Express<\/a> by Camilla Tominey, who reported that Prince Harry was \u201cbesotted\u201d with \u201ca stunning US actress, model and human rights campaigner.\u201d Meghan, Tominey reported, was \u201cconfident\u201d, \u201cintelligent\u201d, and an \u201cexcellent\u201d cook.<\/p>\nFinally, Harry would get his happily-ever-after!<\/p>\n
Errr, record scratch and all that. <\/p>\n
This weekend is 10 years since the Harry story took an unexpected dogleg. For years he had been a larky lad who had a knack for tottering out of Mayfair bo\u00eetes and Fulham boozers, who could woo over itchy-footed Commonwealth realms, and a taste in chintzy girlfriends who had no interest in trading lunches at The Ivy for grinding Duty and Service and a lifetime of nude hose.<\/p>\n
By the time that 2016 rolled around, privately, Harry was suffering. As he writes in Spare, he had \u201cstopped going out\u201d and his life was cottage pies made over by his Pa\u2019s chef \u2018eaten over the sink\u2019 and deep loneliness. <\/p>\n
What he didn\u2019t know he needed was a woman who could work a UN lectern, enjoyed a well-cut blazer and had never met an Instagram Rumi quote post she didn\u2019t double tap. So thankfully, in July 2016, Harry opened Instagram, saw a video posted by his friend Violet von Westenholz mucking around with an American stunner in town for Wimbledon and a thunderbolt appeared over Kensington Palace. <\/p>\n
Their first date involved beers at Soho House and their second came a day later, in a win for symbolism fans, on July 4, US Independence Day. (Foreshadowing much?) Harry writes of that night, \u201cI felt an overwhelming sense of Overture, Prelude, Kettle Drums, Act I. And yet also a sense of ending. A phase of my life \u2013 the first half? \u2013 was coming to a close.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon they were off adventuring \u00e0 deux, Botswana, Toronto, the Kensington High Street branch of Tesco: their fairytale story took in great sweeping vistas of the Okavango Delta and the GladWrap aisle. Within 16 months of that first beer, Harry was on bended knee in their London garden surrounded by what looks like a job lot of Temu electric candles and some roses. (Adoring? Yes. Original? Well, he\u2019s got other talents.)<\/p>\n
The Beatles tra-la-la-ed \u201call you need is love\u201d and for Harry and Meghan, that would, for a short while, be true. You don\u2019t need me to tell you what came next and how we got to today, where King Charles\u2019 son and daughter-in-law are living in a billionaire\u2019s British back garden, paying their bills courtesy of jam sales and forlornly waiting for the Highgrove call-up. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s truly mind-melting if you take a step back and look at the Duchess of Sussex\u2019s life over the last ten years: Toronto, London, Windsor, Vancouver Island, Los Angeles, Montecito and back again, from Ms to HRH to crying in front of Oprah to the Balenciaga front row to teaching the world how to make decorative ice cubes, from tea with Desmond Tutu to drinking from a baby\u2019s bottle for a bit on Ellen, from a job wearing hats to sit in the second row of Westminster Abbey to soon-to-be judge on Junior MasterChef Australia. <\/p>\n
If you time-travelled back to October 30 2016 and showed that paragraph to anyone, they would discreetly start looking for the number for a padded-walled asylum. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the thing I think I have wondered the most over the last decade. When Harry was on their Nott Cott lawn that night unboxing his battery-powered, boys\u2019 basic guide to proposing, Meghan had only lived in London and seen royal life up close for about six weeks at most. Until then, their whole relationship had been one of criss-crossing the Atlantic and actually flying visits. Could or would things have been different if, when Meghan said yes, she had a far fuller understanding about what the hell she was signing on for? <\/p>\n
On paper, Meghan was a far better fit as a modern working royal than Kate, The Princess of Wales prior to her marriage. A passionate advocate for women and girls, a doer, a worker, hungry to make change in the world: by rights Meghan she should have swept into the Palace on day one sipping a venti oat latte and killed it. <\/p>\n
Instead Meghan found herself inside a strange institution, in a foreign country, where she was expected to play by rules that she did not seem to grasp she did not know the first thing about. How could she? I come back again and again to this simple detail \u2013 six weeks. <\/p>\n
By contrast, Kate had nine years to learn every bylaw, subsection and detail of the royal rule book before she stepped onto the Palace gameboard. She might have been \u201cwaity\u201d but she also went into her HRH-dom \u201cknowy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meghan could and should have been the best thing to happen to the royal family since they got over their German-cousin-marrying habit. The UK thought so too. Just before Harry and Meghan\u2019s 2018 wedding, 58 per cent of the UK had a positive view of her. <\/p>\n
Today, since moving back to the UK in August, Meghan\u2019s net rating is the lowest it\u2019s ever been, according to new polling out on Thursday, with more than two thirds (68 per cent) of Brits having an unfavourable view of her. (It\u2019s probably cold comfort but King Charles\u2019 popularity has also taken a hit in the last few months too.)<\/p>\n
On October 30, 2016, having been alerted by Kensington Palace\u2019s then comms head Jason Knauf that Tominey was about to break the news of their relationship, in Toronto, Meghan was slathering herself in black eye make up alongside Princess Eugenie. Euge was in town with her then boyfriend, now husband, Jack Brooksbank, and along with Harry, having borrowed Tom Hardy\u2019s Mad Max costume, were off, as the Duchess of Sussex told Netflix, <\/p>\n
\u201cto just have one fun night on the town\u201d. I truly hope it was a belter. <\/p>\n
Daniela Elser is an editor and commentator with more than 15 years\u2019 experience working with Australia\u2019s leading media titles. <\/p>\n
Read related topics:Meghan Markle<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shoo-in next president Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign had been rocked by the FBI investigating whether she\u2019d been running 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