30 THENEWYORKER,APRIL20, 2020
fluid assurance on the Sussex drama.
“When Meghan arrived here, she was
really well received,” Tominey told me.
There was happiness and relief that
Harry had found such an impressive
woman. As one of Princess Diana’s sons,
he had always been dear to the British
public, but he was known as a Jack-the-
lad, with a penchant for boorish revelry.
“Too much Army, and not enough
prince,” as Harry himself put it, in his
post-Vegas interview. Tominey went on,
“When we wrote the story initially, it
was kind of couched in ‘How did he
score this amazing girl?’ She was this
extremely glamorous woman who had
a lot to say for herself, and had an in-
teresting past as a campaigner for wom-
en’s rights. She was a woman who meant
business, and it looked like she would
be an instant asset to the Royal Family.”
Markle was an instant asset for re-
porters, too. Harry might have been ex-
pected to choose a well-born young lady
whose life had been only gauzily chron-
icled in Tatler. Markle had an appar-
ently bottomless online footprint. There
were the many interviews she had given
as a successful actress, and the reveal-
ing photographs she’d posed for as just
an aspiring one. In 2014, she had even
created her own Web site, the Tig, which
was named for her favorite wine, a Tus-
can red called Tignanello. Markle had
characterized the site as “a hub for the
discerning palate—those with a hun-
ger for food, travel, fashion & beauty.”
On the Web site, which was taken down
after the couple’s relationship became
known, she and other contributors dis-
pensed food and travel tips: one post
touted the Fat Radish, “a delightful and
delicious British (yes, British!) restau-
rant” on Manhattan’s Lower East Side,
where Markle appreciated the peeky-
toe-crab gratin and the “happy, bright
vibe.” She had also written more sub-
stantial essays, including one in Elle
about her biracial identity; she described
how her mother, who is African-Amer-
ican, had been mistaken for her nanny
when she was a baby, and how a teacher
once told her to check the box for “Cau-
casian” on a mandatory census form,
saying, “Because that’s how you look,
Meghan.” Markle wrote that she didn’t
check any box, noting, “I couldn’t bring
myself to do that, to picture the pit-in-
her-belly sadness my mother would feel
if she were to find out.” Markle also had
conveniently indiscreet relatives, includ-
ing a half sister, Samantha, who could
speak no right of her (on Twitter, Sa-
mantha called Meghan “duchASS”), and
a father who had declared bankruptcy
in 2016, before moving to Mexico, and
seemed easily swayed by the opening
of a checkbook. The warmth of the
press’s welcome was, in part, excitement
over a good story.But, Tominey explained, Markle soon
had critics inside the Palace who were
less enamored of the very qualities that
made her irresistible to the press: her
showbiz lustre, self-confidence, and fem-
inist habits of assertion. Reports emerged
that, in the run-up to the wedding, she
was being imperious. The Daily Mail
gave an account of a “dictatorial” Mar-
kle seeking to spritz musty St. George’s
Chapel with air fresheners before the
ceremony (a charge rebutted by friends
of the bride). Tominey said, “I’ve put it
down to a clash of cultures, in the sense
that she had come from the celebrity
world, which is very fast-paced and quite
demanding. The royal world is very
different—it’s much slower-paced, and
hugely hierarchical. In the royal world,
it’s ‘What should we do next?’ ‘Well,
what did we do last time?’” Markle may
not have comprehended how many un-
written traditions governed the institu-
tion she was joining. Tominey explained,
“It’s a bit like ‘Downton Abbey’—there’s
a hierarchy of staff who have been at
Buckingham Palace for years and years,
to serve Queen and country. And, there-
fore, for Harry and Meghan to be mak-
ing demands, there was a bit of below-
stairs chatter, particularly with the
Duchess, that was ‘Well, hang on a min-
ute, who do you think you are?’ ”
Royal reporters soon had their own
reasons for being antagonistic. There
was considerable irritation at Harry and
Meghan’s efforts to circumvent tradi-
tional practices of covering the Royal
Family. Especially egregious, from some
journalists’ point of view, was the ob-
fuscation over the birth of Archie, in
the spring of 2019. The Palace issued a
statement that the Duchess of Sussex
had gone into labor “in the early hours
of this morning” on the afternoon of
May 6th; in fact, the birth had taken
place hours before the statement was
released. It could be argued that it is an
outrageous invasion of an expectant
mother’s privacy for the progress of her
child’s birth to be chronicled as global
news. Nevertheless, the press corps con-
cluded that Harry and Meghan were
trying to render them irrelevant.
Richard Kay, a longtime royal com-
mentator at the Daily Mail, told me,
“There has always been a compact be-
tween the press and the royals that has
worked—they need us, and we need“She was Zen five minutes ago.”