Markle and other American royals
Meghan Markle is about to join more than one select group. In addition to her May 19 wedding to Prince Harry, she’ll become one of just a handful of Americans to become a senior royal around the globe.
Here’s a look at some of her predecessors: The queen that never was
Bessie Wallis Warfield Simpson was the twice-divorced socialite from Baltimore whose love affair with King Edward VIII triggered a constitutional crisis for the British monarchy in the 1930s.
They met when he was still Prince of Wales, through a tangled web involving one of his mistresses. They married nearly three years later. He fell hard, becoming the first British monarch to voluntarily give up the throne, on December 10, 1936. Her marital status and his role as head of the Church of England were insurmountable at the time.
The two became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, settling into exile in France and elsewhere.
JFK’s sister-in-law
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had a younger sister, born into the tony Southampton, New York, family as Caroline Lee Bouvier. She lived largely in Jackie’s shadow, though some considered her the “prettier” and more vivacious of the two.
The year before John F. Kennedy announced his run for the US presidency, Lee married for the second time, to Polish Prince Stanislaw Albrecht Radziwill, on March 19, 1959. It was his third marriage. They had two children. They divorced in 1974 after 15 years of marriage. Lee, 85, divides her time between New York and Paris, having lived in London with her prince.
Princess Grace of Monaco
Grace Kelly, blond and popular, was one of the world’s biggest stars when she was plucked by Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956. She retired from acting at 26 to become his princess, decamping to the tiny, well-heeled Mediterranean principality on the Riviera.
On September 13, 1982, Kelly suffered a stroke and lost control of her car on a steep, winding road as she and their youngest child, Stephanie, drove back to Monaco from their country estate. Stephanie was injured. Kelly died later in a hospital. She was 52.
The royal couple had two other children: The eldest, Princess Caroline, and Prince Albert.
The first royal from Hollywood
Rita Hayworth was a screen queen in the 1940s and a pinup model for the troops during the Second World War. She was married twice before (including to Orson Welles) and left Hollywood behind to marry Italian-born Prince Ali Salman Aga Khan. He was known as Aly Khan and was the son of Sultan Mohammad Shah, Aga Khan III. The two wed in Cannes, France, on May 27, 1949. Things began to unravel in 1951. She filed for a divorce that September and was finally granted a divorce in January 1953. She died in 1987 at 68.