Daniela Elser: Meghan Markle’s approach to royal life irritated Prince Philip

Ah, Prince Philip. In his 70 years in royal office, uncovering license plates and obediently walking several steps behind his wife, perhaps his greatest ‘gift’ to the world has been the constant stream of mistakes ranging from the charmingly old-fashioned to the downright racist.

This week, despite being 99 years old and resolutely staying out of the public eye, despite a Land Rover-related issue, Philip and his unfiltered approach to public life are back in the news.

Later this month, former royal biographer and Majesty magazine editor-in-chief Ingrid Seward will publish a biography of Prince Philip Revealed: A Man of His Century. As with these projects, Seward has hit the publicity track and excerpts from the book have been appearing in the British press.

A quick review: Felipe was a highly successful and decorated naval officer in his own right when he married then-Princess Elizabeth in 1947, yet he resigned in 1952 to support his wife when she ascended to the throne, a remarkable proto-feminism given the gender politics of the time.

Fast-forward to 2020 and, according to Seward, Philip was left “irritated” when the home of Windsor’s newest and shortest recruit, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, did not make the same sacrifice as him.

“I think he’s very, very disappointed because I think he feels like he gave up his naval career to support the Queen and help the monarchy,” Seward told ITV this week. “And why can’t Meghan just give up her acting career, support her husband and support the monarchy?

(Quick note: Meghan clearly gave up her acting career long ago. Now she could be Netflix’s newest celebrity producer and available to hire corporate appearances if the check has enough zeros on it, but the 39-year-old has plenty of time. . since I stopped stepping on the boards.)

“As I used to tell Diana,” Seward said, “this is not a popularity contest, we are all working together.”

And there Philip, for all his indiscreet howls and casual prejudices, could have hit the nail on the head with these two words: popularity contest. To be royalty is to theoretically subsume one’s ego and fall for HRH, any notion of an individual brand or forgotten popularity in the service of His Majesty. That is, being a member of royalty is putting the institution first and not about aggressively competing to be the most beloved SAR in the country.

This, in turn, stands in direct contrast to the way the Sussexes supposedly viewed the importance of their own public recognition. One of the points that emerged from Finding Freedom, the recent comprehensive biography about the duo, was that Harry and Meghan seemed to believe that there was some kind of direct correlation between their own celebrity and how they supposedly felt they should be treated behind the palace doors. . .

In Freedom, authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand write: “As their popularity grew, so did Harry and Meghan’s difficulty in understanding why so few within the palace cared about their interests. They were a huge draw to them. According to press reports comparing the Sussexes ‘online popularity to the Cambridges from November 2017 to January 2020,’ searches related to Harry and Meghan accounted for 83 percent of global curiosity in the two couples’ “.

According to the narrative presented by the book, the immense adoration for the Duke and Duchess was viewed by the wider royal machine with unease. Per Freedom: “The Sussexes had made the monarchy easier to identify for those who had never felt a connection before. However, there were concerns that the couple should join the fold; otherwise, the establishment feared their popularity will eclipse that of the royal family. “

What’s interesting is the couple’s alleged relentless focus on popularity and the belief that others within Brand Windsor viewed him as some kind of threat.

And this is where we return to Philip. For nearly 70 years, he has inherently understood that his job is to support the Queen.

Because, in the real scheme of things, every person whose face is not on the five-pound note, their job is to bravely get up every day and go out into the world and do whatever they can to sell the idea of ​​a hereditary monarchy.

There are no co-stars or special guest appearances in the royal cast, rather there are two tiers – the Queen and then everyone else, albeit with varying degrees of seniority.

Looking back at the last two years and a bit, accepting that B-string role seems to have been a sticking point for both Harry and Meghan.

In hindsight, there seems to have been some kind of disconnect between your expectations and reality, a disconnect that still seems evident today.

This week, Meghan spoke as part of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit from her Santa Barbara mansion, encouraging participants to “focus on living a purposeful life” and “not listen to the noise.”

What’s interesting about those comments is that having a philanthropic drive and being willing to disconnect from the lingering buzz of external disapproval are exactly the key attributes required of older members of the royal family. It would seem not only to survive but to thrive in that strange and pampered world of palace-dom, you need to be a person with a burning desire to help the world and a certain deafness studied around the persistent criticism that is an integral part of the job.

Imagine if both she and Harry had taken these same feelings seriously when they were still front-line members of the House of Windsor. If they had seen and accepted that being a working member of the royal family was not about beating other family members at popularity stakes, but about lining up and pulling everyone in the same direction, to hell with personal acclaim.

Would it have helped you see a way forward as working royalty? Would it have helped them to accept that even though they were clearly the bright stars in the real sky, the deeply hierarchical nature of the institution meant that they would have to accept second or third place at some point? It’s hard not to wonder what it could have been.

(However, before deifying Philip to oracle status there is still more. During the same UK TV interview, Seward said that the Prince “just can’t understand why he couldn’t support Harry and help him instead of wanting to have his voice. “The fact that Philip supposedly thinks that supporting her husband requires remaining resolutely mute means the man desperately needs someone to download the quick sticks of the Ruth Bader Ginsberg documentary for him.)

When it comes to the royal family, their world renown is often paired with the standard Hollywood fame, but I don’t think that royalty has much to do with celebrity. Rather, the royal family is much, much more like an army regiment, replete with uniforms, lots of rules, and an absolutely transparent hierarchical order, and to be successful in this context is to accept this fundamental truth.

After years in the military, including two tours of the battlefront in Afghanistan, perhaps Harry had grown tired of diligently taking orders. And for Meghan, perhaps after nearly 20 years of hard professional work she wanted to enjoy, at least briefly, the fact that she finally had a global platform to make her voice heard.

According to Seward, warnings about popularity were something Philip used to offer Diana, a woman whose very complicated psychology meant she needed much more than a direct sermon from the family man. (Say, like an occasional hug.) Maybe he meant well, maybe he just wanted to help her. There is something so deeply tragic about the Windsor house that it got two charismatic and driven women to marry in the family only so they had no idea how to help them find their place in such a strange world.

Diana, like Meghan decades later, might not have understood that popularity theoretically has no place in royal dynamics. But did the palace do enough to help them? Did the palace do enough to help you see?

I believe the proof is in the postal address: Harry and Meghan are now more than 5,000 miles from Buckingham Palace.