ROYAL RUMOURS There’s much to be learned from the Diana years for Meghan

IT was the night of the Australian Geographic Society awards and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had just presented medals to an inspiring young conservationist and adventurer. As they prepared to leave, I made my way to the bathroom hoping for a closer look at Meghan’s stunning Oscar de la Renta gown. In fact, I ended up just a metre from the Duchess as she and her husband shook hands with a line-up of award winners. A friend who, like me, was forged in the cynicism of Fleet Street, sidled up. “I give it five and two,” she whispered. Five and two? “Five years and two kids then it’ll all be over.”

It seemed a churlish thing to say. The couple were enjoying an extraordinarily successful royal tour characterised by purpose, relevance and the fairy-tale sprinkle of baby news. Not since Diana injected her unique princess powers into the greying and plaidclad monarchy had the royals seemed so shiny.

Yet two months on that goodwill has evaporated. Kate and Meghan have reportedly fallen out, William and Harry’s relationship is feeling the strain, the Sussexes are moving out of Kensington Palace and their staff are leaving in droves. Throw in Meghan’s mouthy dad claiming that she’s “ghosted” him and suddenly the speculation of a Megxit doesn’t seem so improbable after all.

At this point, two things matter: if the “revelations” are true and, if so, what can be done to ensure the Markle debacle does not become Diana 2.0.

There is no doubt there is a rift between the Sussexes and the Cambridges. As someone who worked on British newspapers during the 1990s, this is the classic pattern. Details emerge – a spat over a tiara, tears at Princess Charlotte’s dress fitting – and the public wonders at the veracity of these “trusted sources” and “palace insiders”.

Let’s go back quarter of a century to the night of June 29, 1994. I was working an evening shift on a national newspaper in London when Prince Charles’s infamous interview with broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby would confirm that the heir to the throne had had an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. Newspapers had been speculating about the relationship for years but the Prince’s confession confirmed what we had long known. To be in the newsroom that night – Diana memorably stepping out in what we referred to as her “f*** you” dress - was to have a front row seat in the repositioning of fiction as fact. In the following years all of it – the grubby tampon conversation, Diana’s relationship with James Hewitt, her love affair with doctor Hasnat Khan – would all be substantiated. However spurious the claims and counterclaims between Charles and Diana had appeared, in hindsight we know them to be true.

Ergo, we can assume there’s at least an element of truth in the current reports of a rift between the two (merry) wives of Windsor and the princes to whom they’re wed.

The royal palaces, staffed by underpaid but self-important courtiers, are leakier than a rusty dinghy and the family that lives in them have morphed from in-bred toffs to a new form of aristo celeb focused more on personal branding than breeding. Granted, they’re more “relatable” but that arguably makes them as gossipy, competitive and underhanded as the rest of us. Throw in digitisation – mobile phones were in their infancy during the Diana years - and you have the means for instantaneous dissemination of insider knowledge. So where to from here if this new generation of royals is to avoid the fate of the last? Surely the Queen, having endured her uncle abdicating, three of her children divorcing, her daughter-in-law’s death alongside a European playboy, and her son and heir comparing himself to a sanitary product, deserves equanimity in the final years of her reign. If Diana’s battle of wits with the royal family threatened to irrevocably damage the monarchy, imagine what an internecine war between the leading HRHs might do.

That Kensington Palace hasn’t paraded the “Fab Four” together at some innocuous event speaks volumes of the depth of the rift.

Whether they will walk alongside each other – as they did last year - to the Christmas Day service on Tuesday remains to be seen. If not, speculation will go into overdrive.

The fact is the House of Windsor is not just a family but a workplace. They need psychologists, human resources experts, mediators and damage-limitation advisors on the payroll to help them function. Prince William has already admitted that it can be difficult working with family but this lot don’t have the option of early redundancy or repurposing elsewhere in the firm.

Further, they bring baggage: grief over a lost mum; a troublesome trans-Atlantic family; the loss of career, freedom and friends. “[She] grew up associating the camera with love,” the esteemed editor Tina Brown once wrote of Princess Diana. Could the same be true of Meghan? “It is one of the ironies of Diana’s life that she was always searching to replace her own dysfunctional family with one that didn’t want her,” continued Brown. I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking: “Here we go again…”

For the royals to flourish they need managed unity rather than disharmony. They learned much during the Diana years. It’s time they put those lessons into practice. angelamollard@gmail.com Follow me at twitter.com/angelamollard