The mentor Meghan Markle needs in her corner

Few people are able to truly understand the steep learning curve that comes from being thrust into the world’s spotlight. But if Meghan wants help adjusting, there’s one person who can help.

Michelle Obama had been First Lady for just a couple of months when she went to speak at a girl’s school in London.

The wife of the newly elected President seemed serene in a peacock blue dress and cardigan as she rose to address the students which included 900 refugee pupils speaking 55 different languages.

What few knew was that she was struggling: with the lack of privacy, the loss of identity and the expectation she was a walking, talking symbol of her nation. Over the previous weeks, she has revealed in her autobiography, Becoming, “I’d felt overwhelmed by the pace, unworthy of the glamour, anxious about our children and uncertain of my purpose.”

But that day as she spoke to the students and later hugged as many as she could reach, she sensed a shift. “I felt something completely different and pure — an alignment of my old self with this new role.”

Obama’s Becoming — from the astute title to the very last word — is not only a brilliant memoir but also a road map, and to that end it’s selling its socks off. But there’s one particular woman I hope is reading it: The Queen.

Meghan Markle could likely do with some help and advice as she prepares for the birth of her first child and continues to settle into public life. Picture: supplied

Because whatever way you look at it, the former First Lady is Her Majesty’s greatest hope.

Look, it’s a quirky idea, and without precedent because the Royals do love to do things the way they’ve always done them, but on reading Becoming it struck me that the monarch needs to hire Obama as the Duchess of Sussex’s mentor.

The pair clearly have plenty in common, from their African-American heritage to being catapulted into a role they never envisaged. They are both smart, worldly, articulate humanitarians who were boldly following their own paths until being shoehorned into a role that, by definition, is nothing to do with them but all about the men to whom they are married.

Being a “First Lady” is as anachronistic as being a “Duchess” to the likes of Michelle and Meghan, but having been such a comprehensive success in the White House surely Obama is perfectly placed to guide the newest wife of Windsor.

Royalists will say it’s Markle who has to adapt, that her loss of not one, but three key staff members — notably her police protection officer — is indicative of her difficult nature and unwillingness to conform. But if anyone can parlay tradition into a springboard for change its Obama, the woman who memorably put an arm round the Queen at their first meeting.

In her memoir, Becoming, former US first lady Michelle Obama speaks about the jarring effect being thrust into the spotlight had on her. Picture: Jim Young/AFP

The royals have poor form when it comes to mentoring those who enter what they call “The Firm”. Centuries-old practices are peddled out as if they’re completely normal and new entrants are expected to know, as if by osmosis, when to wear a hat, how to cross your legs and what constitutes a suitable gift. Princess Diana, for instance, was not told that Christmas presents are supposed to be cheap, amusing or handmade, so purchased a cashmere jumper for her sister-in-law Princess Anne only to receive a toilet roll holder in return. The Duchess of York was similarly confounded by the dress code, revealing that she once had to wear seven different outfits in a 24-hour period.

As she prepares to turn 93, the Queen needs stability and it takes more than bequeathing her new granddaughter-in-law a few patronages.

While middle-class and malleable Catherine Middleton has adapted well into the royal family, she had nearly a decade of practice before taking on the title. Markle, conversely, is a career woman who’s given up her own dreams, moved country, ditched her job and swapped independence and freedom for expectation and stricture. That she and Prince Harry will move out of the limerence (infatuation) stage of their relationship about the time their first baby is due will bring additional pressures. Her nutty family — her mother excepted — doesn’t help.

Mentoring may not go with tradition, but the times are a changing. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/Getty

Obama has been there and survived. She reeled through her first year in the White House, realising that her “grace would have to be earned”. She struggled with the public gaze and the media-projected version of herself. “It was as if there were some cartoon version of me out there wreaking havoc, a woman I kept hearing about but didn’t know …” Crucially, she knows the stress such a public role can have on a marriage, noting in Becoming that at one stage “frustrations began to rear up often and intensely”.

Intriguingly, the former First Lady has already given the new Duchess some sound advice. The pair met briefly for the first time last month, the day after Obama told Good Housekeeping magazine that their lives were similar. Her advice: “take some time and don’t be in a hurry to do anything.”

Mentoring may have no history in the royal family where generally someone dies and they stick a crown on you. But if the Queen can ban plastic straws, sit front row at a fashion show and be part of a hilarious James Bond skit for the London Olympics, then she can provide the Duchess with the guidance she needs. Who knows, Mrs O might do it for free — or at the very least in return for a decent cuppa and a cuddle with the new royal bub.

@angelamollard