Could Meghan's greatest asset also be her biggest royal flaw? Photo / Getty Images
Could Meghan's greatest asset also be her biggest royal flaw? Photo / Getty Images
Here's something I often wonder about: Do the royals ever have to do performance reviews?
Sure, they are an actual family but being royal doesn't just mean drinking gin mid-morning whenever you fancy, collecting emeralds and getting to see your face on postage stamps.
They are also all members of an archaic institution which has been around for a millennia. Ensuring the survival of that creaky beast requires dull, monotonous graft, year after year, decade after decade. All new "hires" (AKA the new husbands and wives) are consequently dragooned into the family biz.
So, I'll ask again: Do you think the royals are ever graded on their previous year's work achievements?
Because if so, I think the Buckingham Palace mandarins would give the Duchess of Sussex a big, red "Must do better" while they peer over their half-moon spectacles and glower at her.
No, not because she scribbled on bananas or crossed her legs in the Queen's presence or even because she dared to paint her nails a dark shade (THE HORROR!). But because, in their eyes, she has committed, and continues to commit, what they consider a terrible offence.
I'm talking about showing emotion. (Elevating interest in the royal family to unprecedented heights and in the former colonies too only gets you so far.)
Whether it be sheer joy when she meets schoolchildren or dogs or when she spies her hottie husband during a walkabout, Meghan is a woman who often wears her feelings on her (vintage Dior) sleeve.
It is not just happiness either. When her father Thomas Markle was perpetually appearing on TMZ to castigate his daughter, the former actress betrayed her (totally understandable) anger and hurt by giving five friends tacit permission to speak to People. (It is impossible, given how close they are to the Duchess, that these chicks would have opened their mouths without her seal of approval.)
"Meghan's openness and vivacity, and her seeming commitment to letting her innermost emotions show could be a crucial misstep." Photo / Getty Images
Meghan clearly reacts passionately to the world and people around her, however, this sort of behaviour has no place in The Firm.
The current British monarchy's longevity can be put down to the fact it is largely run more like a dispassionate business (albeit with cracking perks) than a loving familial unit. Anna Pasternak, a royal biographer, wrote in The Telegraph recently: " The Firm requires that it operates as a diplomatic, rational machine. What is not tolerated, far less understood, is emotion."
Ironically, what is viewed as weakness on the part of courtiers, is perceived by the public to be a significant royal weakness also. Time and time again they have faced harsh (but fair) criticism for their inability to publicly express their feelings, such as after the Aberfan disaster which claimed the lives of 116 children and Diana's death.
Sadly, what first attracted Harry to Meghan, that is her exquisite capacity to feel and to be open about those feelings, also seems to be the very trait which could spell her royal undoing.
As Pasternak says, "Excitable characters in the royal family who try to steer their own course tend not to reign triumphant."
By contrast, the Duchess of Cambridge's tenure as a Windsor Wife would only get the highest of performance review scores. She smiles broadly (scratch that, she beams) and curtsies and always looks just delightfully HAPPY to be in whatever gloomy suburban church hall she finds herself in, surrounded by gawking commoners.
Anger, sheer joy and boredom never, ever cross her face, in public at least. (God knows how p**sed off she probably looks when she finds out that Prince George has just used her lace Alexander McQueen dress from last year's Ascot as a tadpole net.)
In the eyes of Buckingham Palace, her dedication to keeping all that messy emotion safely sequestered away from public view must surely rank as one of her more admirable qualities.
Conversely, Meghan's openness and vivacity, and her seeming commitment to letting her innermost emotions show could be a crucial misstep — one which ultimately might spell disaster for her future in the royal family.
