‘Bent over backwards’: Major Meghan clue hidden in Queen Elizabeth balcony photo

A photo of the Duchess of Sussex with Her late Majesty reveals a serious error that set the former actress’ royal career off to a rocky start.

COMMENT

What must it be like to walk out onto the Buckingham Palace balcony?

Awe-inspiring, nerve-jangling, moving, electric? A heady cocktail of all of the above?

There is no more iconic image of the British royal family than of them gathered in a well-pressed, be-hatted mass on the balcony and putting on their usual very modest display of feeling while greeting the tens of thousands of people gathered below.

Five years ago, one woman went from actress, blogger and spruiker of mid-range Canadian department store fashion to full blown HRH, logging not one but two such balcony appearances in only a month.

On July 10, 2018, said woman – of course Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex – stepped out onto the balcony for the fly-past to mark the centenary of the Royal Air Force. It was her second such stint in only a month, after her balcony debut for Trooping the Colour.

Something recently occurred to me about this moment.

Take a look at the photos of that RAF event, and tell me if something unusual jumps out. I’ll wait.

Did you see it?

Standing right next to Her late Majesty is Meghan.

Standing right next to the Queen is Meghan. Picture: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

What you have to understand here is that positioning on said balcony is not some haphazard, stand-wherever-you-fancy, higgledy-piggledy situation.

For much of recent history, when the House of Windsor slaps on their SPF 15 to politely acknowledge the masses before repairing for a cream tea, where they stand is approximately dictated by seniority.

That’s why standing closest to the monarch previously tended to be now-King Charles and Queen Camilla and William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales and their sproglets. Back in the before times, the late Queen’s adored Harry also sometimes got a look-in for prime position.

Which makes the fact that the freshly-coined duchess stood smack bang next to Her late Majesty’s side so significant.

And what I think is worth reflecting on here, looking at those images of Queen Elizabeth and the duchess, is what was going on behind the scenes about that time – a time when the Sussexes still seemed like the monarchy’s number one, sure fire, shining hope for the future.

There was, reportedly, so much trying.

One thing that a number of experienced royal journalists and biographers have spelled out is that back in those heady, early days of Sussexland, when the future seemed bright and the palace gift shop couldn’t keep up with demand for Meghan tea towels (I’m guessing), is that The Firm tried.

The balcony positioning was no accident. Picture: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

They tried to make it work for the duchess, who had been fast-tracked from Toronto single gal living to palace balcony-waving in about seven months.

Required reading for anyone seriously interested in this subject is Valentine Low’s Courtiers. He argues that “perhaps people tried harder to help Meghan than she has acknowledged”.

According to Low, ahead of the wedding, Miguel Head, then William’s private secretary and therefore the top courtier in Kensington Palace, had “told her that the palace would do everything they could to help”.

“She was joining the royal family with a wholly different experience of life, [Head said], but there was no need to think that she had to take on her new role in a particular way. She didn’t have to be straitjacketed,” Low writes.

As one source explained to Low, “The entire place, because of everything about her, and because of what Harry’s previous girlfriends had been through, was bending over backwards to make sure that every option was open”.

In 2021, a former royal aide told the Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah, “The family have tried to be welcoming. All the staff and principals have genuinely tried to be kind”.

Meanwhile, another palace source said: “Everyone bent over backwards to accommodate her”.

“The Queen gave them [the Sussexes] the opportunity to go wherever they pleased. They were given a degree of latitude,” famed royal biographer Andrew Morton also said that same year.

“They did say to Meghan: ‘If you don’t want to embrace royal duties full time please be our guest and continue your acting career’. Those opportunities were open to her.”

But here we get to the thorny part, because what was all this ‘trying’ going on?

British Royal family on the balcony during celebration of the Trooping the Colour in 2018. Picture: Robin Utrecht/abacapress.com

The late Queen attempted to do her bit, sending over a string of her most senior courtiers, such as the Lord Chamberlain, Earl Peel, to help Meghan learn how the royal sausage factory worked (“I liked her, actually. She was very forthright. Very, very polite,” the Earl told Low), and Samantha Cohen, Her late Majesty’s former assistant private secretary.

