Get ready for King Charles and Meghan Markle’s May showdown

King Charles and Meghan Markle both want the same thing – and the battle lines have been drawn.

COMMENT

Sometimes the royal family is just bonkers. Bananas. Batsh*t.

One of the wildest stories of them all concerns Queen Caroline, whose estranged husband George IV locked her out of Westminster Abbey during his coronation in 1821.

With George about to be crowned, the Queen, not one to take the hint, stood outside the Abbey in the rain, beating the barred doors with her fists. She promptly got sick and died two weeks later.

Just over 200 years later and here we are again, with another King George in the offing and another foreign royal wife creating no end of Buckingham Palace headaches.

Even though Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex will be on the other side of the world for King Charles’s coronation on May 6, so absolutely nowhere near the Abbey doors, that does not mean that the 74-year-old is in the clear when it comes to the one-woman headline-generating whirligig of a former actress.

It’s been a strange 12 months in the media life cycle of Meghan. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation

While the King is gearing up for one of the most decisive months of his life, over in California so too is his daughter-in-law, embarking on a milestone month of her own that will see the 41-year-old return to the limelight with gusto.

So, with the world about to get a whole lot more Meghan at the very same time that Charles is trying to keep the coronation honeymoon going, who is going to win the battle for headlines, attention, clicks, likes, re-tweets, shares and whatever the hell kids do on TikTok?

This time next month, will it be London or Montecito setting the narrative and who will have come out on top?

Extra strong aspirin and a restorative Gingernut Your Majesty? (On second thoughts, make it a Jaffa Cake.)

It’s been a strange 12 months in the media life cycle of Meghan. There have been intense bursts of press outings, like her lengthy interview with The Cut and her appearance in Variety.

Then came the content – oh so very, very much content, with more than 12 hours of her talking landing on Spotify followed by the six-episode cringe-worthy exercise in high-sheen propaganda that was her and husband Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex’s Netflix series.

But then, as if by magic, the Duchess disappeared, only to be occasionally snapped by the paparazzi when she popped up doing some particularly LA rich lady things like lunch, charity and shopping.

When in January, Harry took his trademark glower on a tour of major TV networks to promote his tell-all – while having paid-for chats with a psychotherapist and trauma expert and miring himself in legal fisticuffs back in the UK – Meghan was nowhere to be seen.

She did not sit by his side, grasping his hand or supportively beaming at him. Not even once. Nor was there even a hint that she was off camera ready with a protein-packed smoothie and a quick affirmation to buck him up.

That is until this week and kapow! Kablast! Boom!

Meghan Markle introduced her friend photographer Misan Harriman's Ted talk via videolink.

First, on Monday, the Duchess made a startlingly polished and primped return to public view, appearing in a video to introduce photographer Misan Harriman’s TED Talk, with her looking more like America’s Got Talent’s latest hire and not an HRH who once helped open a bridge.

Then that night, blamo! Meghan just so happened to pop out to catch an LA Lakers game with Harry – just the happy couple, their Archewell staff and the 20,000 people crammed into the stadium.

As returns go, it was only marginally less subtle than her turning up with her very own marching band or taking out all the billboards in Times Square.

(Heaven forbid anyone might have thought she was at home sulking over the fact that, as Newsweek concisely put it in a headline, “The More Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Say, the Less Americans Like Them.”)

All of this is just a taster of what is about to come.

While Meghan might have declined Charles’s coronation invitation because she would prefer to spend the day corralling four-year-olds and working out their party clown’s correct pronouns, we are about to see a hell of a lot of the Duchess.

So firstly, Archie’s birthday is also on May 6, an event for which his parents have previously marked by releasing a photo or video. So, will we see something similar next week? Some heart melting new shot of the tiny Californian Prince?

Or might a friendly title like, say, People suddenly get a detailed exclusive about the Meghan-organised family celebration complete with Oprah blowing up balloons and Ellen DeGeneres handing out the lolly bags?

Ten days after that will come the Ms Foundation’s Women of Vision awards in New York, where Meghan will be taking home her own shiny gong.

Expect to see the former Suits actress dialling the glamour up to 11 as she is honoured along with reproductive rights and gender equality activists.

Meghan returns: Prince Harry and his wife made a public appearance recently at a basketball game in Los Angeles. Picture: Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images

Three days later, on May 19, she and Harry will celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. A betting woman would put reasonable money on some new touching behind-the-scenes photo of the couple being released, just in case anyone has forgotten that the Sussexes are the greatest love story since Bogey and Bacall or, err, Edward and Wallis.

Let’s hope Meghan’s stylist is not planning on taking any sort of break because on May 23 the Duchess will be back on the red carpet, attending the 48th annual Gracie Awards in Los Angeles, where she is set to pick up an award for her Spotify series Archetypes.

Quick, someone bust out the borrowed Harry Winston jewels and alert the Twittersphere!

It is also worth mentioning here that May 1 happens to be the Met Gala and over the years there has been repeated speculation that the Duchess of Sussex might attend.

If Meghan did go this time, it would be an exquisitely timed opportunity to remind the royal family what they had lost and to kick off coronation week with her face on every website, social media post, newspaper, magazine and viral video there is. (Good luck to Camilla explaining to her husband what that last one means.)

Which is to say, prepare yourself for a Meghan onslaught in May. We are about to get a big heady dose of Meghan the Style Icon, Meghan the Sainted Mother, Meghan the Adoring and Adored Wife and Meghan the Activist Superhero.

Let’s hope Meghan’s stylist is not planning on taking a break during May’s non-stop red carpet events. Picture: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

So, can Charles even begin to compete in the battle for May?

In the weeks after his coronation and in his first month as an anointed King, will anyone, anywhere be paying much attention to whatever he and Queen Camilla are up to while the ready-for-her-close-up, camera-ready Duchess is back with a vengeance?

As we have seen this week, when the Sussexes pop their heads above the parapet they have a tendency to absorb all of the media’s attention like the human equivalent of blackholes.

This week, Charles and Camilla had a big day out in Liverpool, where they visited the upcoming Eurovision set, and then in a traditional and important moment, presented the new Standards and Colours to all three branches of the military at Buckingham Palace. Have I written about any of this?

Oh no, I’ve been writing about Harry’s latest febrile convulsion of a lawsuit and Meghan’s intriguingly timed descent from the Mount of Montecito to start popping up in public again.

Meanwhile, who is writing about the King’s trip to Liverpool? Picture: Stefan Rousseau-WPA Pool/Getty Images

The King faces his post-coronation weeks, when he should be trying to capitalise on the leftover national bonhomie and pride, turning it into longer lasting support for the institution, being overshadowed by his glossy daughter-in-law.

For both Charles and Meghan, a lot is riding on the coming weeks and months.

On one hand we will have a 74-year-old P-plate Kingwho will be waving and shaking hands like the future of a 1000-year-old institution depends on it. (It does).

And on the other, a 41-year-old former cable actress who will be posing up a storm like her entire career is riding on her pulling off a PR reset. (It is).

And I have a final bit of bad royal news: As with George IV’s coronation, rain is forecast for May 6. Let’s hope no one gets stuck outside the Abbey’s doors. (Okay, maybe Prince Andrew …)

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