Meghan Markle to join a small group of US senior royals
NEW YORK » Meghan Markle is about to join more than one select group. In addition to her May 19 wedding to Prince Harry, she’ll become one of just a handful of Americans to become a senior royal around the globe.
Here’s a look at some of her predecessors:
THE QUEEN THAT NEVER WAS
Bessie Wallis Warfield Simpson was the twice-divorced socialite from Baltimore whose love affair with King Edward VIII triggered a constitutional crisis for the British monarchy in the 1930s.
They met when he was still Prince of Wales, through a tangled web involving one of his mistresses. They married nearly three years later, but what a three years. He fell hard, becoming the first British monarch to voluntarily give up the throne, on Dec. 10, 1936, before her second divorce was finalized and less than a year into his reign. Her marital status and his role as head of the Church of England were insurmountable at the time.
The two became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor after they married on June 3, 1937, settling into exile in France and elsewhere. He did perform some official duties, during World War II as governor of the Bahamas, for instance. There was a visit to Germany with an Adolf Hitler photo op and outrage that they were Nazi sympathizers.
HFK’S SISTER-IN-LAW
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had a younger sister, born into the tony Southampton, New York, family as Caroline Lee Bouvier. She lived largely in Jackie’s shadow, though some considered her the “prettier” and more vivacious of the two.
The year before John F. Kennedy announced his run for the U.S. presidency, Lee married for the second time, to Polish Prince Stanislaw Albrecht Radziwill, on March 19, 1959. It was his third marriage. They had two children. Both were teenagers when their parents divorced in 1974 after 15 years of marriage.
It was Lee who introduced Jackie to Aristotle Onassis, in 1963. Rumors have flown over the years on how Jackie’s marriage to Ari after the assassination of Kennedy infuriated Lee, who married and divorced a third time after the prince.
PRINCESS GRACE OF MONACO
Grace Kelly, blond and popular, was one of the world’s biggest stars when she was plucked by Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956. She retired from acting at 26 to become his princess, decamping to the tiny, wellheeled Mediterranean principality on the Riviera.
To say the union on that April 19 whipped up attention is an understatement. It was one of those weddings of the century. Alfred Hitchcock, one of Kelly’s film directors, reportedly said of the marriage he was “very happy that Grace has found herself such a good part.”
Kelly was reportedly accompanied by relatives, bridesmaids, a poodle and more than 80 pieces of luggage when she set off for Monaco aboard the SS Constitution. Thousands bid her farewell, with thousands more greeting her on the streets of Monaco eight days later.
Hitchcock and other directors courted Kelly to act again after her marriage, but the prince reportedly objected.