(Though Cohen had resigned, the late Queen had persuaded her to stay on to help the Sussexes navigate the advent of their joint career).

Tom Bower, in his 2022 biography Revenge, claimed that “Under Cohen, a team of 14 young, intelligent and experienced officials, including Jason Knauf, was assembled to introduce Meghan sensitively to the quirks and expectations of royal life and service to the nation”.

Also detailed by Her late Majesty to go over to Kensington Palace and help Meghan find her feet was her Ghanaian-born equerry, Lieutenant Colonel Nana Kofi Twumasi-Ankrah, and veteran lady-in-waiting Lady Susan Hussey.

So. Much. Trying.

But not to sound like a minor Star Wars character having a tilt at a spin-off, there is trying and there is trying.

The late Queen et al might have had the best of intentions, but was posting a series of Firm insiders over to explain things what Meghan actually needed at the time?

The Firm tried to make it work with Meghan – but did they try hard enough? Picture: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

The Earl Peel might have been excellent at explaining to Meghan about what the Gold and Silver Stick actually do (honorary positions and not embellished poking devices) – I’m sure it was handy stuff – but was that what she really needed to deal with, given the whiplash she must have been experiencing?

Or what about Lieutenant Colonel Twumasi-Ankrah’s deployment?

He had lived in the United Kingdom since he was three, according to the Times, attended a very good university in the UK and enrolled at Royal Military College Sandhurst before being commissioned into the Blues and Royals, and he also served in Afghanistan.

Yes, he was the first man of colour to be commissioned into that regiment and was the first regal equerry of colour too, but the sole thing that linked Lieutenant Colonel Twumasi-Ankrah and the former actress was that they were both people of colour.

What was he meant to do? Give her a warning about which visiting ancient dukes were most likely to make racially-tinged jokes? Point out the specific palace corridors that are lined with oil paintings glorifying colonial conquest?

Then there’s Lady Susan, who back then was a nearly 80-year-old establishment figure who had spent more than five decades in the royal household.

Sure, she could teach the duchess the right fork for squab, but given Lady Susan’s brief period of recent exile, after repeatedly questioning a black royal reception attendee about where she was “really from”, do we really think these would have been useful conversations?

Since then, the duchess has made claims against The Firm of institutional bias in the Sussexes’ Oprah Winfrey interview, and the Palace has started publishing diversity statistics.

In late June, the latest numbers revealed that only 9.7 per cent of their 517 full-time equivalent staff members were from ethnic minorities – below the ten per cent goal they had previously set themselves.

It didn’t take long before the cracks started to appear. Picture: Matt Dunham/Pool/AFP

Meghan was trying to learn about the finer points of an institution that predates the printing press by centuries, but must have been contending with an extreme sense of dislocation.

Where was the person dispatched who could help her with how she must have felt trading a relatively normal, free existence to inhabit the extremely surreal, discombobulating strictures of royalty?

I think that Buckingham Palace knew what a winning lottery ticket they had in not only Meghan but the Sussexes.

Here were a couple of charismatic, compelling, made-for-Instagram working members of the royal family who could sell the concept of a hereditary monarchy to the new generation.

Their resoundingly successful careers would be a spiffing testament to the mutability and the adaptability of the House of Windsor – and a duchess who looked fabulous on a magazine front cover. What ho!

My point is that when it comes to Monarchy Inc, I don’t think there can be doubt that they wanted Meghan to make a very successful go of royal life – they wanted things to work out. But I don’t think they actually knew quite how to make that happen either, and their trying only went so far.

Where things fell down was failing to twig that the duchess would need more than a couple of elderly titled sorts and one key courtier of colour sent round to have a chat.

Looking at those photos of Meghan beside Her late Majesty in 2018, what I think is that, while the royal family might have tried, I do not think they tried enough.

They did not do a good enough job.

Given that appearing on le balcony is now restricted to HRHs working as official representatives of the crown, we will likely never see the Duchess of Sussex out there ever again.

Perhaps the bigger takeaway here – it didn’t have to be this way.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.