Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(67)
Inside the AIDS center they met with victims and organizers, Meghan impressing them with her natural empathy. Chris O’Hanlon, who has HIV and works with Positively UK, a charity that helps people recently diagnosed with the disease, found the couple easy to talk to, sincere, and attentive. His verdict: “Not only will she make a good addition to the royal family, she will make an excellent ambassador to any of the causes she puts her heart and mind to.”
The royal couple went on to watch a hip-hop opera, where Harry told a fellow ginger-headed man that being with Meghan was “Great, unbelievable.” They left Nottingham folk all aquiver, Meghan having scored a bull’s eye in Robin Hood’s hometown. Complimenting Meghan on her “charm and ease,” columnist Jan Moir cooed: “What an impressive debut. Meghan Markle was not born to be a princess, but she moves with ease in her brave new world.”
With internet searches for Meghan Markle outstripping those for the recently released iPhone 8, it seemed that everyone wanted to dial into the charismatic Ms. Markle, including the Queen, her family, and her staff. Prince Harry made an edited YouTube version of Suits to show the Queen and Prince Philip so that they could understand more clearly what their grandson saw in her. The monarch was impressed enough to wave long-standing rules that only the royal family gather at Sandringham for Christmas. She extended an invitation for Harry’s fiancée to join the clan. It was an acknowledgement of the changing times, as the couple have effectively been living together for more than a year. QUEEN BENDS THE YULES FOR MEGHAN punned the Sun headline.
The first stage of Meghan’s Christmas royal progress was to join the Queen and Prince Harry for the annual Christmas staff party at Windsor Castle. Hundreds of footmen, maids, butlers, and gardeners jostled for position to snatch a brief chat with Meghan, who worked her way slowly around the room. One guest said: “She asked everyone their name and what they did—she was a natural.”
No sooner had she met the staff than Harry was driving her to Buckingham Palace, where, on December 20, the extended royal family—all seventy of them—gathered for lunch. Though it is a family affair, it is still a royal family affair, and there is a hierarchy to follow of who bows to whom and who curtsies to whom. Meghan, for instance, had to curtsy to her future sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge, and also to the Countess of Wessex, as Prince Edward was in the room. (Interestingly, if he had been absent she would not have had to flex her knees.) Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, recalled that on one occasion there was so much bowing and curtsying, he ended up bowing to a bemedaled footman.
For a girl from California, where casual is king and the average American proudly bows to no man, this occasion must have been perplexing, not to say a little troubling. Here she was, a standard bearer for gender equality, curtsying to all and sundry. Of course, everyone was dying to meet the new arrival, so along with curtsying, it was a frenzy of handshaking and “How do you do” and “So pleased to meet you.”
When they were seated for lunch, Meghan found herself between her future father-in-law, Prince Charles, and Peter Phillips, an event organizer and the only son of the Princess Royal. They pulled crackers together, and Meghan put on a paper crown and joined the others reading out corny jokes as they tucked into turkey and all the trimmings.
A royal source was quoted as saying: “She was obviously a bit nervous at first, but she soon relaxed with Harry’s help as he introduced her to everyone and then she really enjoyed it.”
The lunch, however, is destined to be remembered for all the wrong reasons, as Meghan’s near neighbor, Princess Michael of Kent, who lives in apartment 10 in Kensington Palace, just across from Nottingham Cottage, arrived at Buckingham Palace sporting a blackamoor brooch, a piece of sixteenth-century Venetian jewelry that is now considered racist for its depiction of slaves. As Meghan is biracial and this was her first encounter with the wider royal family, Princess Michael’s decision was considered particularly offensive. The seventy-three-year-old princess apologized profusely and promised not to wear the brooch again.
“The brooch was a gift and has been worn many times before,” a representative for Princess Michael said in a statement. “Princess Michael is very sorry and distressed that it has caused offense.”
Princess Michael, whose husband is a cousin of the Queen and whose father was a member of Hitler’s Nazi Party, is no stranger to racial controversy. When she was at a New York restaurant in 2004, she had a run-in with a group of African American diners, reportedly telling them to “go back to the colonies.” In order to restore her reputation, she gave an extraordinary TV interview in which she described passing herself off as a “half caste African” in her youth to experience life among these “adorable special people” as she traveled around South Africa and Mozambique.
But Meghan had more to worry about than her new neighbor’s ill-advised behavior. Her beloved rescue dog Guy broke both his back legs in an accident. Though the beagle mix was on the mend after receiving treatment from TV “Supervet” Professor Noel Fitzpatrick at his Surrey clinic, it meant she left Guy behind to recuperate when, on Christmas Eve, she and Harry drove to Sandringham to spend Christmas with the royal family.
Though there were enough bedrooms in the majestic pile—Sandringham has 270 rooms—Meghan and Harry accepted William and Catherine’s invitation to stay with them at their newly renovated country home, Anmer Hall. It was more relaxed, the “Fab Four,” as they have now been dubbed, becoming closer with every passing day.