For the love of Prince Harry

The engagement shows just how much the royal family has changed.

Prince Harry and his betrothed Meghan Markle during an official photocall at Kensington Palace. Picture: Getty Images

The big question is: why? Why, in the 21st century, would a modern, sassy woman with a burgeoning acting career, a sharp interest in gender equality, a promising author of a successful blog and philanthropic sidelines, abandon her job, her family, her country, her social media, her everything, all to live in a palace?

It’s for love, she says, all doe-eyed and confident, and the folk on both sides of the Atlantic cheer and clap.

After all, who doesn’t want the fairytale ending for that bewildered and sad 12-year-old boy gazing on the flood of flowers and clasping tight the hand of his father after his mother’s shock death more than 20 years ago, to find comfort and happiness in the arms of a beautiful and smart woman?

Rachel Meghan Markle, better known as Meghan, of Los Angeles and Chicago, and Prince Henry Charles Albert David, better known as Prince Harry, of Kensington Palace, have formally announced their engagement, some­thing that would not have been possible last century.

Markle is a divorcee and an American. By princess standards, at 36 she is old and is three years older than her husband-to-be.

Prince Harry claimed there were overtones of racism in the British media firestorm relating to Markle’s mixed-race parentage when their relationship was made public just over a year ago.

Markle said that reaction was disheartening and discriminatory, but the pair focused on nurturing their relationship and ignored the media noise.

At the time Prince Harry, clearly besotted, was deeply disappointed that he was unable to protect Markle from what was described as “the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment ­pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments”.

When this unprecedented missive arrived from Kensington Palace, everyone knew Prince Harry was, finally, quite serious about this one: for like a knight in shining armour he was intent on protecting his exotic maiden.

But no one had guessed the couple had already spent a five-day camping trip in Botswana within weeks of first meeting that had fast forwarded, on high speed, the trans-Atlantic courtship, and the relationship was already so serious they saw each other every fortnight.

In his previous relationships — waifish actress Cressida Bonas, the on-off South African lawyer Chelsy Davy, various television presenters and singers Mollie King and Ellie Goulding (all blondes) — Prince Harry had made no such indulgent pleas, but with Markle he and she wore matching bracelets in public, and he approved a lengthy “Wild About Harry!” Vanity Fair magazine article in which she revealed: “We’re two people who are really happy and in love.”

That she was pictured in the same magazine baring her toned shoulders and knees and swathed in gallons of taffeta raised eyebrows in the inner royal circle, but it’s the daredevil dynamic that Markle may inject into the staid royal family that has some monarchists forgiving of her early transgressions.

There is something inherently familiar in the relationship of a prince and a showgirl: think Prince Rainer of Monaco and the beautiful Princess Grace; Rita Hayworth and Prince Aly Khan; and the 1957 film with Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier.

Markle has grown up around film and stage, for her divorced father was Emmy award-winning lighting director Thomas W. Markle and one of her first jobs was as the hostess of Deal or No Deal. That was followed by an episode in General Hospital, CSI, Without a Trace and Castle and several Hollywood films.

But she was playing Rachel Zane, a paralegal in the legal drama series Suits, when she met Prince Harry. The introduction is believed to have come about through the encouragement of Markle’s American fashion designer friend Misha Nonoo, who knew the prince through her estranged British husband Alexander Gilkes, who attended Eton with princes William and Harry.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry at the Invictus Games. Picture: Getty Images

Nonoo and Markle were in London and Spain holidaying together in June last year, including watching Wimbledon in the rarefied surrounds of the royal box. As was fitting for her blog called The Tig, Markle immediately posted holiday snaps of that happy time, including of Buckingham Palace, but she shut down the popular site in April this year, a sign that she was adjusting her previous very public profile to something more circumspect.

Indeed, in one of the few pre-­engagement pictures of the couple showing affection, in a darkened corner of the Invictus Games in Canada last month, Markle is turning away from Prince Harry’s kiss, lest anyone see them touching each other.

