Meghan Markle’s shocking three-word Prince Harry comment

After gushing about being a mum, Meghan Markle then said this was the “most important” thing to her after her kids.

COMMENT

One of the greatest paradoxes of the British monarchy is that it’s an institution that was helmed by a woman for the better part of a century and yet, has simultaneously

viewed feminism with deep scepticism and suspicion.

One of the most famous moments in feminist history came in 1913 when suffragette Emily Wilding Davison threw herself under King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby. The royal family sympathised with the horse.

(His wife Queen Mary went further, calling Davison, “a horrid woman”.)

Thus when one Rachel Meghan Markle walked up the aisle in 2018 and the world’s media got to giddily use the word ‘first’ with so much frequency ‘f’ keys probably wore out on keyboards the world over, the House of Windsor got their first avowedly feminist member.

Here we were in 2018, more than a century on since the Davison tragedy and FINALLY The Firm had gotten for their number an actual feminist.

HALLE-FRICKING-LUJAH!

In Meghan Markle the royal family finally had itself a self-proclaimed feminist. Picture: Steve Parsons – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Which is what makes comments made by the duchess this week so depressing. So disappointing. So disheartening. It has all been enough to make someone want to curl up in a ball clutching a copy of The Second Sex while whispering a prayer to the spirit of Betty Friedan.

This week Meghan and her royal chap, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex and man who probably thought Andrea Dworkin was a member of Little Mix until he met his wife, were in New York for the very first in-person event for their Archewell Foundation. They marked World Mental Health Day by hosting a panel about the harms done by social media to young peoples’ mental health as part of a festival put on by Project Healthy Minds.

It was a complete success and if this is the direction their non profit work will take then Buckingham Palace better watch out.

However, during a panel discussion the duchess came out with this stunner of a comment: “Being a mum is the most important thing in my entire life — outside of course being a wife to this one,” while gesturing towards Harry.

Meghan Markle commented that being a wife was the second most important thing in her life. Picture: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Project Healthy Minds

Whether intentional or not, the declaration seemed to carry with it a certain syrupy ‘aww’ factor, a hearts-for-eyes-emoji quotient which I’d wager would have had Meghan’s pal Gloria Steinem spitting out her morning prune smoothie back in Montecito.

Here we have a woman who recently picked up an award for her gender equality work saying that “being a wife” was one the “most important” parts of her life.

Here we have, in the Duchess of Sussex, a woman who was part of the cast of a highly successful TV show, who started her own blog, even if it was markedly unimaginative, and who had garnered more than a million Instagram followers long before she started dating an HRH.

My issue here is not her being a loving, outspoken partner to the duke but that after everything she is suddenly defining herself by her relationship to a man.

Meghan has the distinction of being the only woman ever in royal history (get out the ‘first’ button!) who entered royal life with a wodge of money of her own making.

In a thousand years of mostly Kings, blokes who spent centuries losing and regaining chunks of France and getting gout, there has never been a royal bride who had truly made something of her life herself.

You know, a woman whose personal success extended beyond having managed to catch the eye of some prince in doublet and hose or who fancied getting their hands on her ancestral lands.

Meghan Markle seems to have forgotten her feminist roots. Picture: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Project Healthy Minds

Gender equality has been a part of the Meghan story long before she met a certain redhead who still lived at home.

In 2016 she went to Rwanda as a World Vision ambassador, with a focus on clean water and empowering women and girls. Then, the following year, after her relationship with Aitch had been revealed, she travelled to India and penned a very good essay for Time about ending period stigma. As she movingly wrote, “in communities all over the globe, young girls’ potential is being squandered.”

Central to the duchess’ image has been that of her as a fiercely and proudly independent woman who would follow her own star and who had no interest in meekly applying herself to the status quo.

Her first major unscripted event as a working HRH took place on International Women’s Day 2019 when she took part in a panel convened by the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust. She told the crowd she had recently watched a Netflix documentary that included the line, “I feel the embryonic kicking of feminism.”

“I love that!” the duchess, who was pregnant at the time, told the audience. “So boy or girl, whatever it is, we hope that that’s the case with our little bump.”

British model Adwoa Aboah, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard attend a panel discussion to mark International Women's Day on March 8, 2019 in London, England. Picture: Daniel Leal-Olivas – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Since relocating the family’s dream catchers and matcha sets from Windsor to California, Meghan has spoken about the need for paid parental leave, telling the DealBook Summit “it is not just about the mum”, and told Vogue that both she and Harry had a “guttural” response to US Supreme Court overturning the Roe vs. Wade abortion protections.

In May this year, the last time that the duke and duchess had been in the city, they were there for Meghan to pick Ms. Foundation Women of Vision Award. In her acceptance speech spoke of “our vision for an equitable world reality” and said “there is still so much work to be done”.

And yet now we have the 42-year-old saying that “most important thing in my entire life”, after being a parent, is “being a wife” a sentence that would not be out of place coming out of the mouth of some trad wife from the Bible Belt who is morally opposed to women wearing trousers.

What the actual hell. Are we about to see the Duchess of Sussex adopt a rule of only walking several paces behind the Duke of Sussex?

I jest, of course, but this feminist volte face from Meghan is astounding as it is disappointing. Because, it’s one thing to be a loving, devoted partner proud of the relationship you have built and the person you have built it with and another to tell the world your second most important thing in life is “being a wife”.

At this rate Meghan will be putting out a line of gingham aprons and cross stitch kits which spell out things like ‘Home is where my husband is’.

This feminist volte face from Meghan is astounding as it is disappointing. Picture: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Project Healthy Minds

What is also really jarring about Meghan’s comment is that she made them in a year which has seen her largely professionally split from Harry.

In April Hollywood agency WME got to do some excitable tooting that the duchess had signed on with them as a client – but notably not the duke.

Meanwhile, there has been a growing cavalcade of stories about Meghan having one new entrepreneurial project in the works while the Instagram account that is widely held to be hers – @Meghan. Quite the departure from their former shared @SussexRoyal

Last month, the Daily Mail’s Alison Boshoff reported that “the new buzz phrase” around the couple “brand separation”.

How do we square Work Meghan, off blazing her own path, with this week’s appearance of Wife Meghan, who with that one line came across like a woman more invested in baking pies than international aid efforts?

I don’t mean to be overly reductive here, we all contain multitudes, but what I don’t understand is why after years of defining herself on her own terms, Meghan is now seemingly happy to identify herself in relation to a bloke.

In that Time essay about period stigma, Meghan wrote that “wasted opportunity is unacceptable with stakes this high.” In 2023, when it comes to the global fight for gender equality, sadly, those words have never been truer.

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.