Will Meghan be a princess or the Duchess of Sussex?
The intriguing questions raised as news that the Prince and his girlfriend met the Queen for tea fuels engagement talk
The last time an American divorcee was introduced into the Royal Family it imperilled the entire future of the monarchy. But unlike Edward VIII, Prince Harry is not the King or immediate heir to the throne. An intimate tea with the Queen on Thursday last week could mean only one thing: that Meghan and Harry are moving towards an engagement. If the couple do decide to marry, it is now clear they will have his grandmother's approval — which is crucial, since Harry, as the fifth ( soon to be sixth) in the line of succession, needs the permission of the Queen. How times are changing in the Royal Family. Prince Wi l l i a m ' s Kate, a success as Duchess of Cambridge, came partly f r om coal- mining stock in the NorthEast of England. H e r mother Carole, now a successful business- woman, spent her early years in a council house.
Meghan's maternal forebears were slaves. The beautiful and spirited actress is already a favourite among the royals. Earlier this year, Harry introduced her to his father Prince Charles, who is said to have been ' very impressed'. The Duchess of Cornwall is understood to have described her as ' a very, very nice girl, and so pleasant'.
As for the Queen, nothing would give her more pleasure than to see Harry happily married. They have a close relationship and she has enjoyed him coming to tea — teatime is her favourite part of the day, when she is at her most relaxed. People outside the family are rarely invited to share it with her.
So one can understand his nervousness at introducing his girlfriend to his grandmother ( to say nothing of Meghan's nerves). Harry has long told friends how apprehensive he would be when the time came to introduce ' The One' to the Queen.
For the Los Angeles-born actress, who stars in the US television legal drama series Suits, the introduction would have been the audition of auditions.
Thus far, compared with brother William's courtship of Kate, Harry's has been a whirlwind romance — just 15 months. It took William and Kate eight years to progress from first meeting to getting engaged, though the fellow students at St Andrews University were both very young when they met.
Tellingly, though, a full year before Harry began dating the actress, talking with a group of friends, he described his 'ideal woman' as being the girl who plays Rachel Zane in Suits.
For more than a year now, despite her filming commitments, Meghan has been slipping in and out of London and staying with the Prince at Kensington Palace, and looking completely at home. Royal staff and police have become used to seeing her around.
All the signs are that she is preparing for a new life. She has apparently advised the Suits producers in Toronto, where the show is filmed and where she has an apartment, that she cannot commit herself to the series beyond Christmas. She has also ended her VIP leased car contract with Audi several months early.
This is clearly a royal romance being carefully choreographed and there is little doubt where it is heading.
Only twice have statements been made for public consumption. The first, from Harry in November last year, was highly irregular and surprisingly bullish in tone. It confirmed they were in a relationship and asked the media to respect their privacy.
Fast- forward to last month and Meghan was being interviewed in her home by the respected American glossy magazine Vanity Fair talking with unexpected candour about her romance with the Queen's grandson. These were her words: 'We're a couple, we're in love. I'm sure there will be a time when we have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but I hope what people will understand is that this is our time. This is for us.'
Aren't these the words of a young woman whose life may be private at the moment but who expects it to become very public?
Those words said it all — words she would never have uttered without Harry's prior approval. It also suggests he may have urged her to speak out as a means to pave the way to publicly formalising their relationship. And how well the ground was prepared for last month's Invictus Games in her adopted city of Toronto, where the world expected to see them together and was not disappointed.
They were hand in hand, he was pictured tenderly kissing her and, significantly, her mother was also there — Doria Ragland, 60, a yoga teacher and therapist whose great-great-great-great grandfather was a slave working on a Deep South cotton plantation until he was freed after Abolition in 1865.
Doria, who parted from Meghan's father Thomas Markle — an Emmy award- winning Hollywood lighting director — when their daughter was two, had made the five- hour flight to join her daughter and Harry from her home in Los Angeles.
The prospect of a royal wedding for this handsome couple certainly throws up a hatful of questions — the first being: where? The last time Meghan said 'I do' it was dusk and she and bridegroom Trevor Engelson, a promising young film producer, were on a beach in Jamaica. Then, surrounded by friends and family holding sparklers, the couple embraced for their first dance on a lawn lit by scores of white paper lanterns, overlooking the Caribbean. That was six years ago, when she was 30. Two years later, she and Engelson were amicably divorced without an alimony settlement.
A wedding to Harry is unlikely to take place on a beach in Jamaica — if only because the Queen, 91, and Philip, 96, no longer fly long-haul. But the days when Meghan, as a divorcee, and Prince Harry couldn't marry in church are over. The reason the God- fearing Prince Charles married Camilla in a civil ceremony was because, as heir to the throne, he is the future head of the Church of England. So Harry could conceivably marry in one of the great cathedrals, as royal tradition would nor mally dictate — such as Westminster Abbey, where William and Kate were married in April 2011.
The feeling among courtiers who have watched Harry grow up, however, is that he will want to do something different.
There is hypothetical talk of a wedding in Canada. Even if the Queen herself were not there, the idea might appeal to her in principle because Canada is part of the Commonwealth. Harry, of course, has always been the one likely to carve a different path through royal life. Since leaving the Army he has created a role for himself in helping the disadvantaged.
In this, the pair have much in common. Long before she knew Harry, Meghan was involved in the international charity One Young World, was a UN ambassador for the empowerment of women and travelled to Rwanda to promote World Vision's clean water campaign.
Another thing they have in common is that both are from 'broken homes'. In Meghan's case, as with Harry and William, she would still see both parents equally when she was growing up.
But she also possesses a quality the Prince has long hankered after — one that came to be recognised in Princess Diana after her divorce from the Prince of Wales. For Meghan's enterprising and outgoing manner symbolises the very kind of freedom and independence Harry has sought for himself. She also has his favourite characteristic — a sunny outlook.
Such is their apparent compatibility that this romance, more than Harry's previous relationships, has been followed keenly within the Royal Household.
A few weeks ago, when rumour was spreading of an 'announcement', it was whispered with great excitement, particularly below stairs, that this would be Harry and Meghan's engagement. It turned out to be the news that Kate is pregnant, with a baby due in April — whose arrival will push Harry a notch down the line of succession.
Harry has hardly concealed his envy of his brother's happy family life, and made no secret of his desire to settle down and become a father. And so to last week and that teatime appointment with the Queen.
It is, of course, a further marker of the formalising of Harry's relationship with Meghan and suggests an engagement is one step closer.
Meanwhile, a new parlour game has already started among Palace staff: what will they have to call Meghan? Would she be Princess Meghan, or perhaps the Duchess of Sussex, which is one of the suggested dukedoms available to the Prince?