"Revenge" by Tom Bower (2022)

[Curryong]

Apparently Bower would like to think that absolutely nothing Meghan aspires to is authentic. Has he been invited to dinner at the Sussexes? Seems not.

I think that Meghan was and is genuinely interested in food and cooking, in spite of what Bower might infer. She was enthusiastic about trying out recipes and different foods in her The Tig days, and that wouldn’t have just come from her time with Corey. Nor was that a sign that she was a ready-made meals kind of person. People who dislike cooking aren’t interested, don’t write about it a lot. She was also genuinely enthused about Together, the Grenfell Towers cookbook she helped bring to life as well.

 

[Sun Lion]

Frogmore Cottage, after the renovations, did not come up to expectations, even with input from the Buckingham Palace curator of paintings.

With a small kitchen, cramped living living-room and “no view of the ocean”, it didn’t compare to what Kate and William had.

Nor was it as good as the homes of Hollywood.

Being under the Heathrow flight path didn’t help, and Mr Bower writes that both were “gripped by fear of a random attack” there.

Meghan was beginning to realise something of the illusion vs the reality of her situation and of Royalty.

The contractors didn’t just relay their experiences of the new Duchess to their friends, but to other clients as well.

I have some sympathy for Meghan here, and would think the UK climate would also not help after growing up in California.

Getting swept up in something can be a very heady experience … marrying into a Royal Family, Wow! … then daily life appears.

 

[TLLK]

Frogmore Cottage, after the renovations, did not come up to expectations, even with input from the Buckingham Palace curator of paintings.

With a small kitchen, cramped living living-room and “no view of the ocean”, it didn’t compare to what Kate and William had.

Nor was it as good as the homes of Hollywood.

Being under the Heathrow flight path didn’t help, and Mr Bower writes that both were “gripped by fear of a random attack” there.

Meghan was beginning to realise something of the illusion vs the reality of her situation and of Royalty.

The contractors didn’t just relay their experiences of the new Duchess to their friends, but to other clients as well.

I have some sympathy for Meghan here, and would think the UK climate would also not help after growing up in California.

Getting swept up in something can be a very heady experience … marrying into a Royal Family, Wow! … then daily life appears.

No view of the ocean???

 

[Sun Lion]

No view of the ocean???

I guess that was in comparison to life in California TLLK, though I don’t think she ever lived near the coast growing up.

Even now the house on Rockbridge Rd, while facing the sea, is quite some distance from it … I think myself, you might only see the ocean from the upper storeys actually, not from the gardens and grounds.

Whatever may have been behind the comment, it comes across to me as another fracture in the fantasy of some sort of final perfected life that had been reached, only it wasn’t perfect.

 

[Curryong]

Meghan had visited Windsor Castle with Harry several times during her engagement and early marriage and there were reports in the media that she and Harry had visited Frogmore Cottage on occasion while it was being renovated.

I highly doubt that Meghan (especially as Harry had known Windsor all his life) would have believed that Windsor Castle, and FC only six minutes away from the castle, would have possessed a sea view. Sounds to me like Bower is putting some input of his own into it.

Anmer House isn’t directly on the beach either. And as Meghan had spent Xmas with Harry and the Cambridges before her marriage she would also have known that, and so would hardly have compared the two. Holkham beach isn’t that far away but Anmer doesn’t have a sea view.

 

[Marengo]

I suppose what is true is that Frogmore cottage is rather simple in comparison to other houses used by members of the RF - e.g. Bagshot Park, Royal Lodge, Anmer Hall and even Gatcombe and Highgrove. To American standards it may be unimpressive too, considering all these idiotically huge mansions of the stars that we get to see in our magazines.

In comparison Frogmore Cottage seems nice for a middle class family perhaps, but I would not be surprised if people expected something more grand. But they must have known this beforehand as neither the structure nor the plane routes have changed much during the renovation.

 

[Claire]

That seems to be long gone by the younger generation. It was certainly the way William and Harry were raised and still very much Charles’s life but, and I guess William and Catherine would have led the way with this, they don’t have staff like that. I think they do for events they may hold but in their private life no. They have a housekeeper who does a bit of everything, gardener and nanny obviously. That is all since the children came along as well. Before that they had no one.

