A bizarre turn of events between Harry and Meghan has now been explained. Photo / Supplied
A bizarre turn of events between Harry and Meghan has now been explained. Photo / Supplied
OPINION:
There is one prevailing assumption that carries through every fairytale, children's book and Disney confection – that marrying a Prince is an eminently desirable prize.
Not only are princes dashing, brave and generally good lookers, we have been taught, but they come with castles and the promise of lifelong comfort material comfort, saving pretty girls from hard lives.
However, real life is a cruelly different story and over the last 25 years the world has watched on as a series of young women have gotten a crash course in the brutal reality of dating a titled and eligible chap. While in kids' books it's the prince who has to slay the dragon, in the 21st century, it is the wannabe-princess who has to get up every day and face a monster outside their very front door.
Is it any wonder then that Prince Harry took extraordinary steps to hold on to then-girlfriend Meghan Markle back in 2016?
A new report has spelled out the lengths the royal went to all those years ago to hang onto the Suits actress and lifestyle blogger (remember when that was a thing?) and how he risked the ire of his family to protect their nascent romance.
So, let's rewind. It's October in 2016 and Hillary Clinton looks all set to take the White House in the upcoming US Presidential elections. Harry had been ostensibly single for two years since 2014 when his former girlfriend Cressida Bonas ended things because she had been "completely shocked" after watching the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge go on tour with their baby son Prince George, according to biographer Katie Nicholl.
"There was no way she wanted that sort of attention and she told Harry so. Harry didn't want things to end. He was in love with her and he tried to convince her they could make it work," a friend told Nicholl for her book, Harry: Life, Loss and Love. "Harry suffered a real blow when she said, 'I can't do this'."
Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, appear at Global Citizen Live in Central Park on September 25, 2021, in New York. Photo / AP
The year after that break-up, in 2015, he lamented his love life during a TV interview, saying: "I'm waiting to find the right person and someone who's willing to take on the job."
Then 2016 rolled around and come the summer of that year, the red-headed royal had been set up on a blind date with one Meghan Markle. Sparks flew, a trip to Botswana had been planned and their romance was moving at breakneck speed.
On October 30, Harry was in Toronto to visit his girlfriend when journalist Camilla Tominey reported in the Express that he was dating Meghan.
What followed can only be described as an onslaught. Photographers set up camp outside Meghan's home, as well as outside her mother Doria Ragland's house in Los Angeles. The media pounced on the fact that Meghan was far from some horsey gel from the Home Counties devoting reams of coverage to the fact that she was divorced, bi-racial and one of the stars of a cable TV series.
Now, one royal source has revealed that in the wake of the news breaking of the couple's relationship, Harry "was freaking out, saying, 'She's going to dump me'."
According to the Times, when Harry arrived back in London in the days after the Express' front-page scoop, he decided he had to take dramatic action, throwing the rule book out the window because he was terrified that Meghan was about to dump him.
On November 8, the prince's then-press secretary Jason Knauf issued a truly extraordinary statement saying that she had been subjected "to a wave of abuse and harassment" and calling out the "the racial undertones of comment pieces" and "the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments".
Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, leave Windsor Castle after their wedding in 2018. Photo / AP
It was blistering, powerful stuff and its release was a controversial move given that Prince Charles was in the Middle East on tour with his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall at the time and that the statement was guaranteed to blow the trip out of the water, media attention-wise.
However, the Times' new report has revealed the thinking behind the daring move and what was going on behind the scenes at Kensington Palace.
Harry, Valentine Low writes, "phoned Knauf demanding that he put out a statement confirming that Meghan was his girlfriend. That was not usual palace practice, but sources said Knauf told the prince that he did not feel bound by any protocol. If Harry wanted a statement, he could have one."
At the time and in the years since then, there has never been a full explanation why Harry and Knauf diverted so dramatically from standard operating procedure. Until now.
Another royal source has told the Times: "It did feel like that if the palace was not able to stand up and support his girlfriend, against some of that disgusting coverage … then who in their right mind would ever consider entering into a relationship [with him] in the future? He was very exercised about some of that coverage. He definitely felt that if nothing was done to support her, then she would be, 'I'm not sure this is what I signed up for'."
This was a wholly legitimate fear on Harry's part.
In 1999, several months after becoming engaged to Prince Edward, Sophie Rhys-Jones had a topless photo of herself, taken years before when she was only 23, splashed across the front page of the Sun.
Kate Middleton, back in her pre-duchess days, was chased by photographers on a near-daily basis while a hamstrung, perplexed palace did very little.
It was only on her 25th birthday in 2007 when dozens of snappers surrounded her car that Clarence House finally put out a statement condemning the situation and saying: "Prince William is very unhappy at the paparazzi harassment of his girlfriend. He wants more than anything for it to stop … The situation is proving unbearable for all those concerned." Unsurprisingly, nothing really changed for Kate.
Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge attend the 1st Battalion Irish Guards' St. Patrick's Day Parade at Mons Barracks, on March 17, 2022 in Aldershot, England. Photo / AP
Last year a private investigator revealed the extreme lengths some elements of the media went to in order to get information about royal girlfriends, revealing that when Harry was dating Chelsy Davy, they had tried to access her medical records to find out if she had "had an abortion" or any sexually transmitted diseases.
This trial by public exposure sounds simply excruciating which even the hardiest of souls would buckle under.
Clearly, that was not the case with Meghan, perhaps because she was older or perhaps because she was used to some modicum of media attention. (In the 2020 Sussex biography Finding Freedom, the authors revealed that "before she met Harry, [she] had occasionally set up a paparazzi photo here and there or let info slip out to the press.")
What is remarkable about this situation is how unremarkable it is.
Nothing has changed since 1980 when teenager Lady Diana Spencer was revealed to be dating Prince Charles. She too was hounded by the press and left to fend for herself even while trapped in the maw of the media beast.
Given she was not an official part of the royal family, so the palace's line went, they could not intercede nor did they want to be seen to be impinging on the freedom of the press.
The same tired arguments got hauled out when Prince Edward started dating PR gal-about-town Sophie Rhys-Jones in the '90s and then a decade later when Kate came on the scene. Ten years and change after that, it was Meghan's turn.
On one hand, the palace's options in these situations are limited at best. So long as no laws are being broken then there is only so much they can do. So too, while some of the more senior members of the royal family get official police bodyguards, that is only extended to a very select few and ordinary citizens who happen to be seeing someone in the line of succession are hardly qualified get this sort of official protection.
But is that good enough? Is there really no more that a family with such power and such inexhaustible financial means could be doing to protect the young women it wholly relies on for its survival?
Sure, centuries past, younger princes and princesses were married off to their cousins from the continent willy-nilly (how do you think they got all those weak chins?) but in this century the house of Windsor is entirely reliant on outsiders willing to take on both the excruciating public scrutiny and the plodding life of monotonous duty that are part and parcel of being a royal spouse.
Or to put it another way, they will always need new blood, both literally and figuratively. Given this, how can they hope to attract new recruits when the role means enduring years of basically being hunted first? Of being offered scant, if any, protection or support to survive this extreme, brutal initiation rite?
What unites Diana, Sophie, Kate and Meghan, despite the decades that separate them, is that they all had to survive the same hazing ritual.
At this stage, it's hard to see anything changing in the next 15 years, by which time George will be in his early 20s and out in the wide world looking for love. What sane woman or man would want to put their hand up for this particular hell?
That is one of the many questions that William and Kate will have to solve in the coming years. And if they don't? The story of the monarchy will come to a crashing, final halt, no monsters or evil witches required.
• Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
