Marlene Wagman-Geller

   Royal weddings are the stuff of which fairy tales are made, media magnets for millions. As for the happily ever after, a contemporary royal has rewritten the traditional Disney trope.

   The genesis of the saga that sent shock waves into an ancient regime a continent away began on the Hollywood set of the television soap opera, General Hospital, where Emmy-award-winning lighting director Thomas Markle fell for makeup artist Doria Ragland. They raised their daughter, Rachel Meghan, in predominantly white Woodland Hills, Los Angeles; residents assumed the African American Doria was her nanny. When Meghan was a child, her parents divorced; both remained committed to raising their child. A memorable accomplishment for the eleven-year-old occurred when she wrote to the then First Lady Hillary Clinton regarding a sexist television commercial for liquid detergent that carried the tagline, “Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.” In subsequent airings, due to her intervention, the word women replaced the word people.  At her all-girls private school, Immaculate Heart High, Meghan presciently starred in a production of The Princess Bride. Afternoons were spent on the set of the sitcom, Married with Children, waiting for her dad to finish work.

     At age eighteen, Meghan attended Northwestern University with a double major in international relations and theater and was the first college graduate in her family. A feminist, she used the quotation, “It’s time to focus less on glass slippers and more on glass ceilings.” 

   Determined to break into acting, Meghan joined the cast of the television game show Deal or No Deal where she carried a suitcase packed with cash, hers was number 24, while wearing short dresses and sky-high stilettoes. She traded suitcase for briefcase in her subsequent role as paralegal then attorney Rachel Zane in the legal series Suits. For the production, Meghan moved to Toronto where she shared her home with rescue dogs, Guy and Bogart, and husband, film producer Trevor Engelson, when he visited from their second home in Los Angeles. The couple, who had wed on a Jamaican Beach in 2011, ended their marriage two years later. The salve for her wound: “I was born and raised in Los Angeles, a California girl who lives by the ethos that most things can be cured with either yoga, the beach, or a few avocados.”

      The event that put Markle on the media radar occurred in 2016 when Prince Harry met Meghan.  The matchmaker extraordinaire is speculated to be a baron’s daughter, Violet von Westenholz. While most blind dates make one grateful for therapy, Meghan’s evening made her the love interest of HRH Harry, Prince Charles’s younger son. The prince whisked Meghan away on a romantic getaway to Botswana, where, under the African stars, they celebrated her thirty-sixth birthday. After the media discovered that Meghan was wild about Harry and Harry was wild about her, the Internet ignited. Romantics were enthralled that an American woman had bagged a British prince; others sprinkled poison in the fairy dust. The British Daily Mail reported, “Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton.”  Prince Philip, Harry’s grandfather, cautioned him, “One steps out with actresses, one doesn’t marry them.” A royal rift ensued when Prince William told his brother that things “were moving too fast with this girl.” The greatest vitriol came from Samantha Markle who made a cottage industry of bashing her half-sister, such as in her book The Diary of the Princess of Pushy’s Sister. On Twitter, Samantha referred to her stepsibling as “duchASS.” Meghan’s only preparation for her transition from Ms. to Duchess was her agility in wearing heels, acting experience, and carrying a hefty amount of cash.

     Although Meghan gained unimaginable wealth, prestige, and privilege, in exchange she had to surrender Suits, and her prerogative of dressing and speaking her mind. Accordingly, she pulled the plug on her Twitter and Instagram accounts. Another casualty was her lifestyle website, Tig, the abbreviation for the red wine Tignanello. Meghan said the first time she tasted it she got what the fuss was about regarding the Italian wine. Tig became her code name for an AHA moment, “The TIG is my nickname for me getting it. Not just wine, but everything.” In her final post, she told her followers, “Don’t ever forget your worth-as I’ve told you time and time again: you, my sweet friend, you are enough.”

