Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(72)
If she still had her social media accounts, she would have had a few choice words to say about the controversial decision by Simon Dudley, leader of the council borough that is home to Windsor Castle, asking the police to ensure that “aggressive” homeless beggars were removed from the castle surroundings before the big day.
His comments were described as inappropriate, and there were calls for his dismissal. Ironically the fight broke out in early January just as Megan was getting down to wedding details with Jessica Mulroney. As Meghan’s first-ever charity commitment was to the homeless in downtown LA when she was a teenager, and Jessica is cofounder of the Shoebox project, which has so far donated ninety-one thousand boxes of toiletries to homeless women living in shelters, there was no need for a hotline to Kensington Palace to gauge the reaction. Moreover, as both Prince William and his late mother are and were patrons of Centrepoint, the charity for youth homelessness, the council leader could not have picked a target more likely to arouse regal ire.
While the fight rumbled on, Meghan and Harry made their second joint official visit, touring the social enterprise radio station Reprezent 107.3 FM in Brixton, South London, home to many of the capital’s Afro-Caribbean community. As the excited crowd chanted, “We love you,” Meghan smiled, waved, and blew kisses. When the noise reached a ragged crescendo, she coyly put her hand in front of her mouth.
During her tour of the station, which trains hundreds of young people every year in media and related skills, the gender equality campaigner singled out presenter YV Shells, asking the twenty-four-year-old if he was the guy who supported women DJs, empowering women and creating a space that is not so male driven. “I think that’s incredible,” she said.
Inevitably, attention focused on what she was wearing—a ￡45 bell-sleeve black wool sweater, a staple from the midmarket Marks and Spencer clothing and food chain. It was a marked contrast to the ￡56,000 dress she wore for her engagement portrait.
On a walkabout outside, she met with American students Jennifer Martinez and Millicent Sasu from Baltimore. Jennifer approved of the American import: “She’s black, she’s white, she’s an actor, she’s American. She brings a bit of everything and has so many different qualities. She brings so much to the table.”
Not everyone thought so. During her time on the TV reality show Celebrity Big Brother, former member of Parliament and committed Christian Ann Widdecombe described Meghan as “trouble,” the former MP saying that she was “worried about the background and attitude” of Harry’s fiancée.
Matters got uglier as racist remarks made by the girlfriend of Henry Bolton, leader of the pro-Brexit UK Independence Party, were made public. In a series of text messages, glamour model Jo Marney told a friend that Meghan would “taint” the royal family with “her seed” and pave the way for a “black king.” She went on to say that she would never have sex with “a negro” because they are “ugly.” Many of the party’s front bench spokesmen walked out in protest when Bolton refused to quit.
He was eventually ousted after a vote by the party’s shrinking membership. The vote took place before the alarming revelation in February that an envelope containing a white powder and a racist letter was sent to Meghan and Prince Harry at Kensington Palace. While the white powder was deemed harmless, it brought back memories of the anthrax scares in the US a week after the 9/11 attack in 2001, when various senators and others were sent the deadly powder through the mail by, it was believed, an American biodefense scientist. This domestic terrorism left five dead and seventeen others affected by the anthrax spores, the incident so alarming that it enabled mischief makers to cause chaos and disruption for the price of a postage stamp.
The incident, which was officially treated as a race hate crime, was a further example, if any more were needed, that racial prejudice was still a potent issue in multiracial Britain. These sensitive subjects of race and color were issues that concerned those who wondered what happened inside the royal palaces once the cameras and microphones are switched off.
The answer is perhaps surprising: class rather than color is the great divider. Though the Duchess of Cambridge now seems part of the royal wallpaper, it wasn’t always the case. She has faced much more prejudice from those on the inside, the first commoner for four hundred years destined to be queen, than the biracial Californian. When she and William were students together at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Kate was seen by royal courtiers simply as the girl who encouraged him to stay on when he had a well-publicized wobble in the first semester. She was viewed as a perfectly pleasant middle-class girl, who, at some point, would marry someone of her own class when she had finished her degree. When casual friendship morphed into romance, it is safe to say that royal courtiers were stunned. “She got in under the wire,” said one.
Once she started moving in his circle of aristocratic friends, she faced snide remarks and out-and-out bigotry. The focus was on her mother, who was raised in a council house in Southall and snagged a job working as a flight attendant: “Doors to manual” was the cry of William’s snooty pals. It didn’t help Catherine that, in the early days, William was sending mixed messages about her. His ambivalence gave others the chance to criticize and snipe. Not so Harry. From the get-go he was certain that Meghan was the one. No ifs or buts. It has left no room for anyone inside the palace to raise an eyebrow at his choice of bride—commoner or not. It is fair to say that eyebrows have remained studiously unraised. The lead has been taken from the top, and that lead has been entirely positive.