzy, but with Meghan she’s already famous in her own right.
“So while it’s raised her profile no end being romantically linked to Harry, it’s not something that has thrown her whole life upside down.
“This pressure impacted Prince Harry’s two previous serious relationships, with Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas.
“With both of them, Harry blamed the baggage, the media spotlight, the rather unusual position that he finds himself in for those relationships not lasting,” Larcombe said.
“But you haven’t got that problem with Meghan. She’s a big girl, she’s able to look after herself when it comes to being in the public eye and that’s something that’s totally unique for Harry, he’s never had that before.
“There is no way that Harry could have a proper relationship with someone who wasn’t very thick-skinned, and very used to being a public figure because the level of scrutiny that Harry’s girlfriends are subjected to would be enough to send anyone running to the hills.”
Markle told Vanity Fair she rarely reads any press about herself, including publicity for her show, so she wasn’t too phased by what people might be saying about her now.
“We were very quietly dating for about six months before it became news, and I was working during that whole time, and the only thing that changed was people’s perception,” she said.
“Nothing about me changed. I’m still the same person that I am, and I’ve never defined myself by my relationship.
“The people who are close to me anchor me in knowing who I am.
“The rest is noise.”
Charles death plan ‘tearing royals apart’
Shocking new claims have emerged that Buckingham Palace is already preparing for the passing of the King and the accession of his son.
Meghan stuns in solo red carpet outing
Meghan Markle looked stunning in a red-hot dress during a surprise red carpet appearance over the weekend.