Her only relative: a very proud (and dignif ied) mum
FEELING two billion pairs of eyes upon her, Doria Ragland was equal parts proud and petrified.
As she entered St George’s Chapel just before noon, guests, sensing her unease, cast benevolent smiles in her direction.
Normally the bride’s mother cuts a commanding figure around whom family and trusted lieutenants coalesce. But for reasons that are now all too familiar, Doria, yoga instructor and occasional social worker, was the sole representative of the Markle clan yesterday. Inescapably, this was the wedding’s loneliest woman. Sometimes she seemed quite lost.
At all times, though, she comported herself with a quiet dignity that some of her former relatives on the other side of the Atlantic would do well to note, even if emulating it might prove beyond them. Before sitting down to find the entire Royal Family ranged intimidatingly before her, Doria smiled, looked down, looked up, then bit her lip.
Having left her Los Angeles home only a few days earlier, she had already met some of the senior Royals and had tea and a slice of Victoria sponge with Her Majesty. That was a piece of cake. This was overwhelming.
She looked around. George Clooney nodded and smiled. And then came her dazzling daughter on the arm of the Queen’s son and future King.
Perhaps among the 30 million watching on TV in the US (part of a two billion global audience) were the women who habitually mistook Doria for ‘the help’ after she moved to a predominantly white Los Angeles neighbourhood when Meghan was a baby.
How those same women would dearly love to be Doria’s friends now. At one point the camera zoomed in on her face when the Archbishop of Canterbury asked if Harry and Meghan’s families would ‘support and uphold them in their marriage now and in the years to come?’ Doria issued an emphatic: ‘ We will.’ Maybe she summoned thoughts of Prince Charles’s wedding to Diana less than a week before her only daughter was born. Doria had watched it on television.
When the service was over and the bride and groom began to make their way out, it was Charles who sought her out.
They walked together, exchanging small talk, as they followed the happy couple out i nto the sunshine. It was a nice touch. Doria, elegant in a peppermint suit and side beret, settled down after that but not once could you say she looked truly relaxed. Who could blame her?
It was the day her daughter, the former Suits actress, joined a much longer-running show called the monarchy. Doria is now part of the family too, but with much lower billing than her daughter.
And that, one imagines, probably suits this enigmatic, private woman just fine.
‘Charles sought her out… it was a nice touch’