Harry was probably supposed to follow in his footsteps. My friend works in South Ken and would often see him in Waitrose buying food. Certainly none of the rest of the grandchildren have anything like that. Meghan presumed it was something it wasn’t. Cos in honesty the younger royals are not grand by anyones standards. Now Charles is grand by everyone’s standards. Whether William changes when he becomes POW is to be seen.

Currently Harry is the grandest of the lot. Up there with Granny, Dad and Uncle Andy. Rest are really very middle classy really.

The Princess Royal and the Wessexs do not have cooks and maids either. I doubt the Kents and Gloucesters do either. The novelty of seeing Anne and Edward in a Tesco or Sainsbury's has worn off to most people that live in the area that they live.

There is a large gap of reality and the fiction that many people get of the royals especially if your only source material is the Crown and other Netflix shows. Do you remember a few years back when a journalist took shots of the rooms in Buckingham Palace and the bedrooms of the royals appeared like a private school dormitory.

 

[muriel]

That seems to be long gone by the younger generation. It was certainly the way William and Harry were raised and still very much Charles’s life but, and I guess William and Catherine would have led the way with this, they don’t have staff like that. I think they do for events they may hold but in their private life no. They have a housekeeper who does a bit of everything, gardener and nanny obviously. That is all since the children came along as well. Before that they had no one.

Harry was probably supposed to follow in his footsteps. My friend works in South Ken and would often see him in Waitrose buying food. Certainly none of the rest of the grandchildren have anything like that. Meghan presumed it was something it wasn’t. Cos in honesty the younger royals are not grand by anyones standards. Now Charles is grand by everyone’s standards. Whether William changes when he becomes POW is to be seen.

Currently Harry is the grandest of the lot. Up there with Granny, Dad and Uncle Andy. Rest are really very middle classy really.

It is down to each member of the BRF on how much domestic staff they choose to have. If Meghan and her American visitors expected to see plenty of domestic staff at Nott Cott, it was entirely for H&M to get them. There is no firm-wide policy or diktat on that.

 

[Sun Lion]

Meghan had visited Windsor Castle with Harry several times during her engagement and early marriage and there were reports in the media that she and Harry had visited Frogmore Cottage on occasion while it was being renovated.

I highly doubt that Meghan (especially as Harry had known Windsor all his life) would have believed that Windsor Castle, and FC only six minutes away from the castle, would have possessed a sea view. Sounds to me like Bower is putting some input of his own into it.

Anmer House isn’t directly on the beach either. And as Meghan had spent Xmas with Harry and the Cambridges before her marriage she would also have known that, and so would hardly have compared the two. Holkham beach isn’t that far away but Anmer doesn’t have a sea view.

You’ve misunderstood what is written in the book Curryong. You need to read Chapter 25 “Suicide” to see the context for my short post.

Meghan herself was very involved with the renovation of Frogmore Cottage, with the architects, designers and builders … to the extent of making “constantly changing demands”.

The ocean view comment was not in regards to where Windsor sits within the UK.

And the comparison with William and Kate was to their Kensington Palace home, not Anmer, sorry that was not made clear in my post.

I think it was in regards to the realisation that Royal life in Frogmore Cottage wasn’t a patch on celebrity life in California. That’s my take on it, nothing to do with the location of any particular property.


Well, the book is full of more detail than anyone can share here, and it is quite difficult to cover the amount of insights it has given me.

I’ve just finished reading the chapter about the Oprah interview, and though there are no surprises, it was heavy-going for me.

To have seen the early promise of Meghan and Harry ending up with such a mess of nonsense.

When you see it laid out in black and white, as opposed to watching the video, you have to seriously wonder what the hell is going on with all involved in that.

Thank you so much Marengo and TRFs for allowing this thread about “Revenge”. I’ve enjoyed having somewhere to express some reactions l’ve had to it.

I would recommend this book to anyone finding the couple interesting, but this will be my last post about it.

To fully appreciate what it offers, it really needs to be read fully and even then, probably re-read again.

 

[Alison H]

Things have changed generally. Before the First World War, and even in the inter-war period, even an ordinary middle-class family (doctor, solicitor, businessman, etc) would have at least a maid-of-all-work, maybe a maid plus a cook. Aristocratic families and Royals would have several servants. Not any more. It's partly because servants' wages went up, and partly because family sizes have gone down so that not so many rooms in a house are used, and also partly because of labour-saving devices such as ovens, washing machines, hoovers, etc.

