Herald on Sunday editorial: Happy Ever After for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle kiss on the steps of St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle after their wedding in Windsor. Photo / AP

Editorial

If all has gone well, we will be in the afterglow of the royal wedding this morning. There is nothing quite like a wedding. A loving couple seals their bond, makes a solemn pact with each other in the eyes of others and are joined formally together for the future.

It means something, it means a great deal. Not all couples feel the need to formalise their relationship and that is their business. They may be as committed to each other as any married couple, who is to know?

But a wedding states that commitment for everyone to know. When two people turn to face their witnesses as a newly married couple, they and everyone present see themselves in a new light.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were a young man and woman in love yesterday. Today they are a unit, a new branch of the royal family. Together they will set up a household, attend official engagements, make royal visits to other countries and probably have children whose births and childhoods will attract public interest too.

All this we can envisage in the afterglow of the wedding. Marriage makes the future a little more certain, or as certain as anything in the future can be. Marriage is that reliable, even in times when divorce rates are high. It is a contract not lightly broken.

So the ceremony that many will have watched on television into the early hours this morning, will probably never lose its glow. Meghan will bring an American dimension to the royal family. She will be especially warmly feted in the US, which has always had its own fascination with British royalty. And before too long, we hope Prince Harry will bring her to New Zealand.

It is not until William brought Catherine here that we really got to know her. The intense day-by-day coverage of a royal visit let us see her in varied situations, meeting different people, having fun at times, looking poised and elegant when she needed to be. Meghan will have her own style and many sides to her personality.

As a television actress she will be well accustomed to a camera already and starts her new role with that advantage. But this role has to be real. Royalty cannot be played with complete relaxation and candour but it cannot be entirely scripted, either. Carefully, with dignity, she must be truly herself.

With Harry alongside her she looks likely to be fine.