Has it really been eight years since Meghan Markle got engaged to Prince Harry and embarked upon a course of action that would change her own fortunes and those of the Royal Family forever?
Sometimes it seems like yesterday when the American actress first appeared alongside her fiance in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace, taking part in their first official photocall.
In her Aquazzura cocktail shoes that didn’t quite fit, Meghan was a trailblazing Cinderella: gauche but fizzing with confidence, full of promises that she would never stop fighting for social justice and women’s empowerment.
Chiefly her own empowerment, we soon came to learn.
I’ve been a close observer of Meghan’s progress over the years, both professionally and personally.
She makes headlines whatever she does and she is a fascinating, complex character. Whether she is writing messages on bananas to give to sex workers or talking to her bees in her Montecito garden (‘It’s beautiful to be this connected,’ she tells them) it is impossible to look away.
In the beginning I celebrated this articulate careerist joining the Royal Family. I was there on the pavements of Nottingham when she made her first public appearance in December 2017 and wrote of the ‘dazzling and confident debut’ from this ‘remarkable young woman’.
Meghan makes headlines whatever she does and she is a fascinating, complex character
Well. Much has changed since then. Everyone involved could choke on the smoke of the bridges she has burned.
Time has revealed the Duchess of Sussex to somehow be both praiseworthy and monstrous, judicious and preposterous, a divisive figure who is either loved or loathed.
Yet, to her credit, she never lets anything get her down or halt her evolution – and I have a sneaking admiration for her remarkable perseverance and fortitude.
She’s formed her own I Don’t Care Club and many young women could do worse than follow her resolute example. Be More Meghan is a course that should be taught in the university of life. To the benefit of all!
Just consider her astonishing progress. From blind date with Prince Harry in 2016 to royal wedding in 2018 to Megxit in 2020, swashbuckling Meghan tore through royal life like a dose of salts rather than a bountiful ray of duchessy sunshine.
In short order she achieved everything she wanted – and then some. Her own TV show. A lifestyle brand. Royal children, two of them, one of each. The A-list celebrity connections that had previously eluded her. And a place among the elites of California rather than a dull, ribbon-cutting existence as a second-tier royal in Berkshire.
She could teach a master class in Making The Most Of Your Marriage: a hands-on guide for the ambitious wife.
In pre-Harry days, Meghan was a third-division actress who was seven seasons into the TV legal drama Suits that had peaked on season five. As a side hustle she ran a lifestyle blog called The Tig, which brought in a little extra cash, although she had her boundaries.
‘I wouldn’t take ads or sell a $100 candle,’ she sniffed. How times change! Today, our girl is flogging £21 jars of honey (plus shipping), teabags that cost £1 each and boxes of pancake mix (or flour, as I like to call it) on her As Ever label.
Prince Harry and Meghan in their first official photocall. In her Aquazzura cocktail shoes that didn’t quite fit, Meghan was a trailblazing Cinderella: gauche but fizzing with confidence, full of promises that she would never stop fighting for social justice and women’s empowerment
Harry and Meghan’s 2018 wedding, which was watched by a global television audience of 1.9billion
Instead of adverts, she posts the responses of her adoring if occasionally illiterate customers on to the brand’s official website.
‘Devine!’ wrote one, after sampling the As Ever rosé wine. ‘Your honey has taken my sliders up a notch,’ wrote another, which sounds utterly filthy, but we get the gist.
Meanwhile, the duchess is currently negotiating a new multi-million-pound deal with Netflix to replace her previous £73million package, with the global streaming giant promising to focus on the As Ever brand and her television series With Love, Meghan. Wowser. Double devine!
Whatever you might think of the Duchess of Sussex, you have to admire the speed, grit and determination with which she has transformed herself from Little Miss Nobody into Meghan the Global Mogul.
She is relentless, unstoppable, a driven soul who has taken her tiny, scorched threads of official royal life and woven them into a rich tapestry of fiscal opportunities and lush profit margins. It might not last forever, but she sure is making her lady marmalade while the sun shines.
And let’s be brutally honest. Nobody would be buying Meghan’s ridiculous raspberry ‘spread’ – £11 a jar, including ‘keepsake’ cardboard packaging – if she had not married a prince of the British realm and basked in the afterglow of such a lucrative alliance.
This much is obvious, but it is part of Meghan’s genius to pretend that the opposite is true.
Meghan Markle (centre) with her co-stars of the legal drama Suits, in which she starred as Rachel Zane for seven series
Even the name of her brand – As Ever – suggests that this is exactly what she would be doing had she not married one of Princess Diana’s sons and had a Windsor Castle wedding watched by a global television audience of 1.9billion.
And I do not say that in chastisement but in admiration and wonder. How the hell did she get away with it all?
The Duchess of Sussex was always a girl with a plan, someone who envisaged a clear route through life for herself. Of course, there were lucky circumstances and astute choices.
A father who worked in Hollywood, a first husband who was a film producer, well-connected friends, a second husband who provided the keys to the magic kingdom.
She may have married for love on both occasions, but when opportunities came her way, Meghan made the most of them. Good for her.