The days of Upstairs Downstairs, Downton Abbey etc are over. But people coming from abroad wouldn't necessarily know that. Think of the scene in Three Men and a Little Lady in which the three American men come down for dinner in full evening dress, only to find the host, hostess and other guests in jeans.

 

[tommy100]

William and Catherine didn't have a chef while they lived on Anglesey and Catherine was regularly (as in weekly) spotted in the Anglesey branch of Waitrose doing the food shopping. Even now they don't have a full time chef I don't think but a Housekeeper who also cooks when needed. Given how important food is to Meghan that she wanted her own food show I would think most people would assume she would want to cook for herself - or that with £1.5MILLION every year from Charles, plus whatever Harry got from Diana, and the Queen and Meghan's own income from her work they could pay for their own chef if it was so important to them.


I agree the book mention about "no ocean" was comparing it to Meghan's desire to be back in California and what she felt they could have there. (Though personally it does make me wonder if they really did thing they were getting Frogmore House and a view of the lake)

 

[Alison H]

The Yorks' home at Sunninghill was nicknamed "Southyork", after Southfork in Dallas. I think the Royals were keen to avoid another generation being pilloried in the media for having the sort of huge mansion associated with celebs - like the Beckhams' "Beckingham Palace". According to Wikipedia, Southyork had 6 reception rooms, 12 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms. No-one really needs that much room any more: it's not like the days when the upper classes would move around from house party to house party. But a lot of celebs do have huge houses, and maybe it's what Harry and Meghan were expecting.

 

[tommy100]

Again IMO this shows how little experience Meghan had of UK life. A friend of our family moved from America only about 15years ago and made the point that UK homes are often older and smaller (and even when bigger they have smaller rooms) - they were use to more open plan bigger rooms living. Short of moving into anything newly built they were never going to get anything like an LA / Cali mansion.
Maybe if she had visited more UK houses she would have had a better idea of what they were going to get. I also wonder if in part, Meghan had a fixed idea of what she wanted her house to look like, a certain Soho House style and was annoyed when that wasn't as easy to transfer into a smaller UK 'cottage style' house.

IMO so many of the issues with Meghan setting into royal life is actually settling into UK life.

 

[FigTree]

I suppose what is true is that Frogmore cottage is rather simple in comparison to other houses used by members of the RF - e.g. Bagshot Park, Royal Lodge, Anmer Hall and even Gatcombe and Highgrove. To American standards it may be unimpressive too, considering all these idiotically huge mansions of the stars that we get to see in our magazines.

In comparison Frogmore Cottage seems nice for a middle class family perhaps, but I would not be surprised if people expected something more grand. But they must have known this beforehand as neither the structure nor the plane routes have changed much during the renovation.

It’s an impressive house to me, and it is fairly big. No one would doubt anyone but a wealthy person living there, but nothing compared to Amner or their current home in montecito.

Finding Freedom was filled with references of how small Nottingham Cottage was…which now we know came from Meghan. I consider that ridiculous. It was just the two of them in a 2 bed. The Cambridge’s lived there with George. I can imagine once they had kids that it would have been cramped with all the multitude of stuff that comes with babies but for a couple it’s a beautiful house. But English with small rooms. Meghan likes big.

Who knows what she expected and Charles’ funding was for their office and work really. Given Charles also paid the ladies clothes budget it must not have gone far. He could have used his own money to hire a chef but you know? Why? It is really not that popular unless you are vastly wealthy now…and Harry isn’t vastly wealthy. I think it’s just a snippet to show how different their lives are from expectations. I mean you hang out with the Queen and you have all that I am sure. And like I said Harry and William had all that as children but times have changed.

And I agree about her just not taking to British life. If she had moved independently to the UK. Got a job, maybe an acting role, met her own friends and things she may have been better prepared to decide whether she liked it and the life and the idea of being royal. They decided very early on that they were committing and it was a big mistake. If Meghan had stood back and thought about it she would have seen that she didn’t like Harry’s friends, world, work and life. But she, almost like Grace Kelly did many years ago, viewed it as the next and biggest role that she could do what she wanted with.

I mean that shooting party would have been enough to convince me to run for the hills to be honest. Or else a chance to out down boundaries: look this isn’t my thing at all. I respect you do it with your friends and all but I am not going to these things ever. It is your interest and we don’t need to share everything.

