OPINION:
The late Queen made history on numerous fronts: She was the first monarch in British history to have her coronation televised; the first monarch to do away with male primogeniture; and the first monarch to know how to change a spark plug.
She was also the first ever Commander of the Armed Forces and Defender of the Faith to get about in public wearing lime green, electric purple and the hottest of hot pinks. (Though trying to imagine sourpuss Queen Victoria meeting with Benjamin Disraeli in a violent shade of orange is kinda fun right?)
There was a method to rainbow madness – it meant the diminutive monarch could be easily seen by the masses when she left Buckingham Palace for a busy day of waving and posey-accepting.
Now it turns out that another female member of the royal family was similarly making strategic choices about their wardrobe while on the Palace clock, none other than Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
Last week, the first (sigh) volume of her and husband Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex’s Netflix series landed, a testament to one couple’s welded-on preoccupation with themselves.
At one point Meghan says: “Most of the time that I was in the UK, I rarely wore colour. There was thought in that. To my understanding, you can’t ever wear the same colour as Her Majesty, if there’s a group event. But then you also should never be wearing the same colour as one of the other more senior members of the family.
“So I was like, ‘Well, what’s a colour that they’ll probably never wear?’ Camel? Beige? White? So I wore a lot of muted tones, but it also was so I could just blend in.”
A quick trawl through any photo library will offer plenty of evidence of her wearing myriad stylish, designer looks in a neutral palette, a fact that, to the shame of royal obsessives everywhere, no one quite clocked at the time.
However, this is where we get to the inconvenient truth part of things; the part where I try to find new ways to say ‘but’.
Yes, Meghan chose plenty of colourless ensembles during her 20-month stint as a working Duchess but so too were there plenty of occasions when she fully embraced colour.
Take the bright yellow Brandon Maxwell dress the Duchess wore to a Commonwealth youth event or the red coat and purple dress she donned for an early 2019 outing or the other purple dress she wore to that year’s One Young World Summit opening ceremony in London or the green embellished coat and dress she picked for Commonwealth Day that year.
The deja vu here is almost as overpowering as the fragrance Fergie is probably working on in a Royal Lodge spare room to sell on the home shopping network.
When the Duke and Duchess sat down with Oprah Winfrey last year (for what now looks like a blessedly short two hours) they made a series of hair-raising, damning accusations about their time as his’n’her HRHs, most notably of institutional racism and personal suffering.
However, they also managed to get in quite a few anecdotes that later turned out to not exactly tally with facts, like Meghan’s assertion they were married three days before their multimillion-dollar Windsor wedding or her claim that after signing onto royal life, “that was the last time, until we came here, that I saw my passport”.
Given that only the sovereign can travel without a passport, how then did the Duchess get to Amsterdam, New York, Ibiza and the French riviera for private jaunts? (There were also official trips to Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific and Morocco.)
Yet, here we are again. In exactly the same situation. With the Sussexes popping up on TV screens to make various claims while over in London royal sources are saying, ‘Umm, hang on there chaps.”
Take Meghan saying that “there’s no class and some person who goes, ‘sit like this, cross your legs like this, use this fork, don’t do this, curtsy then, wear this kind of hat’ – doesn’t happen … I never saw pictures or videos of a walkabout, [I was] like, what’s a walkabout?”
That is, according to a “well-placed royal source” who has spoken to The Times a “total lie”.
“There was prep for everything, walkabouts – even though she was engaged to someone who’d done hundreds of them – clothes, everything. The level of support was intense,” the source said.
The same report also said that at the time when Meghan was busy learning that The Princess Diaries was not a documentary, Harry and brother Prince William’s then private secretary, Ed Lane Fox, known as “Elf”, put together “a 30-point dossier, studiously researched, brimming with information and contacts for the life she was taking on” which included a list of “expert[s] who could help Meghan”.
Did the former Suits star set off to learn all she could about the arcana of palace life? She did not, according to The Times, which reports that she only subsequently met with Queen’s private secretary Sir Christopher Geidt (now Lord Geidt), the late Queen’s private secretary, and with a “very well-connected, trusted fashion person”.
Then there was the Sussexes’ 2017 engagement interview which Meghan described to the Netflix cameras as an “orchestrated reality show” and said “it was rehearsed”.
The BBC’s Mishal Hussein, who conducted the interview, commented: “We know recollections may vary on this particular subject but my recollection is definitely very much, asked to do an interview, and do said interview.”
A source who was “involved” with that loved-up TV sit-down told The Sunday Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah that “every word of that interview was what they wanted to say. She controlled every micro-detail of how their engagement publicly went.”
Then there was Ashleigh Hale. Hale, an immigration lawyer, is the Duchess of Sussex’s niece and the daughter of her estranged half-sister Samantha Markle.
Meghan said in the third episode that the “the guidance at the time was to not have her come to our wedding” because “the very small comms team” “couldn’t wrap their heads around it”. And I have compassion for it. How do we explain that this half-sister isn’t invited to the wedding, but that the half-sister’s daughter is?
“I was in the car with H. I had her on speaker phone and we talked her through what guidance we were being given and why this assessment was made and … And that’s painful.”
“That just didn’t happen,” a source said of the Duchess’ allegations. “We never gave any advice, steer or guidance on who of her family or friends should or shouldn’t come to her wedding.”
Similarly, sources have told The Sun, that the “press team was desperate for Meghan to have more family and friends at the wedding” with one source saying that the former blogger’s allegation was “a complete lie. Meghan said she didn’t want [Ashleigh] exposed to the media.”
There is a bigger question here, which is, if this pattern continues, will there come a point when the Duke and Duchess’ credibility really suffers?
They would seem hungry to want to be viewed as statespeople, a sort-of ‘have UN Secretary General’s number, will travel’ dynamic duo with a self-appointed global remit. However, what happens if they continue to face allegations of “total” and of “complete” lies?
If their reliability continues to be challenged after this week’s second Harry & Meghan outing, could it compromise or affect their brand going forward?
There is also the issue of whether the show will execute evasive manoeuvres around controversial Sussex topics. Will the show address the allegations that Meghan “bullied” Palace staffers (something the Duchess has always denied)? Will it tackle head-on the hypocrisy of the Duke taking up the cause of climate change and then taking four private jet flights in 11 days? (The pair continue to often use private jets.)
And will director Liz Garbus – in episodes four to six – include anything resembling a dissenting or opposing viewpoint, given that the first volume only featured those who espoused the Gospel of Sussex?
“The truth shall set you free,” or so says the Bible, a book full of fantastical stories and made-up stuff. What will the consequences be for Harry and Meghan of sharing their truth with the world?
Just to really descend into bad cliche territory, stay tuned.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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