Meghan’s first 100 days: A royal win
The former actress is growing into new role
In fairy tales, you’ll recall, you never hear about what happens after the handsome prince marries Cinderella. But in the real-life modern era of social media and 24/7 coverage, we can all suss out if they really do live happily ever after.
It has been a little more than 100 days since Prince Harry, 33, married Meghan Markle, 37, in a breathtaking wedding at Windsor Castle, broadcast and livestreamed to billions around the world May 19.
Now that they’ve had some time to themselves and carried out multiple public appearances representing Britain’s royal family, it’s fair to ask: How’s she doing?
Is the former American actress adjusting well to the royal life of duty and public service? Has she worn the right clothes, said the right things, curtsied the right way during public engagements? Does she look happy and confident? Does he look happy and proud? Yes, yes, yes and yes.
Most important, does Queen Elizabeth II, look pleased? As a matter of fact, she does.
Lots of observers, from professional royals watchers to ordinary Brits, also seem to think Meghan is a hit as a newbie royal: graceful, personable, wellprepared, stylish and very much in love.
Off-duty, they’re enjoying weekends in the gorgeous Cotswold countryside about 90 miles from London, where reports say they have rented an estate while renovations continue at their Kensington Palace home base.
And, according to Sally Bedell Smith, the American writer whose biographies of the royals are best-sellers, they’ve adopted a dog – a black Labrador named Oz – who joins her rescue beagle Guy as part of the Sussex family. With a much-anticipated international tour Down Under coming up in the fall, it looks as if the future is gold for Their Royal Highnesses.
Except for one problem: What to do about Daddy? Her 74-year-old father, Thomas Markle Sr., not to mention her obstreperous Markle half-siblings, Samantha Grant and Thomas Markle Jr., all regularly turn up on TV and in the tabloids in Britain, carping, criticizing and grumbling about Meghan, Harry, his family and even the queen.
So far, Meghan’s success as a royal seems to have insulated her from public humiliation if not private sorrow. Instead, members of her new family,
starting with the queen, have gone out of the way to show support.
The 92-year-old monarch is a woman who rarely lets her emotions show, but she appeared delighted to spend a day with Meghan on a series of engagements in Cheshire in June; she invited her to spend the night with her on the Royal Train – a rare privilege even Harry hasn’t been granted.
Meghan “has done very well. It’s a steep learning curve, quite an initiation,” says CNN royals contributor Victoria Arbiter, daughter of a former press secretary to the queen who spent some growing-up years at Kensington Palace.
Arbiter says you can see Meghan’s confidence growing with each public appearance. “But she really shined that day out with the queen. It was an exceptional day, and they both looked very happy. That day was the highlight.”
Meghan has acquitted herself well, handling herself with dignity and composure, at a series of public engagements, including a well-regarded twoday visit to Dublin, Ireland in July, Smith says.
“She has a lot of warmth, and he has charisma, and both are approachable with crowds,” Smith says. “Because of her background (American, biracial, a former actress on ‘Suits’), she’s already brought a lot of people into the fold of royal fans who were either indifferent or hostile. Now they look on her as a member of a family that is inclusive and very 21st-century. They are real assets for the image of the modern royal family.”
People who thought Meghan was going to “revolutionize” the royal family had it wrong, Arbiter says. “She showed she’s not interested in revolution. She wants to show up and do what she’s supposed to do and do it well,” Arbiter said. “She’s incredibly smart and strategic in the approach she is following. She’s done her homework the way an actress does research for a role.”
Meanwhile, the Markles are talking, talking, talking about their resentment of not being invited to the wedding and about Meghan’s relationship with her father. Markle Sr., a retired Hollywood lighting director who lives in Mexico south of Tijuana, missed the wedding because he said he was too sick to travel.
Meghan “has done very well. It’s a steep learning curve, quite an initiation.”
Victoria Arbiter CNN royals contributor
Ever since, he says, he has had little contact with his daughter except for a few tense phone calls, including one with Harry, who chided him for talking to the media.
Markle could not or would not stop. Instead, he told TMZ, with whom he has chatted often for months, that he was miffed the queen planned to meet with President Donald Trump (in July) before she met him.
“If the queen is willing to meet our arrogant, ignorant and insensitive president, she has no excuse not to meet me. I’m nowhere near as bad,” he complained on July 26.
Later, he compared the royal family to Scientologists. “They are either like Scientologists or the Stepford family,” he told The Sun, the largest-circulation newspaper in Britain, on Aug. 17. “They are cultlike – like Scientology – because they are secretive.”
Smith, whose royal sources are deep, says she knows “for a fact” that Meghan has been distressed by her family’s behavior. “One thing she stopped doing is reading the press because it was too upsetting,” Smith said.
Her family’s public outbursts are no doubt painful and embarrassing, but are they permanently damaging to Meghan or her marriage or the royal family? The consensus seems to be no, because eventually the Markles will lose their news value and the TV shows and tabloids will no longer be interested.
“People will listen less and less because there’s not a lot he can say to add to what he’s already said,” Smith says. “If he wants a relationship with his daughter, he’d be wise to do what he can to get over his feelings of hurt and betrayal.”
Arbiter says that what the British have read so far about Meghan’s father and half-siblings – divorces, bankruptcies, estranged relationships – has shown them as anything but a loving, unified family.
“I think they’ve lost sympathy for (the Markles) because they’re seeing them for what they are, which is gold diggers out for an opportunity,” Arbiter says. “It will pass eventually.”
It’s not unusual for people marrying into the royal family to have troublesome relatives or broken relationships. Harry’s mother, the late Princess Diana, fell out with her mother, sisters and brother at different points in her life, Smith notes. Kate Middleton, now Prince William’s wife, the Duchess of Cambridge, has a maternal uncle, Gary Goldsmith, who pleaded guilty to slapping his wife outside their London home, among other scandals.
Can Meghan’s relationship with her father ever be repaired? Possibly, but it can’t happen with the public watching, Smith says. She points to Meghan’s private secretary, Samantha Cohen, a highly regarded former top aide to the queen, as a potential daddy whisperer whose discretion is unchallenged.
“She has good instincts, and if there is a way of repairing this, she could be crucial in helping to guide them to get to a rapprochement,” Smith says. “I suspect that on some level they are already trying to work things out. ... There must be a way to mend what is obviously a very painful situation.”
Katie Nicholl, author of several biographies of the young royals, including “Harry: Life, Loss and Love,” agrees the media eventually will view the Markles as irrelevant; in the meantime, Meghan and her palace advisers are unlikely to move away from their position of refusing to comment in public.
“It might be that at some point, the palace reaches out to Thomas Markle to try and forge some sort of reconciliation, but they will only do that with Meghan’s blessing,” she told Vanity Fair.
“Meghan will rise above all this,” Arbiter predicts.