The Real Reason Prince William Doesn’t Like Duchess Meghan
With the smearing of an American duchess, the monarchy feels less crown jewel and more cheap, tarnished souvenir. Author COURTNEY HARGROVE examines what’s at the root of it all
After decades following the British royal family in the media and in person, it’s depressing to watch the façade whipped away like the curtain in The Wizard of OZ. Their resistance to change and their relentless attacks on the former Meghan Markle to draw attention away from their greatest failings is turning off generations of supporters and fans.
One symptom of the wider problem is the fractured brotherhood of Prince William and Prince Harry, which is in sharp focus this week as they prepare to face each other at the unveiling of a statue they commissioned of their mother at Kensington Palace. I believe the massive chasm between them began as tiny, invisible fissures years ago.
I was in the single digits when I stayed up all night in a cozy den on the west coast to watch Diana Spencer marry Prince Charles. I never cared about getting married or becoming a princess, but I loved the distraction of the royals, even so young. I loved reading about grand, beautiful lives. I embraced the history and the castles. I fell for the living fairy tale.
My mother subscribed to People magazine and kept the issues in a basket in our bathroom, and it felt like Princess Di was on the cover at least once a month. I would read about her old husband Charles, her babies, her hair, and her cheeky sister-in-law Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson, who married the handsome (believe it) Prince Andrew, so dashing in his RAF uniform.
When I grew up, I became a journalist and spent time in Europe covering various royals including Charlene, Albert, and many of the British royals. While on assignment for respected newspapers, a wire service and the occasional magazine, I had a front-row seat to some low-key moments in the lives of the younger ones.
The royal family was still fascinating to me then. I was in a new country with smart-sounding accents, castles, Big Ben, the Tower of London and a real, live Queen living down the road in Buckingham Palace — and I could visit her at home.
I didn’t forget how Princess Diana was hounded and smeared by the British media and anonymous leaks from palace courtiers, how she was threatened and stripped of her HRH title and sneered at for dating a Muslim man, how she was mocked instead of helped for talking about her bulimia. But as the campaign against Diana ceased abruptly when she died in 1997, the ugliness was buried in the back of my mind.
With her went the royal family’s need to control and attack her. In its place were left two heartbroken, grieving little boys. Those same boys were also the future of the monarchy.
By the time William was in his twenties, we’d hear stories of “Prince Petulant.” He was known to have a temper and showed hints of creeping paranoia (for understandable reasons…until it grew into something less healthy) that saw him going medieval on his own friends. To test the loyalty of his inner circle, he’d confide false gossip and if it ended up in the papers, he’d follow the leak to find out who betrayed him.
I, like so many, understood it. He was reticent and often grouchy toward the intrusive media, and everyone knew it was because of his mother’s legacy of being hounded literally to death. Harry, on the other hand, was cast as the rogue spare — sometimes a loveable one, sometimes a reckless and clueless one (the Nazi costume and the Vegas party pics for example).
Yet Harry grew up fast. He became a beloved, respected member of the British Army, flying Apaches and becoming known fondly as “Captain Harry Wales.” When you’d see him out and about when he was still thisclose to the throne — third in line behind William and Charles — he carried himself with a genuine man-of-the-people ease.
I watched Prince Harry in the flesh at the polo, hair mussed in sweaty tendrils, athletic and focused, mucking in with the rest of the players. He’d wander the grounds after the match, shaking hands, backslapping, stopping by the afterparty. He appeared to adore his cousins Beatrice and Eugenie, tossing back champagne and having a dance under the marquee. Whenever I’d see polo star Nacho Figueras around, he couldn’t say enough nice things about Harry.
Covering Harry at the more casual, fun events meant watching people love him. Not because they were in awe, but because he exuded warmth, and as hard as it obviously was for him to suffer snapping cameras and shouting reporters like me, I think he understood his privilege — even before he realized he understood what that meant. Something in him directed him to be genuinely humble and kind. Something his mother gave him.
Harry exuded warmth and a desire to connect with those who needed him to — wounded warriors, the poor, the struggling.
I usually saw William when he was out and about as a private citizen. He didn’t exude. He sucked in.
He became the center of a room when he walked into it, and he seemed to absorb the energy of those around him. They came to him, drawn in not by charisma but by the quiet demand of his position.
He had height and ever-present protection officers, and he had a way of waiting for people to approach — and when they did, if he was in the mood, they would be his court jesters, and in return he provided them a laugh or a tilted head meant to indicate a listening ear. Or he didn’t, and you would feel the cold of being in his shadow, his back to you.
Future king William, towering and reticent and understandably moody at times, would sometimes be jovial enough to let journalists and their ilk think he was letting them in, when really he was barely tolerating them. Or he would watch from afar while aides did the dirty work of dispatching people he didn’t want in the room.
He is not the charismatic one in the family. Not everyone has that it factor. But what always struck me when I’d watch him in person and in videos of him working engagements was not that he couldn’t connect. It was that he didn’t seem to want to. He’s not shy. He’s articulate. He knows how to talk to people. It sometimes seems like he can’t be bothered.
When you’d see him out hanging with his friends, that booming voice and overwhelming deep laugh echoing through a room, William would fold his lanky frame into a chair that always looked too small for him, and people would fuss around him.
The Fallacy of a Shy Kate Middleton
That included Kate Middleton, aka Waity Katie, aka Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge.
When I would see William in social situations, he was never fussing over anyone. He was the fussee, never the fusser. His girlfriend Kate, whose reputation as “shy” is wide of the mark, has long possessed a confidence of place in life. Her bubble, her privilege, her deep-seated knowledge she was owed a place in the sun, is far more obvious in private than at larger engagements where she struggles to say Good afternoon without checking her note cards.
The few times I was around both of them, Kate would stick close to him, shoot him the occasional warning look, toss her hair, and make it plain William was hers. (As I write this I can hear the cries of a thousand women yelling out, Girl, you can have him). She took her place near him and owned it. She walked the room with a cool gaze, noticing people noticing her.
To many, it appears Kate is uncomfortable speaking in front of people. She sometimes seems nervous and awkward when she’s out and about. And who can’t relate to that? It’s not easy. But. But. She’s had a decade and then some. She’s had princess training. Also: She. Is. Not. Shy.
There was a long time where she didn’t seem to do much else than fuss over William. Those with longer memories beyond 2012 know the Waity Katie nickname was well earned. She lived in a London flat paid for by her mother for years with no job other than being William’s girlfriend. The Queen’s own directive to keep the monarchy alive is always for descendants to show the subjects who pay for them that they’re worth keeping, and the monarch herself worried Kate was “workshy.”
Kate’s only known “jobs” in life were doing unspecified work at her parents’ company Party Pieces, and a brief role at Jigsaw in London, a halfhearted attempt that never really took, according to a colleague who spilled the tea years ago.
Indeed, a scathing article by longtime royal reporter Katie Nicholl in 2008 did not paint a hopeful picture of future Queen Catherine.
She was “nicknamed Waity Katie because of her apparent willingness to do nothing but socialise and shop until William decides when to propose,” Nicholl wrote.
And, in the years before they were engaged, Kate’s charity portfolio was made up of one roller-disco fundraiser for Oxford Children’s Hospital. In 2008 she pulled out of an event for the Royal Marsden Hospital at the last minute.
It wasn’t for a lack of offers. When one charity asked Kate to pitch in, for example, Nicholl quoted a “friend” as saying, “‘She was really keen at the time and said she would love to get on board. She gave the organiser all her details but, when they wrote to her, Kate didn’t even reply. She has quite a bad reputation for being rude when it comes to responding to letters.’”
The piece concluded that the “fact that she is seen to spend her time shopping, holidaying and partying instead of working hard at a career has triggered a bitter backlash.”
As a royal watcher and sometime-reporter, I was most disappointed by Kate’s post-marriage refusal to embrace her platform. I could barely attract a few hundred dollars in my efforts to fundraise for my chosen cause, and when I saw Kate constantly in the media I wouldn’t dream about being a princess like her, but about having a spotlight like hers to shine on those in desperate need.
Who is Kate? Kate is the young woman we saw strutting down the runway with a sultry sneer in a see-through skirt-turned-dress while the future king of England was in the audience. She is the person who continued to show up in public for official royal engagements without underwear or weighted hems, which are de rigueur for public engagements for just this reason — she flashed photographers in 2011, 2014 and 2016, to name a few times. That is not the behavior of a shy woman. In my opinion, it is the mark of a complacent one. Seems she and William would rather be in Mustique.
I do not buy any recasting of Kate as a hard-working mum making the feminist choice to be there for her children. It’s great that Kate can stay home and not worry about gender or race equality, voting rights, sexual harassment in the workplace or unequal pay, but — especially when she was first married — she could have taken up the baton and been a force for good.
The work is not done. Kate could have done anything with her platform. She was given every benefit of every doubt and so much time, training, support, and endless financial freedom. She chose to do the bare minimum.
As academic Meagan Tyler argued in a piece for The Conversation, feminism is not about a few women having the luxury of choice; we are not there yet. “The promotion of ‘choice’ — and the myth of an already-achieved equality — have hampered our ability to challenge the very institutions that hold women back. But the fight is not over. Many women are reasserting that feminism is a necessary social movement for the equality and liberation of all women, not just platitudes about choices for some.”
Still, Kate needn’t be compared to Princess Diana, or be expected to have Diana’s natural warmth and inborn empathy — or even Meghan Markle’s. Kate simply could have been herself, but more curious. Herself, but more hard-working. Shown more of whatever her self is.
After Diana died, William found a new family who appeared to want the full-on fairy tale. William and Harry were born to a mother whose fiercest goal was for her sons to live as normal a life as possible, to become fully formed humans first and royal highnesses second, to be kind and generous and develop at least a faint streak of humility, especially for William who was destined to be King.
But William found an anchor outside the sea of family dysfunction he was left with after his mother was gone. He was drawn to the happy family Kate’s mother Carole Middleton presented, and fell in love with the gauzy filter laid over the Bucklebury dream with cream teas, open-plan kitchens with a roast dinner in the oven and crisp pints at country pubs where locals knew not to hassle the prince.
Why the Comparisons Persist
Meghan is constantly compared unfavorably to Kate, whose role is to be quiet and look pretty, one she has performed well. Meghan is being punished for Kate’s apathy.
Meghan’s ethos is summed up with one of her own quotes: “If there is wrong, if there is a lack of justice, and there is an inequality, then someone needs to say something. And why not me?”
Like Diana did with Charles and his royal relatives of yore, Meghan makes the new generation look bad. Her drive and sincere desire to work for a better world is cast as abusive when, in reality, she’s earning her keep. They hate her for it, they’re furious at Harry for marrying her, and they’re doing everything they can to distract everyone from that fact. They leak to the British press, which in turn churns out headlines and content many have called blatantly racist.
I believe the sore spot for the British royals, William in particular, is the same one that Princess Diana triggered in the nineties. She shone too bright, and Charles and the gang punished her for it. And now Meghan and Harry are doing too well. Instead of rising to meet them, it’s easier for the palaces to drag them down to their level.
The Real Story
I believe the root of the William and Harry rift is fueled largely by jealousy. William and Kate over at Kensington Palace are trying to outrun past commentary in UK papers like, “…it’s been boring. And that’s because THEY’RE boring. They couldn’t cobble together a personality between them,” or, “Mr. and Mrs. Bland!” Or, the couple is “DULL.”