 

[hereditarytitles]

William and Catherine didn't have a chef while they lived on Anglesey and Catherine was regularly (as in weekly) spotted in the Anglesey branch of Waitrose doing the food shopping. Even now they don't have a full time chef I don't think but a Housekeeper who also cooks when needed. Given how important food is to Meghan that she wanted her own food show I would think most people would assume she would want to cook for herself - or that with £1.5MILLION every year from Charles, plus whatever Harry got from Diana, and the Queen and Meghan's own income from her work they could pay for their own chef if it was so important to them.


I agree the book mention about "no ocean" was comparing it to Meghan's desire to be back in California and what she felt they could have there. (Though personally it does make me wonder if they really did thing they were getting Frogmore House and a view of the lake)

I agree, especially about the cooking. I remember very well when she had her blog "The Tigg", where she constantly talked about home made cooking, posted many pictures of the food she had prepared herself.
And didn't they tell the press that harry proposed while she had fried them a chicken for dinner?
Her ideas and expectations about servants were just a bit wrong. I just wonder why Harry didn't explain.

 

[TLLK]

I guess that was in comparison to life in California TLLK, though I don’t think she ever lived near the coast growing up.

Even now the house on Rockbridge Rd, while facing the sea, is quite some distance from it … I think myself, you might only see the ocean from the upper storeys actually, not from the gardens and grounds.

Whatever may have been behind the comment, it comes across to me as another fracture in the fantasy of some sort of final perfected life that had been reached, only it wasn’t perfect.

Thanks Sun Lion. I really should pre-order the book and read it.

 

[Mbruno]

I agree, especially about the cooking. I remember very well when she had her blog "The Tigg", where she constantly talked about home made cooking, posted many pictures of the food she had prepared herself.
And didn't they tell the press that harry proposed while she had fried them a chicken for dinner?
Her ideas and expectations about servants were just a bit wrong. I just wonder why Harry didn't explain.

I don't blame her for her expectations about servants though. To be honest, many Americans imagine British life based on period pieces like Downton Abbey and, back in the 1920s, I assume the norm for most upper middle-class families in England, and most certainly for gentry and the peerage, was to have a cook (not a chef) at home.


As a matter of fact, one thing that I consider a bit ironic is that, in middle-income countries as in Latin America or maybe South Africa, middle-class families still have domestic cooks and that is not considered a luxury because labor is generally cheap there. That is no longer the case in wealthier countries like the US or in Western Europe.

 

[Ista]

I received a copy of the book from the UK a couple of days ago and am finding it very engrossing reading. I wouldn't call it balanced, necessarily, since that seems impossible without input from the Sussex friends, but it is not, so far at least, a hatchet job either. What is striking to me is how completely out of her depth Meghan was in regards to the type of life she was entering and how unwilling or unable she was to adapt her expectations.

 

[Queen Claude]

I think that someone can enjoy cooking but that does not mean that they want to prepare all the meals for a family day in and day out. I would think that when Meghan was in LA and Toronto she frequently dined out in restaurants and went to whatever restaurant she pleased, and as she was not uber-famous, she could have an enjoyable experience with little or no disruption. I would assume that London has gobs of restaurants of all types and price ranges, but unfortunately members of the BRF cannot just make a spur of the moment decision to eat out at whatever establishment they have a hankering for.

I don't consider myself a snob or a narrow-minded aesthete, but Frogmore Cottage is sooo unimpressive to me, just the building itself, and that is even before I factor in the grounds, it being in a flight path, and IIRC, it is not too far from a part of Windsor that is accessible to the public.

I suspect that the Sussexes had limited choices as it seemed like they wanted to be at Windsor / away from London and wanted to be in an abode that would be complete or near complete in time for the arrival of their first child.

 

[FigTree]

I think that someone can enjoy cooking but that does not mean that they want to prepare all the meals for a family day in and day out. I would think that when Meghan was in LA and Toronto she frequently dined out in restaurants and went to whatever restaurant she pleased, and as she was not uber-famous, she could have an enjoyable experience with little or no disruption. I would assume that London has gobs of restaurants of all types and price ranges, but unfortunately members of the BRF cannot just make a spur of the moment decision to eat out at whatever establishment they have a hankering for.

I don't consider myself a snob or a narrow-minded aesthete, but Frogmore Cottage is sooo unimpressive to me, just the building itself, and that is even before I factor in the grounds, it being in a flight path, and IIRC, it is not too far from a part of Windsor that is accessible to the public.

I suspect that the Sussexes had limited choices as it seemed like they wanted to be at Windsor / away from London and wanted to be in an abode that would be complete or near complete in time for the arrival of their first child.

Certainly even to get a take away I take it they need to send someone else to pick it up which probably wasn't always easy.

Windsor is thee most expensive place to live outside Central London. Flight path or no Flight path. If it was disagreeable they could have bought their own home...their Oxfordshire one for example. May have been better for them. Even on the coast. Perhaps she wanted to be offered a Sandringham home one BUT it is extremely isolated out there and I doubt she would have liked it.

There was no rush to move out of Nottingham Cottage. They could have gone on living there for a while with baby Archie.

But it was a fix it wasn't it. I am not happy...this will work. Over and over again.

I think a lot of the problems have to do with deep seated insecurity and unhappiness. We lash out because our own opinion of ourselves is low and we gain any morsel of self esteem from validation. That was always going to be a disaster.

 

[Magnolia471]

^^ Oh, come on Fig Tree! How many times have we seen Archie and Lili (aged 3 and a half and Lili one year respectively) full face since their births? For Lili, once, Archie maybe four times. That’s hardly pushing Harry and Meghan pushing their children in front of cameras every five minutes!

Some royal reporters speculated that they don't show off their children in public so they can merched them in their docu-series or personal projects.
Just think about it: the only time that we have heard Archie's voice was on the only podcast episode they made for Spotify. In that documentary Harry made on mental health, there was a footage of Archie.
When they will come out with some content people will watch out of curiosity. It's a marketing strategy.

I think that someone can enjoy cooking but that does not mean that they want to prepare all the meals for a family day in and day out. I would think that when Meghan was in LA and Toronto she frequently dined out in restaurants and went to whatever restaurant she pleased, and as she was not uber-famous, she could have an enjoyable experience with little or no disruption. I would assume that London has gobs of restaurants of all types and price ranges, but unfortunately members of the BRF cannot just make a spur of the moment decision to eat out at whatever establishment they have a hankering for.

I don't consider myself a snob or a narrow-minded aesthete, but Frogmore Cottage is sooo unimpressive to me, just the building itself, and that is even before I factor in the grounds, it being in a flight path, and IIRC, it is not too far from a part of Windsor that is accessible to the public.

I suspect that the Sussexes had limited choices as it seemed like they wanted to be at Windsor / away from London and wanted to be in an abode that would be complete or near complete in time for the arrival of their first child.

If you marry someone for love and not for money, it's not that outrageous to cook for your partner, expecialy if you go around calling yourself a 'foodie'. Meghan never had private chef herself so you cannot say that she was used to this lifestyle either.
And Royals are perfectly allowed to go our for a dinner. They frequent restaurants as usual.
Now Kate and William are planning to live in Adelaide Cottage, so not all british royal members are supposed to live in huge palaces.
Meghan expected to be treated like a Queen in this marriage and its wasn't the case because the married the 6th in line not the future king.

 

[Mbruno]

Some royal reporters speculated that they don't show off their children in public so they can merched them in their docu-series or personal projects.
Just think about it: the only time that we have heard Archie's voice was on the only podcast episode they made for Spotify. In that documentary Harry made on mental health, there was a footage of Archie.
When they will come out with some content people will watch out of curiosity. It's a marketing strategy.

I have no particular interest in hearing Archie's voice and certainly wouldn't pay for a podcast just to do that. I admit other people may do it though, but it sounds like a silly celebrity culture to me.

 

[camelot23ca]

Again IMO this shows how little experience Meghan had of UK life. A friend of our family moved from America only about 15years ago and made the point that UK homes are often older and smaller (and even when bigger they have smaller rooms) - they were use to more open plan bigger rooms living. Short of moving into anything newly built they were never going to get anything like an LA / Cali mansion.
Maybe if she had visited more UK houses she would have had a better idea of what they were going to get. I also wonder if in part, Meghan had a fixed idea of what she wanted her house to look like, a certain Soho House style and was annoyed when that wasn't as easy to transfer into a smaller UK 'cottage style' house.