      In 2018, the thousand-year-old St. George’s Chapel brushed off centuries of tradition; Prince Charles walked Meghan down the aisle as Hollywood and British royalty looked on. Except for Doria, Meghan had no other relatives in attendance. A gospel choir sang “Stand by Me,” and the couple exited the church to the accompaniment of the civil rights anthem “This Little Light of Mine.” The television audience of two billion tuned in to watch the 45-million-dollar latest episode of the world’s most storied soap-opera.

       Prince William and Princess Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, dubbed the Fabulous Four, starred as Britain’s power players. The public enthusiastically welcomed the 2019 birth of the couple’s first-born, Archibald Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, “Archie.” (Harry is also a nickname; his legal one: Henry Charles Albert David). What prevented the family from living happily ever after in seventeenth century Frogmore Cottage was behind Meghan’s megawatt smile lay a sea of misery. She claimed that her life was wretched because of in-laws who gave her the cold-shoulder and the constant vilification in the press. What further chipped at her soul were the inevitable comparisons to Princess Kate who never has a bad hair day or an excess pound. Tabloids reported on Thomas Markle who, bankrupt, had moved to Mexico and was always available for comment if he smelled the scent of money. Rumors abounded that the Duchess had been a bridezilla on steroids who had a temper tantrum when Queen Elizabeth had not allowed her to wear an emerald studded tiara, reduced Kate to tears, bullied the palace staff, stolen Eugenie’s wedding-day thunder with news of her pregnancy, out of control spending, failure to assist financially strapped father...Another faux paus: for a formal dinner in Fiji, Meghan wore earrings that had been a wedding present from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia who had, three weeks earlier, approved the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Harry was frantic the press would hound his wife as it had his mother. The situation showed there were some things that cannot be cured by yoga, the beach, or avocadoes.

        The chill of the castle led to Harry and Meghan’s TIG moment: their lives as senior royals were no longer a deal. Britons spilled their collective tea upon learning of the Sussexs’ decision to exit Britain, stage west, a move referred to as Megxit. Comparisons arose likening the Duchess of Sussex to Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor also an American divorcee who had removed a royal from his birthright. Madame Tussauds in London separated its wax figures of the duo from the rest of the Windsors.

      After a stint in Canada, and a stay in tycoon Tyler Perry’s 18 million dollar Los Angeles mansion, the couple purchased an 18,000-square-foot, 14.65 million dollar home in Montecito, near Santa Barbara, California, whose celebrity neighbors include Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Pregnant with Lilibet Diana, rather than observe the queen mother’s mantra of “never complain never explain,” the Duke and Duchess were guests on Oprah. With an audience of 17.1 million, the couple levied a “J’accuse!” against the Windsors, dropping bombshells such as their failure to provide psychological support to a suicidal Meghan, that Princess Kate had reduced her to tears. The most shocking segment was the Duchess’ claim that a member of the royal household had expressed concern if their baby would be dark-skinned. Oprah responded, “Whoa.” Despite the airing of the Windsor dirty laundry, the couple did not reveal who had made the comment, (they later stated it was not the queen or Prince Philip). Prince William hotly denied the grenade his brother had lobbied, “We are very much not a racist family.” The public exposé of the royal rupture severed the bond between the brothers. The segment proved controversial: was Meghan more sinned against than sinner? Detractors cited the insensitivity of giving a warts and all show and-tell while the ninety-nine-year-old Prince Philip was hospitalized. Another dagger aimed at the couple is in their quest to “finding freedom,” (the title of a 2020 biography), they made a deal with Netflix that earned an estimated 100 million dollars that would never have been possible had Harry not been the British prince. A romantic note amidst the vitriol was when Meghan shared that her love story with Prince Harry was “greater than any fairy tale you’ve ever read.”

      In the WTF interview, Meghan made a reference to Disney’s The Little Mermaid who traded her tail for legs (and, by implication, what lies between them) as well as her voice, in order to be with the prince. Meghan made it clear she would no longer be silenced.  

     In 2019, Meghan helped edit an edition of Vogue in which she shared that erotica writer Anaïs Nin had inspired her to be different that Disney’s Ariel, “I must be a mermaid…I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.”