Meghan Markle move that set ‘alarm bells ringing’

Only months after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding, Her late Majesty was getting worried for one messy reason.

The time has long, long since passed that the Buckingham Palace works department – or Prince Philip back in the day armed with a screwdriver – should have installed an alarm bell.

A bell which could have been used, say, when Prince Andrew brought around his chums Ghislaine Maxwell and Kevin Spacey to let them sit on the actual, real thrones.

Or for when Andrew boarded a flight to New York to holiday with a bloke called Jeffrey.

Or for when Andrew would “shout and scream” at maids if they didn’t perfectly place his “50 or 60” stuffed toys on his bed.

(Or really, for when Andrew and his ego left the house every day).

Now we have the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden reporting that, if the palace had had one of these particular bells, maybe one with some sort of flashing red light that emitted a really ear-piercing woop woop, it would have been going off in 2018 after the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

A royal source has told Eden: “Meghan’s public disagreements with her father set alarm bells ringing at the time. Her Majesty realised the potential damage they could do to the Royal Family in general. Looking back, the Queen might have had an inkling of what was to come”.

So let’s cast our minds back to that northern summer, when the fields rippled with golden wheat and Crown Inc was bathed in the reflected glow of the Sussexes’ big day, an event I am legally required to term “fairytale”.

Oh, it was lovely, positively Darling Buds of May-ian – love had won, and the monarchy had lucked out with their newest recruit.

But wait, what’s this? Entering the frame comes the baddie of the piece, Thomas Markle.

When news broke in May 2018 that Markle, a retired lighting director, had been in cahoots with the paparazzi, he wasted little time and within days he was talking to TMZ. He has not stopped since.

Shortly after the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, alarm bells were ringing. Picture: Netflix

In 2022, Meghan told the Netflix cameras that during this deeply upsetting time, she had gone to no less than the Top Lady (as Diana, Princess of Wales nicknamed the late Queen) for help.

“I reached out to Her Majesty and was, like, ‘This is what’s going on. What do you want me to do? I want … whatever advice you have’,” the Duchess said.

“Ultimately, it was suggested by the Queen and the Prince of Wales [now King Charles] that I write my dad a letter.”

So Meghan duly did this, posting off a lengthy handwritten letter – only for Markle to then give chunks of it to the Mail the following year. (He did this in retaliation after some lines from the letter had been published by People).

Meghan wrote her father a letter. Picture: Seven

Alarms were going off in the palace after the union. Picture: Oli Scarff/AFP

It was about at this stage in this particular soap opera that, according to Eden’s royal source, that palace alarm was going off. Woop woop, woop woop.

However, Her late Majesty should have been used to exactly this and one fact that never gets discussed is that by this point in 2018, she had already had decades of experience with royal brides, their troublesome families and their propensity to run to the press.

Meghan and her father Thomas Markle. Picture: Thomas Markle: My Story

First there was Diana, whose messy, unhappy family life was part of her public image from the very beginning. The princess had been deeply scarred by her parents’ vicious divorce, one so toxic it had seen her own maternal grandmother Ruth, Lady Fermoy give evidence in court during custody proceedings against her mother, Frances Shand Kydd.

In 1996, as Diana and Charles were locked in their own divorce negotiations, Shand Kydd spoke to the Express, telling them that the press was partly to blame for the royal split.

The following year, only three months before Diana’s death, Shand Kydd would give a lengthy two-part interview with Hello! that was splashed all over the cover, including that she thought it was “absolutely wonderful” that her daughter had lost her HRH.

The princess never spoke to her mother again.

Things were no better with Diana’s stepmother, Countess Raine Spencer – whom she nicknamed “Acid Rain” – with Raine cast as a wicked stepmother in the papers. (The two women would make up and grow quite close in the final years of Diana’s life).

Diana had a messy family life. Picture: Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images

Then there is Major Ronald Ferguson, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York’s father. Not long after Andrew and Fergie’s 1986 wedding, the palace had started becoming “concerned” about what they called Ferguson’s “errors of judgement”, according to the Times.

In 1988, the Major was photographed leaving a massage parlour which also allegedly offered sexual services.

Courtiers were also reported to view the Major’s willingness to give press interviews as “regrettable”. They were “aghast” when he joined Dame Edna Everage on stage for a charity fundraiser, and after finding out he had agreed to a TV quiz show, “insisted that he withdraw”.

In 1994, Ferguson published a tell-all called The Galloping Major, which the Times described as a “foolhardy enterprise that saw him only embarrassing himself further”.

Not long after Andrew and Fergie’s wedding, the palace had started becoming “concerned” about her father’s “errors of judgement”. Picture: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

When, in 2018, Meghan was mired in her own family drama, it was often framed as a by-product of a sort of tawdry Americanism or some personal failing on her own part, when it was actually par for the course.

The Duchess and her parental woes were not the exception, but the actual damn rule.

You would think that, at that point in time, Buckingham Palace would have been old hands at dealing with the irksome and idiotic antics of the families of royal brides rather than just letting that alarm bell ring, ring, ring.

It would seem not.

Here we are, six years later, with neither Harry nor Meghan on particularly good – or any – terms with their fathers and with Buckingham Palace still having failed to install that Andrew alarm. At least they can still easily fix one of these things. I’ll even lend them my Phillips head.

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.