One. More. Week.
Is that what Meghan, Duchess Of Sussex, is saying to herself today, as the ink dries her new Hollywood deal and Harry packs his overnight bag for the most high-profile family reunion of the year?
Quite possibly, because this Saturday's coronation of King Charles should also signal the end of Markle's recent silent era – the months she's been busy "not being a distraction" for her husband as he's continued his lucrative campaign against the injustices of being royal.
While Prince Harry has been promoting the mega-selling Spare and suing newspapers for historical atrocities, the Duchess has been almost invisible. And what Meghan has discovered, in this period of shush, is that it really doesn't matter whether she's talking or not. People will continue to drag her into the narrative.
Trending today: #DumbPrinceAndHisStupidWife
Trending today: #HarryAndMeghanAreAJoke
Trending almost every day: #MeghanMarkleIsANarcissist
Famously, there's no shortage of online hatred for two of the most complicated celebrities of our era – the kind-of-sort-of Prince, Harry, and the woman who dared to marry him.
Meghan is, according to a quick sweep of major news sites today, a "grifter" with "rubbish dress sense" who is "desperate" to keep her husband and is "frustrated she's not being given special treatment".
This, in quite a mild media week for Meghan, as opposed to the last one, when a UK broadsheet newspaper ran with an exclusive that she had written letters to the now-King after the now infamous Oprah Winfrey interview, imploring him to address his family’s ”unconscious bias".
Meghan’s team issued a statement on that story: ”The Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago," it said. "Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating."
The thing is, one part of that statement might be accurate, but the other is not.
Watch: Prince Harry speaks about Meghan Markle's mental health during their interview with Oprah Winfrey. Post continues after video.
Meghan Markle has been seen in public approximately four times this year, and two of them were last week.
Since late-2022's Sussex onslaught with its six hours of Netflix documentary, the climax of an award-winning podcast, and some explosive profile pieces in glossy spaces, Markle has indeed been "going about her life in the present", keeping her head down, preparing for whatever's next (she's newly signed to WME, a major Hollywood talent agency, sharing managers with The Rock and Serena Williams, so something Big™️ is coming). So far, this year has been one of strategic retreat for Meghan.
But the second sentence with its "exhausting circus that [the tabloid media] alone are creating", wilfully ignores that while Meghan has been staying well out of the salacious narrative of a royal family eating itself, that ‘circus’ is being cheered along and bankrolled by someone very close to home – her husband, Prince Harry.
His excellent memoir, Spare, is still in the top 10 of New York Times bestsellers. And as it sits there, quietly throbbing with resentment and fury at the media, his family and the "Institution" of the Windsor royals, Harry continues to stoke fires that fuel sales with a steady drip of royal-adjacent drama.
The will-they/won't they RSVP to the Coronation story, dragged on well-beyond necessary (or the deadline, for that matter).
The late news that Harry and Harry alone would be attending, started a new line of excited speculation about seating arrangements and the extension of family olive branches and official roles and party attendances.
All of which could have been stage-managed with a strong dose of stiff upper lip if Harry wasn't simultaneously pursuing a decades-old hefty legal action that keeps serving up swipes at his brother and dad.
It's hard to argue against Harry’s demand for an apology from the phone-hacking, stalking, paparazzi-fueled UK media of the 2000s. Or that it wasn’t an out-of-control, life-ruining monster. But there has been an entire parliamentary inquiry into that period, underlined by closures and fines and firings.
As part of his case, last week Harry told the world that William chose to settle with their Murdoch-media enemies for an undisclosed sum in 2020, while he, the brother of principal, refused to do so.
House Cambridge hasn’t commented publicly on that claim, but new reports that 2020 was also the year Prince William made a £1million donation to Harry’s Invictus veterans’ charity, suggests they are doing so privately.
Is that circus music you can hear in the background?
Spare is the fastest-selling non-fiction book of all time, and that isn’t because people were desperate to hear about the Invictus Games, as worthy as they are. It has sold because people want the dirt on the royal family, and Harry has given it to them in spades.
But where does Harry’s has scorched earth era leave Meghan?
In hiding, it seems.
The strategy for Spare has been noticeably Meghan-free. Given the level of vitriol she now attracts, for being a woman, for being a woman of colour, for being an actress, for being divorced, for having opinions, for having ambitions, for having… a personality, it was an obvious choice.
After all, it is Harry who has written a tell-all book breaking confidences and centuries of convention. It’s Harry’s historical media war that’s keeping old stories and headlines alive in courtrooms over in England.
And ultimately, it’s Harry’s hypocrisy on display when he points out all the problems of a monarchy but still wants its trappings and titles.
Surely, true integrity would be to pull support for an outdated system of supremacy. To agree that it’s truly ridiculous to believe that one person and their descendants were chosen by God to rule above others, all over the world, including many whose lands were invaded and stolen in the name of that divine ruler.
But no, Harry still supports the monarchy. He would just like it to be a bit… nicer.
Anyway. Despite all that, it’s Meghan people have chosen to hate.
So, a strategic disappearance, now transitioning into a strategic relaunch.
Her decision not to follow Harry to the coronation is savvy. The bad blood between Harry and his family would end up on her hands, as it always does. And the very live possibility of a boo-ing or an egging or a strategic snub would be difficult to endure.
No, Meghan need never set foot in the UK again if she has no need, and to do so would be like returning to an abusive relationship. The British press and public love-bombed her for months before they turned hard, and hoping for a second honeymoon is a step too far for a smart woman like Meghan.
Knowing that anything she says about anything will be used as a hail of bullets in the War Of The Windsors has silenced Meghan as much as "proper" royal life did.
Perhaps, when coronation fever passes, Harry too will focus a little more on “going about life in the present”, and Meghan's gag can be abandoned for good.
Image: Getty + Mamamia.
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