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Becoming royalty
What comes after the ‘happily ever after’ for Meghan Markle? Combat training, wardrobe strategy and avoiding faux pas with The Firm. Former Telegraph royal correspondent Gordon Rayner goes behind the palace gates to reveal the fraught process of
Former Telegraph royal correspondent Gordon Rayner reveals what it takes to join The Firm – from etiquette training to anti-terrorist drills
Never mind sorting the dress; what of anti-terrorist drills, history lessons and religious conversion?
Ican very safely say, as naive as it sounds now… I did not have any understanding of just what it would be like.’ So said Meghan Markle on the day she and Prince Harry announced their engagement, as she discussed her ‘learning curve in the past year and a half ’ since she stepped through the looking glass into the fantastical world of the Royal family.
When the American actress first met Prince Harry two years ago, her experience of Britain was so limited that she had no idea that a sidewalk is called a pavement on this side of the Atlantic, or that the lion that appears on the royal coat of arms is England’s national animal, so that learning curve has perhaps been steeper for her than for any royal bride before her. Never mind sorting out the dress, cake and invitations; what of the anti-terrorist drills, the history lessons, the wardrobe secrets, the etiquette, and the religious conversion, not to mention the inter-palace politics?
Meghan will be making vows not just to Prince Harry when they marry in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle today, but, implicitly, to the institution of the monarchy itself. She must honour and obey the centuries-old customs of the Royal family, regardless of whether she comes to love or cherish them. And right now, she needs all the help she can get to navigate the bewildering set of rules that will dictate her behaviour.
‘There is no formal training or induction process for royal brides,’ says Patrick Jephson, former
private secretary to Diana, Princess of Wales and author of The Meghan Factor. ‘It all comes down to her willingness to ask for advice and to learn. No one tells the Royal family what to do – the only discipline they have is self-discipline. The Duchess of York used to get it quite badly wrong because she wouldn’t accept advice, so Meghan must learn to listen.’
Even something as simple as getting dressed presents the sort of challenges Meghan will never have encountered. She may have launched her own clothing range before she met Harry, but she has never needed to worry about whether she is dressing for a state or semi-state occasion, official engagement, meeting with the Queen, Royal Ascot, formal dinner, informal dinner, or some combination of the above. On some days Meghan can expect to wear four different outfits (even at Balmoral, the Royal family changes for afternoon tea) meaning she must have a wardrobe that can cope with more costume changes in a week than an entire series of Suits.
Other Royal households must be contacted to make sure clothing choices do not clash, aides must check the colour schemes of rooms and backdrops to ensure a dress will not disappear into the background, and it will be the job of Meghan’s private assistant secretary Amy Pickerill to explain that royal clothing must be adapted to make it suitably modest. Poppers are sewn into necklines to prevent them gaping when the wearer bends over to accept flowers from children, weights are sewn into hems to prevent skirts blowing upwards in the wind, and female members of the Royal family will even rehearse getting in and out of cars in particular outfits to make sure every possible wardrobe malfunction is pre-empted.
Even so, Meghan was criticised in April for wearing a jacket draped over her shoulders (when she needed to shake hands), and for wearing a sleeveless dress to a church memorial service that marked the 25th anniversary of the murder of teenager Stephen Lawrence. ‘She will almost be on probation to begin with,’ says Jephson. ‘People are going to be looking for errors or curious choices, and even within the palaces there are more people who are ready to criticise behind someone’s back than there are those who are ready to offer advice.’
Diana told her biographer Andrew Morton that after her engagement to the Prince of Wales, ‘I cried like a baby to the four walls. I just couldn’t cope with it. I cried because I got no support from Charles and no support from the Palace press office. They just said, “You’re on your own.”’ It was left to Diana’s personal protection officer to tell her, the night before the engagement was announced, that, ‘This is your last night of freedom ever in the rest of your life, so make the most of it.’ Diana said that was ‘like a sword went in my heart’.
Thankfully the Royal family is now better at preparing newcomers. Princes William and Harry sensibly moved things into the modern age by living with their girlfriends before their marriages.
William explained at the time of his own engagement: ‘I wanted to give [Kate] a chance to see in and back out if she needed to before it all got too much. I’m trying to learn from the past. I just wanted to give her the best chance to settle in and to see what happens on the other side.’ Likewise, Meghan has been Harry’s live-in girlfriend at Kensington Palace (filming schedule permitting) for several months, giving her plenty of time to get used to her new life, and in particular the straitjacket of royal security.
There is no way of sugar-coating the fact that Meghan is now a terrorist target, and like every other member of the Royal family she will by now have been given defensive driving training to learn how to take evasive action in the event of an attempt on her life when she is at the wheel. Diana said of her own training by the SAS: ‘Bombs were being thrown at me. It was terrifying.’
Previous royal brides have also been sent to the Metropolitan Police College at Hendon to rehearse what happens if someone lunges at them in a crowd. (The number-one rule is to step back to give the protection officers room to do their job.) ‘You want to make sure they have a third eye open when it’s appropriate,’ says Dai Davies, former head of royal protection. ‘There are some basic moves you can learn, and if Meghan wants to go to Hereford for training with the SAS, I’m sure that will be offered.’
Meghan will, of course, have a policeman with her at all times – even today, during her wedding procession through the streets, one of the two gold-braided footmen riding on the back of the open carriage will be an armed officer with a gun concealed under his ceremonial dress. And Meghan has already learned that she can’t pop to the shops on the spur of the moment. Every trip
out must be arranged in advance with the Prince’s protection officers, and the same goes for visits from friends, who must provide names and car registration numbers the day before they drop by.