She has been coached in a quasi “princess school”, learning how the smallest body language will be extrapolated in the public eye. Her dress style has suddenly become more modest and there are no longer statement looks such as bare midriffs, off-the-shoulder dresses and tight leather skirts. The new look is expensive casual. Slowly, perhaps taking a cue from Kate Middleton, whom Markle described as “absolutely amazing”, the skirt length has surreptitiously become more conservative, although Markle intuitively outstyles her prospective sister-in-law.

That’s something she has learned from her African-American mother Doria Ragland, a yoga instructor, as well as inheriting her humanitarian streak and feminist ideals. “We can just have so much fun together, and yet I’ll still find so much solace in her support,” she said about her mother.

Very early in the relationship — the first date, according to Markle — Harry loved her interests with World Vision Canada, and her UN HeforShe gender equality work, as it mirrored his own campaigning in Africa.

As a royal, she will be drawn into many more charitable efforts, including those that interest the younger royals, such as animal rights and mental health. When she set up her blog to promote women’s empowerment she said: “I’ve never wanted to be a lady who lunches — I’ve always wanted to be a woman who works.” Adjusting to the British public expectations that royals should be largely seen and not heard, to be decorative and not controversial and to satisfy her “duty” to add to the royal brood could be Markle’s biggest challenge.

When just 11 she lobbied to change a soap advertisement because it portrayed women in the kitchen, yet her love for Prince Harry will see such natural activism instincts curtailed, for her position as the wife of a royal is to be subjugated to the monarchy. Perhaps that joie de vivre may be redirected into other spheres such as working with the poor. She said this week it would also include touring the Commonwealth.

British law has changed since the last time a royal wanted to marry an American divorcee and the public attitudes have shifted too, particularly because Prince Harry is the adored second son of Princess Diana and Prince Charles and therefore is distanced from the tighter strictures of any heir to the throne.

Big brother Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge have helped matters too, with their third child due sometime in April, pushing Harry down the line to sixth in succession, although the Queen has still had to give her official approval.

When Prince Harry’s great great-uncle Edward VIII wanted to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson he had to give up the throne and marry in exile in France. Before he abdicated in late 1936, the king’s marriage plans created moral and religious difficulties that threatened to destabilise the monarchy because he was not only head of the kingdom and its realm but also of the Church of England.

However, since 2013 in changes to the Succession of the Crown Act, members of the royal family can marry a person who is not of Church of England faith. Markle attended a Catholic school and married her first husband Trevor Engelson, with whom she had a nine-year relationship, in a Jewish service. But any children of Prince Harry and Markle would be expected to be raised as Church of England given the three centuries of history involving Prince Harry’s royal predecessor and church founder Henry VIII.

If anything, obtaining a British residency visa is more of a hurdle than Markle’s divorce history.

The Queen has seen the heartache of her younger sister, Princess Margaret, who was unable to marry her great love, Peter Townsend, in the 1950s because he was divorced. But since then there has been a parade of royal divorces ranging from the bitter split of Diana and Charles to the bizarre ongoing relationship of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson and the quiet second marriage of Princess Anne to Timothy Laurence.

Sixteen years ago the Church of England recognised that some marriages failed and that in exceptional circumstances a divorced person might be married in church during the lifetime of a former spouse.

Any children of the couple are unlikely to be styled as princes and princesses unless the Queen expands the Letters Patent of 1917, issued by George V, which restricts the titles to grandchildren of the sovereign in the direct male line.

Prince Harry is likely to be given a dukedom, and possibly become the Duke of Sussex, and if that happens Markle will then be the Duchess of Sussex.

The wedding of Markle and Prince Harry is anticipated to be smaller and more intimate than the extravaganza of William and Kate, although the guest list will be studded with celebrities, politicians and VIPs from both sides of the Atlantic.

Markle said her marriage would mark a new chapter of her life and she did not view the change as giving up anything. She said she had “ticked this box” of acting and was keen to work as a team with Prince Harry.

Prince Harry added that their sense of responsibility was apparent from day one and they had sat down together with “grand conversations” about what she was getting into.

“At end of day she chose me and I chose her,” Prince Harry said.

Markle, when she walks down the aisle, hasn’t had years to mull over all of the issues, but in saying yes to the man who makes her happy, in becoming a duchess, and her obvious ease at being in the spotlight, her thoughts have been clearly along the lines of “Well, why not?”