Meanwhile, every time crowds scream and cry for Meghan and Harry like they’re the Beatles incarnate, it makes William and Kate’s subdued presence look all the more dull. When they’re seen serving the homeless, it shines a light on Will and Kate’s retreating to the rosy confines of Anmer Hall with its pool and tennis court. Every time Harry earns his own money with hard work, it highlights how William and Kate live off money they haven’t earned.
This unfavorable comparison takes William from Prince Petulant to William, Incandescent With Rage™. Meghan’s bestselling book The Bench and the Invictus Games Harry developed with his whole heart are bright lights next to William and Kate’s hour-long engagements and routine assurances that they’re keen to do something, someday, we really mean it this time.
Perhaps you can’t be taught to be as wonderful as Diana was with people, but you can try. You have to want to do it.
Goodbye to the Princess Myth
None of this is glamorous or dreamy or beautiful. It’s ugly and cheap and small. The princess myth was always suspect in its whiteness, thinness, wealth and reliance on a handsome prince to save the helpless female.
Not enough people could see themselves represented in that princess picture. Yet Meghan met the love of her life and burst in, ready to modernize and lift the institution. With her departure, so goes the gloss and shine and bejeweled fairy tale.
As I discuss in my new mini-biography of Harry and Meghan’s new California life, I also believe there is ample evidence that their zinging chemistry shines an unwelcome light on William’s drab relationship with Kate. It’s not a rosy picture. That Tatler article that referenced an alleged affair William had with one of the Turnip Toff set in Norfolk was eventually curbed, but the horse had left the barn, so to speak.
One cannot illustrate the targeting of Meghan without comparing and contrasting how she is treated relative to other British royals. She is accused of sending emails at five in the morning. Prince Andrew is accused of raping a teenage girl (he denies this). Who gets more vitriol out of the British media? Who is subject to more palace leaks?
In highlighting Meghan’s Rampant Avocado Production™, the way she holds her son, the unsubstantiated and entirely non-specific “bullying claims,” of falsely calling her #1 bestselling book a flop, the palace leaks and the British media’s aim seems to be to distract you from the ineffectual “work” done by William and Kate; from claims about William cheating on Kate; from the Firm’s unforgivably low diversity numbers in its staff, which is so bad that Kensington Palace refuses to even release their numbers; from their overpriced choo-choo ride at the height of the pandemic; and perhaps most of all, Prince Andrew.
It’s time the royal family was called out for some of the real damage it allegedly does. Let’s start with Prince Andrew. This pal of the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is doing jolly old interviews with Sky News after the death of his father Prince Philip, but there’s another interview he really should be doing. There are some agents over there in the US of A who want to talk to you, Andy. Here’s their number if you’re calling from Windsor: 001 202 324–3000.
Why I started this series of Harry & Meghan mini-biographies
Writing this book, for me, started as a way to catalogue events and reports that were going from insulting to ludicrous to libelous. It doesn’t mean I think Meghan and Harry are perfect, but I do have a point of view: To be neutral on Meghan, Duchess of Sussex is to stand up for racism and bullying. Whether she’s perfect is not the question.
To sum up a Tweet frequent Sussex supporter Goldburn P. Maynard Jr. sent out not too long ago, the couple receives such a pounding that it’s not necessary to pile on when something they do isn’t entirely brilliant and amazing.
Still, I do point out in the book some happenings and quotes that aren’t ideal because they are a part of the couple’s new history in America. I am aware there will be blowback from royal fans, royal watchers, British monarchists, and even Sussex Squaddies.
If everyone is likely to have a beef with these books, a friend asked recently, what are you doing it for, then? To mark this place in history. To create a series of accurate catalogues of the beginning of the end of the monarchy.
Buy the book, don’t buy the book. The next one will come next year, and I will continue to speak out against racism, misogyny, misogynoir, and will champion social justice issues.
And with that, I say goodbye to the British royal family.
Hello to the new American princess, and welcome.
Courtney Hargrove is a longtime royal watcher, writer, author and journalist.
