The Meghan Markle picture palace can’t explain
Four years ago, Meghan Markle joined the royal family for an event and one detail, not remarked on at the time, now might have been a sign of the mess that lay ahead.
Prince Louis Arthur Charles is fifth in line to the throne, the third child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, making him the spare to the spare.
While on the afternoon he was born, guns rang out in central London, with the traditional 41-round salute coming from Hyde Park and the 62-round version from the Tower of London, the poor boy faces a lifetime of forevermore slipping down the pecking order.
(For example, when Louis’ father Prince William was born in 1981, Prince Edward occupied the fifth spot; today he comes in at number 14 behind Sienna Mapelli Mozzi and August Brooksbank.)
But still, despite being dynastically irrelevant, when Louis arrived in 2018 he made history: The first Prince ever born into the British monarchy whose arrival did not bump his sister down a peg. In 2013, his Gan Gan the Queen had done away with millennia of male primogeniture, meaning that from Louis onwards, no longer would male Windsors supersede their sisters.
Louis’ history-making turn was not one people spent much time considering back then, largely because only a few weeks after his arrival into the world, his uncle Prince Harry married Suits star Meghan Markle in a blaze of loved-up public adoration. Huzzah for love! Huzzah for the future of the House of Windsor!
And, it was also little Louis, who was responsible for the first outing of the newly made Duchess of Sussex in July with her new Windsor family members, for the baby’s christening at the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace not long after that in July.
After the family event, Kensington Palace promptly put out the usual sort of stiffly upright shots of the happy occasion, showing the family posed around the sort of hard gilded sofa of the sort that Queen Mary probably favoured for a kip.
However, look at that photo now and one thing very clearly jumps out, something that with the benefit of hindsight looks a lot like a red flag about the disaster just around the bend for the royal family.
The thing is, this image barely caused a ripple back in 2018 and why would it? Then, love ruled the day and the future of the royal family looked golden: Somehow, miraculously, Harry had managed to find and secure a woman who looked set to single-handedly yank the monarchy into contemporary relevance.
We now know, of course, that the path of public true love never does run smooth and only a short 20 months after all the sunshine and joy of that summer, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would shock the pants off the world by announcing they were done with palace life. Bring on palm trees, swimming pools and cheques with more zeros than a Garrick Club meeting!
Knowing what we do now, looking at the images of Louis’ christening, were the signs already there that the Age of Meghan was not going to pan out as gloriously as everyone assumed it would?
At first glance, it all looks pretty stock standard. Hats, suits, small children on their best behaviour. (Princess Charlotte stole the show when she was filmed telling the waiting press after the ceremony what sounded like, “You’re not coming.”)
"He's not coming" Princess Charlotte said looking at the cameras as she left Prince Louis’ #RoyalChristening. She clearly wasn't up for sharing any of her little brothers' cake at the after-party (even if it was a 7-year old tier from Mum & Dad’s wedding) 🎂 pic.twitter.com/bnzou9If61
— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) July 9, 2018
All the adults have the miens of people who could definitely do with a glass of something sparkling from the Queen’s vast cellar and the children look seconds away from managing to somehow get Victoria sponge in their hair.
But take a second look at what the assembled Windsors and Middleston families are wearing: All are in varying hues of cream and blue. And then take a look at what Meghan is wearing – an olive green Ralph Lauren dress and hat by Stephen Jones.
Is it plausible to believe that ten adults and three children all turned up in perfectly co-ordinating shades of the same two colours purely by accident?
Consider also the fact that for years now Kate, Duchess of Camrbidge, has demonstrated an abiding yen to nearly permanently dress her family in matching colours – in reds and pinks in 2017 for Trooping the Colour, in mauve and pastels in Poland the same year, in soft blues for a National Health Service charity video in 2020 and more blue for a family meeting with Sir David Attenborough.
(There are many, many more instances of the Cambridges putting on a colour-coordinated display, but I don’t want to assault anyone with so many pastels on a weekend.)
So, why the dickens are the lot of them matching except for Meghan?
While the anomaly was noted at the time, no one really gave it much heed. As far as the public knew, the so-called Fab Four – the Cambridges and the Sussexes – were going strong.
What has come out since then is that by the time that Louis was being wrangled into the famed Honiton christening gown, things had already started to go wildly pear-shaped behind closed doors.
William’s urging of his brother to, according to Finding Freedom, not “rush this” and to “take as much time as you need to get to know this girl” had spectacularly backfired.
Meanwhile, Meghan’s introduction to royal life had been decidedly rocky and instances such as Kate reportedly not giving the actress a lift to go shopping one day, even though they were both headed to the same destination, hardly helped smooth the way.
(By and large, Kate gets on with her life only rarely being snapped by the press. The two of them together could very likely have sparked a paparazzi frenzy.)
Then there was the Great Mystery of the Tears.
In late 2018, reports started circulating in the British press that Meghan had made Kate cry ahead of the wedding.
Subsequent stories have argued that this alleged barney was over the flowergirls’ dresses and later whether or not they should wear tights. Meghan, of course, during the Sussexes’ Oprah broadside made the case that it was Kate who had left her in tears.
Around the same time, we now know, there was another storm brewing. In October of that same year Jason Knauf, then both couples’ communications’ secretary, had written to Simon Case, then William’s private secretary, saying: “I am very concerned that the Duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. The treatment of X was totally unacceptable.” (The Duchess of Sussex has always vehemently denied the claims.)
According to biographer Robert Lacey’s 2021 Battle of Brothers, when William heard about the bullying claims, he “was horrified by what he had just been told about Meghan’s alleged behaviour” and went on to have a “showdown” with Harry that “was fierce and bitter”.
Less than a year after the Louis christening photo was taken, the Sussexes had left the Royal Foundation, the charity body William and Harry had jointly established in 2009, and were leaving the tree-lined streets of Kensington behind to set up home in Frogmore Cottage on the Queen’s Windsor estate.
Imagine Crowded House’s The Dream Is Over playing here.
Less than a year later came the final hammer blow and off the Duke and Duchess waltzed into the Hollywood sunset.
Therefore in hindsight, with so many of the undercurrents and tensions of that time having been widely reported on, should Meghan’s choice of christening outfit been something of a signpost that very choppy waters lay ahead? That what looked like the Glorious Age of the Sussexes was going to spin out of control?
The two most obvious explanations for the Duchess of Sussex’s outfit, as far as I can see, are that either Kate had come to some sort of loose understanding with her family about what colours they would all wear, the photography-loving Duchess having a weather eye on the photos and failed to tell her new sister-in-law.
Or, the cream and blue palette was chosen and the families all dutifully told and Meghan chose to disregard things.
Who did what to whom in this situation is something we may never know but in retrospect, Meghan’s incongruous outfit should have been something of a flashing warning sign that it was not all happy families and cosy kitchen suppers when the press and public weren’t looking.
Or maybe we should have all just been paying more attention to Harry. When the two couples’ took part in the first and only Royal Foundation forum in early 2018, the question of whether there were disagreements ever between them all came up.
Harry responded: “They come so thick and fast. Working as family does have its challenges, of course it does. But we’re stuck together for the rest of our lives.”
Nothing though, is forever, aside perhaps from family portraits, even the enduringly inexplicable ones.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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