Then and now, she is focused, steely, diligent and disciplined. She pushes herself forward, she gets herself noticed, she seizes the opportunity, she reaps the rewards, she takes the credit and she revels in the glory.
There is a very telling anecdote in Meghan, Andrew Morton’s 2018 biography of the duchess, which encapsulates this spirit.
In 2010, she had a part in the film Horrible Bosses: just 35 seconds of screen time in a role as a FedEx girl delivering a parcel to Jason Sudeikis. No, it is not exactly Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice. Blink and you will miss her.
The duchess is currently negotiating a new multi-million-pound deal with Netflix to replace her previous £73million package, with the global streaming giant promising to focus on the As Ever brand and her television series With Love, Meghan (pictured)
Let’s be brutally honest. Nobody would be buying Meghan’s ridiculous raspberry ‘spread’ – £11 a jar, including ‘keepsake’ cardboard packaging – if she had not married a prince of the British realm and basked in the afterglow of such a lucrative alliance
Meghan was the lowest of the low on set, but that did not stop her approaching the film’s famously charming star, Donald Sutherland. ‘Mr Sutherland, I hear I’m going to fall in love with you before lunchbreak,’ she simpered to the bigshot.
As Mae West once said, it is better to be looked over than overlooked. And Meghan’s determination not to go unnoticed is a significant part of her success.
Nobody puts baby in the corner, even if this attitude would become a corrosion in her brief tenure as a working member of the Royal Family.
For Meghan never did understand primogeniture or protocol, the unique demands of ceremonial public service or the difference between being a celebrity and a royal. But is that entirely her fault?
Perhaps Harry could have done more to explain and to help his bride decode the arcana of life inside The Firm. Or perhaps their mutual sense of self-importance, heightened awareness over perceived slights and coddled grievances were what assured their exodus and sealed their fate.
And just like anchovies, Marmite, Covid vaccines, blue cheese, olives, Crocs, plunge pools and techno music, the Duchess of Sussex continues to have a polarising effect on the populace.
Some love her, some love her a little less, some make a vomit face at the first flurry of flower sprinkles landing on a cowpat of her overpriced pancake mix, while others merely convulse and froth at the mention of her name.
But that’s enough about the Windsors, the hapless family Meghan threw under the wheels of her freedom wagon when she and Prince Harry escaped to America.
Once in the land of Oprah-tunity the duchess could speak her truth at last – and also establish herself as a lifestyle guru showing a grateful world how to chop melons to make a rainbow fruit platter.
She also reinvented herself as a rescue chickeneer, a humanitarian activist with an unrivalled collection of calligraphy pens, a trad wife making candles in a stranger’s kitchen, a player of mahjong in a floaty dress (all details on her ShopMy account), a lady bountiful – spreading joy and jam wherever she goes.
Yet not everyone is as in love with the Duchess of Sussex as she is with herself.
The internet is awash with cruel memes and lampoons, depicting her as a giggling fake fool who doesn’t know one end of a spatula from another. America’s domestic goddess and queen of entertaining, Martha Stewart, has questioned Megan’s validity as a lifestyle guru.
‘I hope she knows what she’s talking about,’ she said. ‘Authenticity to me is everything, and to be authentic and knowledgeable about your subject matter is extremely important.’
Chat show host Megyn Kelly recently told her YouTube subscribers that the duchess was a ‘malignant narcissist’.
This week, President Donald Trump dismissed the Sussexes as ‘not great people’ and has previously called Meghan ‘disrespectful’ and Harry ‘whipped’ – as in bullied by his wife.
It cannot be pleasant to have a sitting president taking potshots, especially when you are trying to establish yourself as a royal-in-exile in a country that is robustly republican.
Yet Meghan is the Duracell bunny of the bounce back. She never seems to let any of it affect her advancement.
Not even in 2023, when the satirical TV show South Park mercilessly mocked the Sussexes in a spoof video called The Worldwide Privacy Tour.
In short order edghan achieved everything she wanted – and then some. Her own TV show. A lifestyle brand. Royal children, two of them, one of each, pictured with Archie and Lilibet
Not when Spotify dropped her risible Archetypes podcast after one series. Not when one of their top executives called the couple ‘grifters’.
Not even when the late Queen Elizabeth issued an elegantly devastating public statement saying that ‘recollections may vary’ following claims made by the Sussexes of racism within the Royal Family and failures in helping Meghan when she was struggling.
How does the Duchess of Sussex rise above the opprobrium?
For years, Meghan has cherished a quote from the great US artist, Georgia O’Keeffe: ‘I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.’
In this age of relentless social media scrutiny, it is a maxim many could usefully adopt – even if it is inspired by the Duchess of Sussex, the unlikeliest of modern role models and a woman who seems to have a few maxims of her own. If the tiara doesn’t fit, ask for a bigger one.
What Meghan wants, Meghan gets. And if all else fails, marry a prince.
Yet, whether you think the Duchess of Sussex is an angel incarnate or the worst thing to happen to the Royal Family since Oliver Cromwell, you have to admire her drive, her ambition and the smarts that have taken her from the fringes of celebrity to sanctimonious philanthropist who means well, jampreneur luminary, joy seeker, deal maker and purveyor of edible petals to the nation.
Be more Meghan? You could do a lot worse.
