If the glass slipper fits, get to work
Can Meghan Markle save the British monarchy? Can she reverse racism?
These silly questions were asked seriously in the media this week after the 36-year-old divorced, American biracial actress and humanitarian became officially engaged to everyone’s favourite royal lad.
Prince Harry, 33, younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, seemed joyfully smitten with his bride- to-be — and she with him — during a BBC interview after the couple, who will marry in May, announced their engagement.
There was thankfully no antiseptic “whatever in love means,” as his father Charles put it 36 years ago, about his own impending and, it turned out, spectacularly ill-advised marriage to a virginal Lady Diana Spencer, then 19.
That so-called fairy tale marriage destabilized the British monarchy and ended in infidelity, tumult, divorce and the shocking death of Diana in a car crash.
Diana was only 36 in 1997 when she died, the same age Markle is today as she enters what, depending on your perspec- tive, will either be the last enduring monarchy in the western world, or a wealthy, untalented, dysfunctional family living precariously off the public purse.
In this icon-toppling era there is no way to predict what will happen to the royal family led by Queen Elizabeth, now 91 and the longest-living monarch in British history. Will it even survive her inevitable death?
Harry, now a safely distant fifth in line to that throne, seems free to marry for love.
Except a royal marriage is never just about love. That was made clear even in their engaging interview.
As the couple charmingly described their courtship, right down to the roast chicken they were making when Harry proposed, some telling phrases leapt out.
In marrying Markle, a woman who he said with crashing understatement wasn’t “necessarily in (my) circle,” Harry said he was adding “another team player as part of the bigger team.”
He had no doubt Markle would be “really unbelievably good at the job part of it,” a realization that came to him as “a huge relief.”
I’ll bet it did. You don’t have to be cynical to accept that anyone marrying into this family has to survive a job interview.
You want this prince? Well, if the glass slipper fits, get to work.
There are wardrobes to wear, rope lines to walk, charities to promote, children to bear, a brand to preserve and a lifetime, if you’re lucky, of service ahead of you.
“We are a fantastic team, I know we are,” enthused Harry, as Meghan murmured about how she was going to “transition out of my career and into the role,” starting with “boots on the ground in the U.K.”
One of Markle’s causes has been the global advancement of girls and women. She got a standing ovation at the UN in 2015 on International Women’s Day, speaking about gender equality. Can a woman who has some feminist bona fides be taken seriously if she gives up her substantial career to marry a prince?
Markle, who for six years has starred in the USA Network lawyer series Suits (filmed in Toronto), has been in the entertainment business for 15 years. She also developed a lifestyle site, the Tig, describing herself on it — as Vanity Fair reported — as “an actress, a writer, the Editor-in-Chief of my lifestyle brand The Tig, a pretty good cook, and a firm believer in handwritten notes.”
Pursuing her work and her causes, she was always a little too serious and discreet to be paparazzi fodder over the years. What Markle has in common with her future sister-in-law Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, who is married to Harry’s older brother William and is the wife of one future king and the mother of another, is not just that they are both poised commoners, but that they are also properly educated.
Both graduated from university, Markle with a degree in theatre and international relations from Illinois’s Northwestern University.
In contrast, Harry’s beloved mom Diana Spencer, from one of the great aristocratic families of Britain, was woefully undereducated. Before marrying Charles, Diana worked as a nanny and briefly even cleaned houses.
Diana carried shame with her. You could see it in her eyes. She put herself down, describing herself as “thick as a plank” even though she became one of the most popular royals in history, with a significant societal impact on issues such as landmines and the treatment of AIDS victims.
Markle is obviously self-confident and proud of her heritage, her accomplishments and her own handling of the lurid media storm that was her introduction to being in the royal limelight.
My first thought about Markle was: Does she know how it will feel to no longer have a career of her own?
A competent, engaging actress, Markle is, however, no Meryl Streep, and in fact, in her mid-30s, was approaching a time that actresses rightfully loathe, when they have to work harder in an unfair system for parts that start going to younger women.
“I have ticked this box,” said Markle frankly of her 100th episode on Suits.
So the fairy tale morphs into how much societal good she can do alongside her husband Harry, who has already championed the issue of mental health, especially of soldiers, after serving as one for 10 years himself. Could they actually make a powerful difference together, speaking out on issues that matter?
With her first walkabout already scheduled, Meghan Markle’s glass slipper is now officially a “boot on the ground.”
You might call it a fairy tale with a mission statement. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson