The Duchess of Sussex has turned 40 and she may be reflecting on what she has achieved. From a middle-class childhood in Los Angeles, the only child of divorced parents Thomas Markle and Doria Ragland, she became an actress and blogger, met her first husband, Trevor Engelson, graduated from being a model on a game show to starring in Suits, and got a divorce. One day in July 2016 she went on a blind date and met Prince Harry.
It has been a tumultuous five years. She is now in California, mother to two-year-old Archie and one-month-old Lilibet.
The first the British public knew of Harry and Meghan’s relationship was a statement issued by Harry’s communications secretary three months after their first date at Soho House. It confirmed that Meghan was Harry’s girlfriend and condemned the “wave of abuse and harassment” and “outright sexism and racism of social media trolls”.
In Finding Freedom, a well-informed and flattering biography of Harry and Meghan, with which the couple deny collaborating, authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand revealed that Prince William “pissed Harry off” when he raised concerns about the speed with which the relationship was moving. Sources quoted William as saying: “Take as much time as you need to get to know this girl.” Harry thought he was being snobbish. The first fracture appeared in his relationship with his brother.
His relationship with his girlfriend, however, prospered. In May 2017 Meghan was Harry’s date at Pippa Middleton’s wedding reception. By October, she was on the cover of Vanity Fair. “We’re a couple,” she told the magazine. “We’re in love. I’m sure there will be a time when we have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell.”
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Nothing about her had changed since the relationship became public, she went on. “I’ve never defined myself by my relationship.” The previous month, the couple made their first official appearance, at the Invictus Games in Toronto, holding hands and laughing. A body language expert told Vogue that the omens were excellent. Meghan’s smile was “gleeful”, she said. “Harry wants to be connected, but he wants to take care of her.”
On November 27 the Palace announced that after 15 months of dating, they were engaged. In the couple’s engagement interview, a confident Meghan took the lead, telling the BBC’s Mishal Husain that Harry went down on one knee at home in Kensington Palace while they were roasting a chicken. He presented her with a ring containing a diamond from Botswana, flanked by two diamonds from his mother’s collection.
“It was just an amazing surprise,” Meghan told Husain. “Just so sweet and natural and very romantic.”
Newspapers all over the world published photos of the happy couple smiling and laughing. One described Meghan as a “kick-ass, super-cool, confident woman”. Royal biographer Christopher Wilson wrote that the royal family had “finally” joined the 21st century in realising that “you don’t have to be a blue blood to make a good princess”. Afua Hirsh wrote that their marriage showed the “changing faces of Britain’s attitude to race” while another journalist wrote that Meghan was a “refreshing departure from the mould of staid tradition”.
A fashion photographer, Alexi Lubomirski, was chosen for the couple’s official engagement photos and later their wedding. In a break from royal tradition the couple were shot outside, intertwined, in photos that were unashamedly loved-up, glossy and glamorous.
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Meghan wore a £56,000 couture ballgown by Ralph & Russo and Kensington Palace thanked all the people who had sent “warm and generous messages”. A few days later, in December, the couple were mobbed on a walkabout in Nottingham by well-wishers waving Union Jacks and bouquets of flowers.
One woman in the crowd told a reporter, “You’ve got to believe in the fairytale”, adding that Meghan’s status as a divorced American made her “more relatable” and praising her as a “modern woman who had made her own way”. “I’ve been made so welcome,” a beaming Meghan told the crowd, “I can’t believe it.”
“Markle sparkles in Nottingham”, read one headline. “Radiant Meghan wins an army of starstruck new young British fans”, said another.
In February 2018 Harry and Meghan made their first official appearance with William and Kate, laying out their joint charitable vision. The Fab Four were born. They married at St George’s Chapel in Windsor in May.
There, the royal family mixed with A-listers, including Oprah and the Clooneys, and the streets were lined with cheering crowds. Princess Charlotte, Prince George and Robbie Williams’s daughter were among those attending the bride, who wore a gown by Givenchy and a diamond tiara lent by the Queen. It later emerged that George Clooney had cheerfully admitted to a fellow guest that he’d never met the couple before.
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There had also been trouble in the run-up to the wedding. Harry had taken Angela Kelly, the Queen’s dresser, to task in a dispute over tiaras. “What Meghan wants, Meghan gets,” he told her furiously. The Queen summoned her grandson to explain that that was not, in fact, how it worked.
There was back and forth over whether the bride’s father would walk her up the aisle. Finally, on the eve of the wedding it was announced that, owing to health problems, he would not be coming at all. Instead, Meghan would enter the chapel alone and be escorted on the final stages to the altar by the Prince of Wales, who was said to adore his new daughter-in-law.
She released a statement saying, “I have always cared for my father and hope he can be given the space he needs to focus on his health.” The only member of the bride’s family in attendance would be her mother, who was widely judged to have been the picture of maternal pride and poise.
Privately, Meghan had severed all ties with her father after he was revealed to have collaborated with paparazzi to produce staged photos. He has never met Prince Harry or either of his grandchildren. The contents and ownership of a letter Meghan wrote to him have been the subject of a court case against a tabloid.
It later emerged that Meghan had complained that the medieval chapel smelt musty, and her staff had been refused permission to spray it with Diptyque air freshener. There were further rumours of ructions at a fitting for Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress. Early reports were that Meghan made Kate cry. Meghan later told Oprah that “the reverse” happened. But the newly married couple settled into life at Frogmore Cottage.
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By October, Meghan was pregnant, as the couple embarked on a hugely successful tour of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga. Huge crowds turned out to greet them on a tour which Forbes magazine declared to be “triumphant”.
Early in the new year, in February 2019, Meghan flew by private jet to New York for a baby shower. Reported to have cost half a million pounds, it took place in the penthouse suite at the Mark hotel and featured a harpist and a flower-arranging session. Amal Clooney was there, as was Gayle King, Oprah’s best friend (and the US breakfast TV presenter who later revealed that William and Harry’s conversation after the Sussexes’ Oprah interview had not been “productive”.)
Public reaction to the extravagance was disbelief. In private, relations between the two households had been strained for months. In October 2018 Jason Knauf, the communications secretary for the Cambridges and the Sussexes, had written a formal email to Simon Case, then Prince William’s private secretary, detailing allegations that Meghan was a bully, allegations which are alleged to have infuriated Prince William and were revealed by this newspaper.
“I am very concerned that the Duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year,” Knauf wrote. “The treatment of X was totally unacceptable. The Duchess seems intent on always having someone in her sights. She is bullying Y and seeking to undermine her confidence. We have report after report from people who have witnessed unacceptable behaviour towards Y.”
The duchess was reported to have said: “It’s not my job to coddle people.” She strenuously denies the bullying allegations and claims she is the victim of a smear campaign.
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By March, a month after the baby shower, it was announced that the two households were splitting. The Fab Four were no more. The split had nothing to do with rumours of a rift between the couple, Palace sources insisted with a straight face. On the contrary, it was simply part of a long-term plan. Harry and Meghan would appoint their own communications secretary and Knauf was promoted to become the Cambridges’ senior adviser.
Harry and Meghan’s first child, Archie, was born almost exactly a year after their wedding, in May 2019, shrouded in secrecy. It was only announced that Meghan had gone into labour after she had given birth at the private Portland hospital in west London.
When President Trump came to the UK on a state visit that summer, Meghan, who had been vocal in her criticism of Trump before her marriage, avoided meeting him because she was on maternity leave. That summer, the couple,who spoke often about their fears for climate change, flew widely by private jet, including to holidays in Ibiza and at Elton John’s château in the south of France. They declined an invitation to join the Queen at Balmoral. The Cambridges were photographed boarding a budget airline at Norwich airport on their way to Scotland.
Meanwhile, Meghan was busy guest-editing the prestigious September issue of British Vogue, around the theme “forces for change”. The Duchess of Cambridge had agreed to appear on the cover of British Vogue in 2016. Meghan said that she had chosen not to, so as not to appear “boastful”.
That autumn, Harry and Meghan set off on a ten-day tour of Africa, with Archie, in which they introduced him to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela’s widow. Hailed as a huge success, the tour was overshadowed by the couple’s decision while they were still in Africa to launch legal action against two newspapers.
Shortly after their return, an interview and fly-on-the-wall documentary were broadcast. Talking to ITV’s Tom Bradby, a tearful Meghan complained that she had been struggling with royal life and “not many people have asked if I’m OK”. Prince Harry complained that every time he heard a camera click he was taken back to his mother’s death in a car accident while being chased by paparazzi. They declined an invitation from the Queen to spend Christmas at Sandringham, flying instead to spend it on Vancouver Island in Canada.
In January 2020 Megxit was announced. The couple would step back from their royal duties, they said, while continuing to support the Queen and working to become financially independent. No such settlement was ultimately allowed.
In a deal thrashed out by the royal households and a furious Prince William, the half-in-half-out model was rejected. In the weeks before the pandemic struck in spring 2020, Harry and Meghan conducted their last engagements as working royals, before leaving for good. After it was confirmed in February this year that they would not be returning, the couple’s royal patronages reverted to the Queen along with Harry’s honorary military titles, after the Palace said, “it is not possible to continue with the responsibilities and duties that come with a life of public service”.
“We can all live a life of service,” the Sussexes shot back. “Service is universal.”
They have signed commercial deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds including plans for programmes and podcasts with Netflix and Spotify. Meghan has written a children’s book, The Bench, and Harry has given speeches about mental health.
As the 99-year-old Duke of Edinburgh went into hospital with what would be his final illness, the couple gave an interview to Oprah in which they shared “their truth”. Prince Philip was said to have declared the decision to give the interview madness and predicted “no good will come of it”.
In the resulting furore, the Queen refused to be bounced into an immediate response. Instead, the next day an elegant and conciliatory 61-word statement was issued, saying how saddened the whole family was to hear of how challenging Harry and Meghan had found recent years. “Some recollections,” the statement continued, “may vary.”
Officially, the Sussexes remain much-loved members of the family.
