A very modern royal
In the year since the wedding, Meghan Markle has helped transform the British monarchy
Has it really been 12 months since Meghan Markle became the Duchess of Sussex? It seems like yesterday that we (and nearly 2 billion of our closest friends) were watching a Toronto-based actress from a successful cable drama suddenly skyrocket to being one of the most famous women of her generation, via the decidedly old-fashioned avenue of marrying a prince.
A lot has undoubtedly changed in Markle’s own life in this past year (she moved to a new continent, switched careers, got married, renovated a house, became a best-selling author, became a mother), but her reign thus far as duchess has also seen a major shakeup in the lives of the people around her. More specifically: the amorphous entity known as “the Palace,” which encompasses the Royal Family and the staff who work behind the scenes for them, as well as the general status quo of the House of Windsor as an entity.
First, a rundown of major headlines: She chose not to appear in public with her baby hours after giving birth. She left the family compound at Kensington Palace for Windsor. She dared to decorate with vegan paint and not Farrow & Ball. She and Harry separated their household and office from Prince William and Kate Middleton. She famously closed her own car door. She’s expressed opinions and given speeches about feminism.
Markle being American is a large contributing factor to how she is doing duchessing her own way. The fact that she gets up at 4:30 a.m. and starts sending emails to her staff at 5 was one of the more memorable bits of “evidence” in accusations last year that she was driving Kensington Palace staffers bonkers with her relentless drive to, like, make a difference and do something with her life.
Purely from a scheduling standpoint, this is a marked change from, say, the Queen, who is said to not be a morning person. Her Majesty generally wakes up around 8:30, and staffers schedule morning engagements for her at their peril.
You read a lot of press in certain quarters about how Markle has done double, triple, quadruple the number of engagements Kate has done in a given month, and there’s an entire subgenre of royal coverage dedicated to Work Shy Wills. It’s worth remembering, however, that there is more to royal “work” than walkabouts, and that so much of what they do happens behind closed doors — taking meetings, going on private engagements we’ll never hear about, scheming up initiatives like Prince Harry’s Invictus Games or the new mental health text helpline he just launched with Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Stories about the palace feeling threatened by Markle’s ambitions have been bread and butter to many tabloids over the past year. In fact, the Express just released an interview with a royal biographer who claims that “Buckingham Palace, unsettled by Markle’s determination to do things her own way, has already taken decisive action to control her activities.”
This article repeats the same charges that have been levelled elsewhere, which boil down to, “She wants to do it her own way.” Case in point: authorizing several of her close friends to give interviews to People back in February. It wasn’t quite Markle speaking out herself about the online abuse she faces and clearing the air about her father, but it was close. The rub: she didn’t tell the palace the feature was happening until minutes before it ran.
As you can imagine, that’s fairly threatening when it’s your job to be her actual PR machine. Whether it comes from a place of mistrust or just preferring to do things herself, there is ample evidence that Markle is indeed having a lot more hands-on involvement in, as they say in the biz, shaping her own narrative.
Take social media. While we don’t have official confirmation that Markle is actually tapping away on Instagram with those protocol-breaking burgundy nails, the @SussexRoyal Instagram account does have a distinctly different flavour. The voice alone — informal, redolent of the stream of consciousness writing on her former blog, The Tig — is very different from the starchy pronouncements of all the other obviously palace-run accounts. Case in point: the snap of Archie’s toes and snippet of a poem that was posted for Mother’s Day.
The year ahead should bring more surprises and more change, particularly on the modern motherhood front. As with much of the world, we’ll be watching to see how Markle continues to help the monarchy evolve into a modern institution that feels a little less alienating and a little more accessible.