Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(73)
Indeed, even though she has only been officially engaged since November 2017, it is as if she has always been part of the family. Meghan has only made a handful of public appearances, but she is well on the way to being accepted as a bona fide National Treasure. By the time she traveled to Wales a week after her visit to South London, she was well into her stride, the slight reticence that had characterized her first couple of engagements replaced by a relaxed manner and a willingness to have fun, to go with the flow.
During their walkabout at Cardiff Castle—where Meghan exhibited spot-on sartorial diplomacy by sporting black jeans from the small Welsh brand Hiut Denim—Meghan described herself as a “super lucky woman” and even joked with two fans that the Welsh city would be a “fun” location for a bachelorette party. Unlike her first outing, she felt confident enough to pose for selfies, signed an autograph for one star-struck schoolgirl, and described her husband-to-be as a “feminist.” She was even presented with a wooden Welsh love spoon as an early wedding gift.
Meghan mania reached fever pitch by the time she and Harry arrived at Star Hub community leisure center in the economically deprived area of Tremorfa. Meghan was soon surrounded by youngsters desperate to meet her. They were given their cue by Harry, who told them: “Let’s all give Meghan a group hug!”
Her visit was a triumph, with even tabloid hacks going all misty eyed about her performance. “Centuries of royal traditions melted away as the US actress brought the warmth of modern celebrity to adoring crowds,” opined the Sun’s Jack Royston.
After the Cardiff visit Harry took Meghan on a short drive to meet the “other woman” in his life, his former nanny and companion, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who had mentored the princes following Diana’s divorce and subsequent death. For Meghan, who winces every time one of her own family opens their mouths, it was a chance to get to know and understand the woman who had such a striking impact on the upbringing of the man she was due to marry.
Though she would never meet Harry’s mother, reminders of her influence and presence were everywhere. Meghan’s first evening appearance was at Goldsmiths’ Hall in the City of London which, by extraordinary coincidence, was where Lady Diana Spencer also undertook her first evening engagement in the run-up to her wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
A generation on and now Diana’s youngest son was taking his own bride-to-be. They were guests of honor at the Endeavour Fund Awards, set up by Harry’s Royal Foundation, to celebrate and honor the achievements of wounded, injured, and sick servicemen and servicewomen who have taken part in remarkable sporting challenges over the last year. A veteran of awards ceremonies, Meghan was cool and poised, unfazed when the envelope containing the winner of the award “celebrating excellence” went missing for a few seconds while her copresenter hunted for the errant piece of paper. “I am truly privileged to be here,” she told a specially invited audience of former service personnel and their families. Unlike Diana, who arrived for her first evening engagement in a low-cut dress that she almost spilled out of when she got out of the car, Meghan opted for a sleekly sophisticated Alexander McQueen trouser suit. The nineteen-year-old Diana would have surely been in awe of such confident self-assurance—in some ways, the groomed and camera-ready Meghan was the woman Diana always strived to become.
Yet much also connects them. Both women shared a humanitarian mission, albeit on a vastly different scale, both charismatic and glamorous, and both recognizing that they were invested with a power to do good in the world.
However, when Diana broke through the barriers of class and ethnicity on both sides of the Atlantic, her appeal as a celebrity lay as much in her vulnerability as her star status. She was all the more attractive because of that susceptibility, especially to women with unhappy marriages. Her social work, visiting those in hospices on their last lonely journey, was therapeutic, as healing for her as it was for those she comforted.
The word vulnerable does not immediately spring to mind when assessing Meghan’s many splendid qualities. Empathetic, certainly but also self-possessed, sophisticated, and poised, equally at home on a podium making a speech or on a photo shoot. She is a flag bearer for a new generation of confident, assertive women, determined to kick through the glass ceiling.
Time and again Meghan has proved herself a team player, embracing her new family and her new country with enthusiasm. This California girl may inwardly wince at the idea of bending the knee, miss all those opportunities to take stylized selfies, and rage at the near impossibility of finding a ripe avocado or a decent hot yoga studio in central London, but she will survive and thrive. She will struggle over the pronunciation of Derby, Leicester, and Torquay, and learn that Brits prefer to sneer than do sincere and that irony is not a device to press your designer shirts. She will learn, sometimes painfully, that while we share the same mother tongue, the British and Americans are very different people.
Her presence inside the royal family is a challenge and an opportunity.
Long before Prince Harry transformed her life, Meghan had articulated what was effectively her manifesto for her future life. Following a visit to Rwanda, she wrote on The Tig: “My life shifts from refugee camps to red carpets, I choose them both because these worlds can, in fact, coexist. I’ve never wanted to be a lady who lunches—I’ve always wanted to be a woman who works. And this type of work is what feeds my soul and fuels my purpose.”