Doria stated how she finally wanted to speak out and did so, but in the most measured way and with admirable restraint. Photo / Netflix
Doria stated how she finally wanted to speak out and did so, but in the most measured way and with admirable restraint. Photo / Netflix
Opinion by Judith Woods
OPINION:
I tuned in to watch at 8am. Appointment television, but not a nice appointment like a blow dry. More root canal, or the wrecking ball demolition of the royal family.
Yet Harry & Meghan turned out to be an excellent breakfast watch; what with the soaring strings, lambent pianonotes scattered like dappled sunshine across the irresistible narrative of a brave soldier prince and a beautiful Hollywood actress that everyone insisted was a fairytale. Not so much boy meets girl, more Real Life meets Netflix, and Netflix, with its giddily high production values and endless hours to fill, well and truly wins. Three hours on, the fairytale was admittedly getting a bit Grimm, but truthfully, by then, it was too late. I was suckered, having fallen under an enchantment of a very unexpected sort; the spell of Doria, Meghan’s mother.
What a dignified, self-possessed woman. There she was, keeping not just her head when all about were losing theirs, but her own counsel to boot. Shame she didn’t marry into the House of Windsor instead. But we are where we are. Sigh.
Doria stated how she finally wanted to speak out and did so, but in the most measured way and with admirable restraint. Photo / Netflix
In Meghan & Harry, Doria stated how she finally wanted to speak out and did so, but in the most measured way and with admirable restraint. I can’t recall her using the term “lived experience”, not even once. When she referred to Meghan’s father flogging staged pictures to the paparazzi she was incredulous rather than angry: “I was absolutely stunned that Tom would become part of this circus. I felt sad that the media would run with this. That he would capitalise …
“Certainly as a parent, that’s not what you do. It’s not parenting.”
And when she recounted how the tabloids descended, stalking her and offering her inducements to give them a story, her eyes widened with remembered indignation. “This. Is. My. Child,” she said with icy, tiger-mother clarity. It was reminiscent of a clip from the first episode (three were released at once, so it was a helluva working breakfast for some of us) in which Princess Diana strode over to the paparazzi on the slopes of Gstaad or wherever aristos go to ski, and told them, in the same unimpeachably polite, brooks-no-argument tone, to put away their lenses and give her sons space.
Meghan and Doria arriving at Cliveden House Hotel on the eve of Harry and Meghan's wedding. Photo / Getty Images
It’s no wonder Harry drew poignant comparisons with his own mother, citing her “warmth and compassion”. And Meghan, who, to quote the late MP and boulevardier Alan Clark, is occasionally “economical with the actualité”, never said a truer word when she described her mother as “classy and quiet”.
I get the feeling that a NZ$193 million Netflix documentary - sorry, Global Event - full of bombshells that will do more than blow the bloody doors off the House of Windsor isn’t exactly Doria’s comfort zone. But it’s a mother’s lot to support her child and so, of course, she has taken part. Now aged 66, she split from Meghan’s father when their daughter was just 2. He had Meghan at weekends, while Doria made sure they were surrounded by a network of women by way of a surrogate family.
Because her daughter was much paler, strangers would assume Doria, a yoga teacher and social worker, was her nanny. Meghan herself affectionately regards her less as mother and more of a “controlling older sister”. They are evidently very close and intimate family photos show the grandmother to Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1, celebrating key milestones, including Archie’s first birthday.
Doria and Meghan. Photo / Netflix
In the series, Doria reveals the first time she met Prince Harry: “There was this 6ft 1in handsome man with red hair, [he had] great manners. He was just really nice. They look really happy together. He was The One.”
Just as William, now Prince of Wales, has been gratefully taken into the embrace of the Middleton family, thanks to his mother-in-law, Carole, in Doria Ragland Harry now has a loving maternal rock to rely on. And he may well need her fortitude in the coming days and weeks.
“This is a great love story. It’s crazy but it feels like this is just the start,” he says at one point in the programme. For him, maybe. For us, it is all over. That’s why so many ordinary people feel cross and perplexed. There was Meghan, just a girl standing in front of a United Kingdom asking us to love her. And we did.
I joined the throng on The Long Walk at Windsor on the day of the wedding. We picnicked in the sunshine, corks popped as we watched the ceremony on big screens. And when the happy couple later passed by in a carriage, a radiant, waving Meghan looked across and smiled at me. Just me. Weirdly, everyone I spoke to said exactly the same thing. That’s the magic of fairy tales, folks.
But then the make-believe wears off - and it’s impossible not to feel cheated when the couple decide they can’t possibly live happily ever after here, in the country, among the people who welcomed them.
In the documentary Harry refers to kicking back, relaxing and “pulling the pin on the fun grenade”. With these revelations, and those still to come, the Duke of Sussex has just pressed the button on the nuclear option.
I fear in the ensuing backlash Harry will need Doria’s steadfastness more than he yet knows.
