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- Aug 19, 2008
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- 113
We've pleaded. We’ve scolded. We’ve cajoled. But the time has come to face the facts. Meghan has broken up with Britain.
Short of stealing her vertiginous Manolo Blahniks and locking her up in the Tower there’s nothing more we can do to make the Duchess of Sussex stay.
Some of us are distraught. Some are in denial. There’s been an upsurge in feigned indifference. Piers Morgan is unaccountably furious.
But it was ever thus; the end of an affair is always painful and fraught with recrimination.
Especially when we’re the ones who bought her a house, let her wed our darling Harry and dressed our small dogs in union flag bow-ties as we waved in delight from the cobbled thoroughfares of Windsor on their big day.
I was there in May 2018 amid the picnickers in the blazing heat and sunny goodwill on the Long Walk - all of us waiting patiently for the newlyweds to whizz by us in their Ascot Landau.
And all those hours were worth it for that brief, unforgettable glimpse of his proud profile and her dazzling smile. It was the Richard Curtis version of a fairytale wedding this country craved.
Yes, there were early reports that Californian-born Meghan described St George’s Chapel as smelling musty.
However, once she nailed the terminology - the word she was looking for was “venerable” - we assumed she’d settle into the ranks of our royals and adapt to their arcane idiosyncrasies. Wouldn’t she?
But did anyone properly prepare the actress and social activist for a world in which upper classes live in crumbling drafty houses with leaky taps and Her Majesty the Queen punctiliously stores her cereal in Tupperware tubs?
Were courtiers not on hand to explain that having to buy one’s own furniture was positively shameful?
Like Madonna before in her anglo-phile phase, free-spirited Meghan was probably expecting Downtown Abbey, bless her.
What she got was grief; for being unnecessarily slim, for not being Kate, for wearing the wrong nail polish, for being American, for being too sincere, for not being sincere.
While she was born into the sunny uplands of the shiny happy people of California, here she got plumbing that didn’t work properly and unrelenting grey skies in April.
We’re blithely used to such free-for-all scrutiny of public figures.
For good or ill, it adds to the gaiety of a stiff-upper-lipped nation that stoically accepts drizzle as a lifestyle choice and invented the miserablist motto “keep calm and carry on”.
No wonder Meghan felt cut adrift from the “have a nice day” optimism of La La Land she had been brought up on.
Would any one of us relish the peculiar role of “civil servant in a tiara” cutting ribbons on command far from home?
It can’t have been easy, adapting to the stubborn absence of glamour in her new life; trading the Met Ball glitz for dutiful visits to day centres and council offices.
Of course we never pretended to be anything other than who we are. But, nor did she.
It’s pointless to apportion blame; she’s just not that into us, much as both sides tried to make it work.
We may feel bewildered and saddened but surely the only honourable response is wish her well? It is far far better that Meghan falls out of love with Britain than out of love with Harry.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-f...as-come-face-facts-meghan-has-broken-britain/
Short of stealing her vertiginous Manolo Blahniks and locking her up in the Tower there’s nothing more we can do to make the Duchess of Sussex stay.
Some of us are distraught. Some are in denial. There’s been an upsurge in feigned indifference. Piers Morgan is unaccountably furious.
But it was ever thus; the end of an affair is always painful and fraught with recrimination.
Especially when we’re the ones who bought her a house, let her wed our darling Harry and dressed our small dogs in union flag bow-ties as we waved in delight from the cobbled thoroughfares of Windsor on their big day.
I was there in May 2018 amid the picnickers in the blazing heat and sunny goodwill on the Long Walk - all of us waiting patiently for the newlyweds to whizz by us in their Ascot Landau.
And all those hours were worth it for that brief, unforgettable glimpse of his proud profile and her dazzling smile. It was the Richard Curtis version of a fairytale wedding this country craved.
Yes, there were early reports that Californian-born Meghan described St George’s Chapel as smelling musty.
However, once she nailed the terminology - the word she was looking for was “venerable” - we assumed she’d settle into the ranks of our royals and adapt to their arcane idiosyncrasies. Wouldn’t she?
But did anyone properly prepare the actress and social activist for a world in which upper classes live in crumbling drafty houses with leaky taps and Her Majesty the Queen punctiliously stores her cereal in Tupperware tubs?
Were courtiers not on hand to explain that having to buy one’s own furniture was positively shameful?
Like Madonna before in her anglo-phile phase, free-spirited Meghan was probably expecting Downtown Abbey, bless her.
What she got was grief; for being unnecessarily slim, for not being Kate, for wearing the wrong nail polish, for being American, for being too sincere, for not being sincere.
While she was born into the sunny uplands of the shiny happy people of California, here she got plumbing that didn’t work properly and unrelenting grey skies in April.
We’re blithely used to such free-for-all scrutiny of public figures.
For good or ill, it adds to the gaiety of a stiff-upper-lipped nation that stoically accepts drizzle as a lifestyle choice and invented the miserablist motto “keep calm and carry on”.
No wonder Meghan felt cut adrift from the “have a nice day” optimism of La La Land she had been brought up on.
Would any one of us relish the peculiar role of “civil servant in a tiara” cutting ribbons on command far from home?
It can’t have been easy, adapting to the stubborn absence of glamour in her new life; trading the Met Ball glitz for dutiful visits to day centres and council offices.
Of course we never pretended to be anything other than who we are. But, nor did she.
It’s pointless to apportion blame; she’s just not that into us, much as both sides tried to make it work.
We may feel bewildered and saddened but surely the only honourable response is wish her well? It is far far better that Meghan falls out of love with Britain than out of love with Harry.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-f...as-come-face-facts-meghan-has-broken-britain/