However, most of her royal education is rather less onerous. What happens, for example, if Meghan is caught short on a royal engagement? No problem: a retiring room with a loo, searched and sealed in advance by security officers, is set aside at every venue exclusively for royal use. Meghan is also now versed in the royal ‘banned’ list. Autographs are out, for the simple reason that in the melee of a walkabout, members of the Royal family cannot check what they are signing. Making any sort of political statement is also forbidden, as is revealing secrets. The name of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s dog Lupo is a peculiar example of what is classed a ‘private matter’ by Kensington Palace – it only became public knowledge when the Duchess told a child the spaniel’s name while visiting a school.
Dickie Arbiter, the Queen’s press secretary until 2000, explains, ‘Meghan has got to be aware of what she says at any time during a walkabout, because the first thing that happens is that the press go along afterwards and ask all the people what she said to them.’
Having your own blog or social-media account is also banned, as Meghan discovered when she had to close down her lifestyle website The Tig, and her Instagram page, which had 1.9 million followers at the time. As Prince Harry has said, she is now ‘another team player as part of the bigger team’, not someone with a personal profile.
Prince Harry has also been Meghan’s guide through the minefield of royal etiquette. The Royal family really do curtsy to their superiors when they first meet each day, and they curtsy to each other again when they say goodnight. When Meghan joined the Royal family at Sandringham at Christmas, Harry whispered in her ear before the Queen drove away, apparently prompting the curtsy that followed.
Then there are the family in-jokes and rituals. Diana was mortified when she spent her first Christmas at Sandringham and realised too late that she had committed a faux pas by gifting cashmere jumpers; no one had explained to her that cheap and tacky is the order of the day when the Royal family swap Christmas presents.
Like the Duchess of Cambridge, Meghan, who was raised a Protestant but attended a Catholic school, had never been confirmed and so a discreet baptism and confirmation into the Church of England was arranged in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace in March, ministered by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In addition, Meghan has begun the three-year procedure to become a British citizen, and will go through the same Home Office application process as anyone else (though marrying the Queen’s grandson will ensure she has leave to remain). Learning the Queen’s English – and un-learning American English – is a work in progress. ‘She will have done a lot of swotting up,’ said one acquaintance of the couple. ‘As an actor she is used to doing background research for roles, so it will be second nature to her.’ She will not be given formal lessons in British history, but Palace insiders suggest Meghan will be offered briefings on the constitution (or lack of it) by Sir David Manning, the former ambassador to the US who now works as an adviser at Kensington Palace.
The Duchess of Cambridge was given voice coaching by the late Anthony Gordon Lennox, whose other clients included David Cameron and Ban Ki-moon. There will be no need for elocution lessons for someone who has spent her career enunciating her lines, but Meghan may gradually reduce the volume of her voice. Members of the Royal family are masters of the art of speaking just loudly enough for the person in front of them to hear what they are saying, thus ensuring they are not overheard. The Duchess of Cambridge spoke at a normal conversational volume at the time she and Prince William got engaged, but now speaks so quietly that it can be a struggle to make out what she is saying for those talking to her in crowded rooms. She also speaks with a noticeably more regal accent than when she first married.
But Meghan will have freer rein to be herself than perhaps any royal bride before her, according to Prince Harry’s biographer Penny Junor. ‘She will take Harry’s lead, and he is the most normal and natural of them all,’ she says. ‘He’s also someone who doesn’t play by the rulebook, so he won’t want to rein her in.’
Meghan, of course, is vastly more experienced than previous royal brides. The Princess of Wales was just 19 when she agreed to marry Charles; but at 36, Meghan will be seven months older on her wedding day than Diana was when she died. Arbiter says, ‘Diana was a totally inexperienced young woman: the most she had done was work an assistant at a kindergarten. She wasn’t a woman of the world, unlike Catherine or Meghan.
‘I was called in to teach Diana how to project her voice, how far away from the microphone to sit, how to convey things though speech and not through body language. Meghan is already wellversed in that sort of thing; she has just got to be aware of what she is being asked and to think before saying anything.’
She will also, in time, have to decide which charities she wants to support as a royal patron,
At 36, Meghan will be seven months older on her wedding day than Diana was when she died
a process that will take years rather than months. ‘It’s all about growing into the job,’ says Arbiter.
But even choosing which charities to support is fraught with danger, as Patrick Jephson explains. ‘She will need to learn that the Royal family is not one unified body. It is a federation, and each household does things a little differently, so she will need to learn to negotiate palace politics. For example, she will need to be aware of each palace’s charity space: they need to check that taking on a charity patronage will not cut across the work that another member of the family is doing.’
Behind the scenes, Meghan will be able to call upon the services of not only Pickerill, but also Prince Harry’s staff. But Jephson believes that if Meghan learns from earlier mistakes, the rest will fall into place. ‘She will need to show the public that she is dutiful, hard-working and that she is putting her new country first. If she and Prince Harry are always off on holiday her popularity will quickly wane.’
Given her track record so far, there is no danger of that. Whereas Prince William’s fiancée, the then Kate Middleton, dipped her toe into public life with just a couple of official engagements before her wedding day to ‘learn the ropes’, the possible future Duchess of Sussex (Meghan’s rumoured title) is determined to learn on the job. As Meghan put it, she wanted to ‘hit the ground running’ – and with her number of official engagements passing the 25 mark by mid-april, she has been as good as her word. Something the Royal family, as much as the nation, will be reassured by, as her transformation from Hollywood princess to royal Duchess continues.