Why Meghan’s staying silent

Following another explosive interview from Thomas Markle last week, Harry and Meghan are reportedly escaping to Balmoral. Royal writer Robert Jobson reports on the couple’s new strategy to combat the Duchess’s errant father…

Balmoral, the royal family’s Scottish holiday home, is the Queen’s favourite place. It’s where she’s unburdened by official duties for two months every summer, and where she walks on the moors with her dogs, rides on the 50,000 acre estate and drives around in her beloved Land Rover. For the other guests, there are picnics, home cinema evenings, games and bracing walks. It is a place to relax, recharge the batteries and reflect.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that, amid the unending stream of headlines driven by Meghan’s father Thomas, Prince Harry is said to be taking his new wife there this month for a break. Last week, Thomas gave yet another unprecedented interview, in which he spoke of hanging up on Harry during a row over his cooperation with the paparazzi and being ignored by Meghan. It led many to wonder if this is the biggest crisis to hit the royal family since Diana.

Many also wondered why Meghan and Harry are refusing to speak to Thomas to control it. The reason? ‘Both want to avoid direct contact with Thomas as they don’t trust him,’ said a royal courtier. ‘Harry and Meghan are leading the strategy, and the other royals are bowing to them at the moment as they don’t want to muddle the thinking. Royal lawyers, who they have consulted about the best way to approach this, have advised caution. The couple are hoping that if they don’t say anything to him, there will be less for him to tell the press. They’re praying the situation exhausts itself.’

The subject will no doubt be in the air at Balmoral, where Meghan will come face to face with the Queen and other members of the family (every morning, the family sit together for breakfast, where pressing family matters are often discussed). But there will no hard feelings towards the new Duchess. Charles, in particular, has gone out of his way to embrace his daughter-in-law and make her feel welcome. The Queen will, of course, have sympathy for her grandson’s wife. After all, Meghan can hardly be held responsible for her father and half-sibling’s indiscretions. Nobody in the family blames her.

‘Meghan has played by the rules at every turn, and has kept a close, very private circle since she met Harry,’ said a source. ‘Despite her father talking about her, her private life is watertight: she has given very little away about who she is and keeps herself very much to herself. Her intention is to stick firmly to that strategy,

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and the other royals respect her for it.’

Many may wonder what the Queen will say to Meghan. Privately, she and Prince Charles are understood to be irritated by the ‘wishy-washy’ way aides paid to advise Harry and his wife have performed so far. But Her Majesty has never been one to interfere directly in private grief. She believes time is a great healer. The Prince of Wales, too, will always wait to offer advice until asked directly, particularly when it comes to his sons and their personal lives. If Harry or Meghan choose to ‘consult up’ and take the counsel of either the monarch or Charles, it will be for them to arrange.

Besides, Balmoral is no stranger to royal crises. It was over breakfast, after all, that in 1992, when Sarah Ferguson’s marriage to Prince Andrew was faltering, surreptitiously taken photographs were published of John Bryan, an American financial manager – apparently sucking on the toes of a topless Sarah in Southern France. ( The Queen was not amused, and her private secretary told the Duchess that she might feel better if she left immediately for London.) Balmoral was also the backdrop for the royals as the tragedy of Diana, Princess of Wales’ death played out.

So for a few fleeting moments, when dancing the Eightsome Reel at the annual Ghillies Ball, Meghan may well forget her family squabbles. But many observers feel that, if she doesn’t want the now toxic relationship with her father to define her early royal career, she must take steps of a different kind to resolve it. And fast. Over the last three months, Thomas Markle has attacked his daughter for cutting contact, ignoring two birthday cards addressed to ‘Duchess Meghan’ and refusing to let him make a speech at her wedding. But Meghan Markle’s father had largely steered clear of criticising her new husband, Prince Harry. Until last week.

In yet another interview, Thomas labelled Harry ‘rude’ and claimed he had hung up on the Prince in a phone call from him just a few days after the royal wedding. Discussing Thomas’s explosive decision to collaborate with the paparazzi, he claims Harry told him, ‘If you had listened to me, this would never have happened.’ Most hurtful, Thomas said, was the fact it happened while he was lying in hospital following a heart attack.

Initially, Harry will have been astonished by Thomas speaking out in this way; and then furious about the invasion of his privacy. Harry has strong views and a quick-fire temper, so much so that his aides often hold back from addressing him with their requests until he is in a good mood.