IMO so many of the issues with Meghan setting into royal life is actually settling into UK life.

I tend to agree with you and have thought from the beginning it would have been smart for Meghan to live in the UK for at least a year, and ideally closer to two, before they even thought about getting engaged. That would have allowed Meghan to be exposed to various aspects of Harry’s world in stages. She’d get his friends, close family and the media right away, but she wouldn’t have had to immediately jump into wedding planning and learning to be a member of the British RF.

It seems obvious in retrospect, given how things went, but the primary question Meghan should have been asking herself in the beginning was whether she could live in the UK on a permanent basis. Everything else was at least a little bit negotiable, up to and including how Meghan and Harry would function as working royals.

If she’d moved to London as just Harry’s latest girlfriend she could have seen whether she’d come to like Harry’s friends and family and the segment of British society they moved in. At the same time she could have been making new friends of her own (something that would become much harder once she got engaged and entered the royal bubble).

 

[Alison H]

I don't blame her for her expectations about servants though. To be honest, many Americans imagine British life based on period pieces like Downton Abbey and, back in the 1920s, I assume the norm for most upper middle-class families in England, and most certainly for gentry and the peerage, was to have a cook (not a chef) at home.

There's a brilliant scene in Three Men and a Little Lady in which the three guys - Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson - are staying at the country pile owned by the child's mother's posh British boyfriend. The American guys come down for dinner in full evening dress, based on having seen Brideshead Revisited, only to find all the posh British people in jeans. It says a lot. People do get ideas from TV programmes.

All the books about the Sussexes agree that Meghan wasn't prepared for royal life. It was Harry's responsibility to prepare her. If Diana, daughter of an earl, found it difficult to adapt, then someone coming from abroad was bound to struggle. Maybe he didn't want to say too much in case she was put off as Chelsy and Cressida both were. It was just all too quick. But, from what's been said, William tried to tell Harry to slow down, and Harry took umbrage.

 

[tommy100]

Bower's book also makes clear that he doesn't even think Meghan thought of herself as a fantastic actress with lots of potential. I think if she had pure skills and craft it might have been easier for her to keep on acting in the UK. To be honest I'm not sure, and Bower alluded to this, that she wanted to be a famous actress so much as just famous. In this regard I think she is different from Grace Kelly. Meghan wanted to be famous, acting was one way to get famous, then Harry came along and there was another route to being famous. That isn't saying she doesn't love him but to Meghan IMO -as the book suggest - a lot of it for her was 'being famous'. Hence why she kept her agents, set up exclusives with CBS, invited Oprah to her wedding and asked for freebies from fashion houses - that is what a famous person does, not a royal.

 

[Curryong]

I tend to agree with you and have thought from the beginning it would have been smart for Meghan to live in the UK for at least a year, and ideally closer to two, before they even thought about getting engaged. That would have allowed Meghan to be exposed to various aspects of Harry’s world in stages. She’d get his friends, close family and the media right away, but she wouldn’t have had to immediately jump into wedding planning and learning to be a member of the British RF.

It seems obvious in retrospect, given how things went, but the primary question Meghan should have been asking herself in the beginning was whether she could live in the UK on a permanent basis. Everything else was at least a little bit negotiable, up to and including how Meghan and Harry would function as working royals.

If she’d moved to London as just Harry’s latest girlfriend she could have seen whether she’d come to like Harry’s friends and family and the segment of British society they moved in. At the same time she could have been making new friends of her own (something that would become much harder once she got engaged and entered the royal bubble).

If Meghan had moved to London as Harry’s girlfriend that would have meant breaking her contract as a regular with Suits. She could hardly have filmed her role from London. And if the romance had gone pear shaped she might well have found herself unemployed.


I think it’s easily forgotten here that Meghan was already in her mid 30s when she and Harry met. If the couple had spent two to three years in London together getting used to this, that and the other before becoming engaged she could well have been forty before she married.


And yes I know that women over forty can conceive quickly sometimes and go through childbirth without problems but it becomes much less easy at that age. Harry especially wanted a family, and Meghan did too.

 

[yukari]

If Meghan had moved to London as Harry’s girlfriend that would have meant breaking her contract as a regular with Suits. She could hardly have filmed her role from London. And if the romance had gone pear shaped she might well have found herself unemployed.


