Duchess discord
Jan Moir reports on palace pressures facing Kate, Meghan
Royal wives in Windsor knot
Have Kate and Meghan really fallen out? If so, it must be a world record for sisters-in-law; from hello to zero in less time than it takes to say: “I saw that tiara first.”
Speculation of a rift between the royal wives has been percolating for months. News that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are to move out of Kensington Palace — and away from William and Kate — only seems to confirm the rumours that continue to flutter around.
Or does it? The royal residence in London may be grand, but it is still a kind of gilded campus; stuffed with royals of all stripes, seething with major and minor dukes, duchesses, attendant courtiers plus those saucereyed honeymooners Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank, ugh!
Wouldn’t you want to flee from this suffocating west wing of royal bling, where the Cambridges are the senior principals who must come first and to whom everyone must defer at all times?
I’m a celebrity, says Meghan Markle, get me out of here.
So perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that she and Harry are fleeing 32km down the M4 to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor. There, they will set up home under the Heathrow flight path, just as soon as their gourmet kitchen and Soho
House velvet sofas have been installed.
And if their wives continue to simmer at each other like two furious eggs in a poaching pot, what will happen to the relationship between the two brothers? William and Harry have always been close.
They were the two little boys bonded by maternal bereavement; the teenagers united in the odd loneliness and peculiarities of their royal lives; the young men who railed against the strictures of longestablished protocol and custom.
Now they are both married — and we all know that wives change everything, especially wives who do not get along.
For a brief shining moment, the two couples teamed up for informal public events and were known as the Fab Four, but I think we can kiss that cosy scenario goodbye.
From now on, the courts of the Sussexes and the Cambridges have officially and emotionally parted company.
By settling in Windsor, Harry and Meghan hope to distinguish themselves outside the stultifying orbit of William and Kate. They want to make their own mark and create their own power base.
Behind them they leave the reek of sisterly misunderstandings, including Kate’s apparent tears during a Princess Charlotte bridesmaid fitting for Harry and Meghan’s wedding, plus heightened tensions between the Sussexes and the royal household staff.
“What Meghan wants, Meghan gets,” Prince Harry is reported to have said. It makes me suspect that it is him — and not her — who is hyperaware of insider status and royal slights.
As outsiders, Kate and Meghan could have been powerful allies for each other, but it is clear that life as a wife of Windsor is anything but merry. When Meghan gives birth to her first child with Prince Harry next year, don't expect it to be at the Lindo Wing at London's St Mary's Hospital, the traditional hospital of the royal family.
The Duchess of Sussex reportedly has been looking at other birthing options, sources have told
The private maternity wing is where Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, gave birth. The hospital, which costs upwards of $14,000 to give birth in, welcomed George and Amal Clooney's twins in 2017.
Options could include a home birth or hospital close to their home Frogmore Cottage, the publication reports.