I know this, because I spent a year following Prince Harry on his royal assignments and interviewed him at Kensington Palace, leading to my book Harry: Conversations With The Prince.

But from spending that time shadowing him, I also know that he can be very caring. He has an incredible intuition to say the right thing at the right time – even with people he barely knows. He asks profound questions that go to the heart of emotional issues. This is something I saw many times, whether he talked to children or ex-army people. It’s as if he has trained as a psychotherapist, but he does it instinctively.

Harry did his best to keep the press away from Meghan and, in a way, he’ll be the best person to help her. He too has experienced how embarrassing a parent can be. He was only 12 when both his mother Diana and his father Prince Charles publicly confessed to their adultery. So he will empathise enormously with Meghan and be protective, reassuring, loving and – as is his way – try to make her laugh. He will be less forgiving of the press, who he has disliked since childhood and blames in part for his mother’s death.

What will be most difficult for Harry is working out how to stop Thomas. Harry usually gets to the core of problems very quickly – in part because he is used to getting his own way – but Meghan’s father has got him stumped. His aides won’t move without his say so. He won’t move without Meghan’s approval. He will listen to her and respect her decision when it comes to her father. It’s very important to him that she has a voice and, until she changes tack, Thomas Markle will be very difficult to silence.

‘HARRY is THE Only PERSON WHO UNDERSTANDS WHAT Meghan is going THROUGH’

WITH BRITNEY back in ad campaigns, baguette bags on our arms again and Buffy set for a reboot, you’d be forgiven if you wondered what year we’re in. J-LO is still making music (and headlines), And The City’s ’s still being referenced and pencil-thin eyebrows are officially back in vogue thanks to the latest issue of, er, UK Vogue. . We just can’t let the ’90s go.

Certainly in fashion, the ’90s are in full swing. But whereas the initial swell of the revival – cycling shorts, bucket hats, tiny glasses, ugly trainers – was best left to people who weren’t even alive in the ’90s, the new mood has edged towards something glossier and more grown-up: minimalism, underpinned with a hint of bohemian decadence. It’s out with the ladette and in with the starlet.

At the moment, the freshest out-out looks aren’t new at all. Forget Beyoncé, forget all the Kardashians – get on Google immediately and search for Sofia Coppola, Gwyneth Paltrow and Winona Ryder looking ridiculously cool in their ’90s finery. Bar the cigarettes in their hands (smoking! inside!), top to toe, their looks would feel completely relevant now. These are your thoroughly modern muses.

Not that you need us to page you that message – it’s clearly been received. According to Lyst, searches for slinky slip dresses – the effortless yet impactful out-out uniform of the ’90s starlet – have surged in the past three months, with demand for red and yellow styles increasing by 42% in the past year. Today’s red carpet regulars are following suit: Rosie Huntington-whiteley was spotted in a Christopher Kane slip last week, Zoë Kravitz, Rihanna and Emily Ratajkowski have also worn them recently.

And the late ’90s love-in doesn’t stop there – fine-strap sandals are the fash pack’s current fave, with Mango’s square-toe versions as in-demand with the streetstyle set as The Row’s barely-there pair. The undisputed bag of the moment is the embroidered or beaded pouch (searches up by 37% year on year, according to Lyst): Ganni’s Edison could easily pass for something Kate might have had swinging from her wrist in the Johnny Depp days. Want to take it even further? Consider a velvet jacket or lace-trimmed cardigan – though we suggest holding off on the Rachel cut for the moment.

And for those hankering after something even more authentic, the original bags that launched a thousand waiting lists – like the Dior Saddle and Fendi Baguette – have found favour with a new generation of influencers, proving they’re just as It as ever. Ditto Manolo’s Maysale mules.

So what’s making this decade so desirable? Influencer and editor Irina Lakicevic talks about the ’90s’ high/low appeal: ‘ We saw the simultaneous rise of Björk and the Backstreet Boys; black and tie-dye went hand in hand.’ Then there’s the era’s relative closeness – recent enough to evoke familiarity, long ago enough to feel novel. But beyond nostalgia, the ’90s resonate for another reason. Pre-social media and being shackled to your phone 24/7 ( hilariously, the Huji filter, which makes snaps look like ’90s disposable pics, is trending right now), the ’90s represent the last time we could really let go. Perhaps this was the last time our eveningwear was made for having fun in, rather than taking selfies in. In that sense, what late-’90s style represents is effortlessness in its purest form. And as we all know, that never goes out of fashion.