I think it’s easily forgotten here that Meghan was already in her mid 30s when she and Harry met. If the couple had spent two to three years in London together getting used to this, that and the other before becoming engaged she could well have been forty before she married.


And yes I know that women over forty can conceive quickly sometimes and go through childbirth without problems but it becomes much less easy at that age. Harry especially wanted a family, and Meghan did too.

I used to use this arguments to defend her on Quora in the beginning of their marriage, but then I got this counterargument (which I couldn't refute back then):
- Angela Gisela Brown (who's also married a 2nd son), had her son when she's 43 and that was back in 2001. Surely medical technology is better in the late 2010's, right? If the Sussexes wait 1 more year before jumping the gun, Meghan would only be 37 or 38, still half a decade younger than Angela.
- Maxima and Mary were in their 30s when they married the heirs to the throne. They already had established careers which they had to give up, moved to foreign countries which not only has different culture but completely different language. Didn't Maxima say in an interview how she explored the Netherlands alone to get to know it?

My conclusion: delaying their marriage by a year to live in London so she could have a better understanding of British and royal life would be better in the long run instead of jumping to marriage and baby right after.

 

[FigTree]

I used to use this arguments to defend her on Quora in the beginning of their marriage, but then I got this counterargument (which I couldn't refute back then):
- Angela Gisela Brown (who's also married a 2nd son), had her son when she's 43 and that was back in 2001. Surely medical technology is better in the late 2010's, right? If the Sussexes wait 1 more year before jumping the gun, Meghan would only be 37 or 38, still half a decade younger than Angela.
- Maxima and Mary were in their 30s when they married the heirs to the throne. They already had established careers which they had to give up, moved to foreign countries which not only has different culture but completely different language. Didn't Maxima say in an interview how she explored the Netherlands alone to get to know it?

My conclusion: delaying their marriage by a year to live in London so she could have a better understanding of British and royal life would be better in the long run instead of jumping to marriage and baby right after.

Well quite.

And they still may have wanted to be together but bow out and go to the USA and it wouldn’t be such an unholy mess.

A year or two would have made no difference yet at the same time maybe all the difference in the world.

Whole thing was a disaster. In the end that is kind of what the book says. It was all just too much and they combined just pushed each others energy up. And there is no one to counteract the other and the two just flit like teenagers.

When you step back probably all you are left with is too very hurt, damaged people who are just clinging to each other and it’s them against the world. And the world is all wrong.

And I will stand by the fact that suggesting Meghan could keep her career is the most progressive thing the royals ever did…ever.

So much wisdom in it. But she was insulted by it. Book also said that Knauf was too young and green to manage them or reign them in…now if it had been Tommy Lascelles.

They needed managing and parenting and I think unfortunately no one was able to get them off the hamster wheel long enough to get them to play the long game.

 

[Mbruno]

- Maxima and Mary were in their 30s when they married the heirs to the throne. They already had established careers which they had to give up, moved to foreign countries which not only has different culture but completely different language. Didn't Maxima say in an interview how she explored the Netherlands alone to get to know it?

Weren't Maxima and Mary already engaged when they moved overseas? I suppose that technically there was still a risk that the wedding might be called off, but the risk was pretty low at that stage.



I don't normally take Meghan's side, but I must agree with Curryong on this one. Moving to London when she was still on a contract doing Suits to pursue a relationship with Harry that could or could not work out and was not even official yet would be reckless in my opinion. And, although the UK is a big market for actors, I don't think it would be so easy for Meghan to have a career in London if she lost her job in North America.

 

[yukari]

Weren't Maxima and Mary already engaged when they moved overseas? I suppose that technically there was still a risk that the wedding might be called off, but the risk was pretty low at that stage.



I don't normally take Meghan's side, but I must agree with Curryong on this one. Moving to London when she was still on a contract doing Suits to pursue a relationship with Harry that could or could not work out and was not even official yet would be reckless in my opinion. And, although the UK is a big market for actors, I don't think it would be so easy for Meghan to have a career in London if she lost her job in North America.

I'm saying "delaying their marriage/wedding", not their engagement. For one, as Harry's fiancee, she could get royal protection (if his argument about marrying quickly was "to protect her"). And if in the end they called off their engagement, 1 year building her profile as Harry's fiancee with all of the perk and publication, Meghan would be known as "the Queen's most popular grandson" ex-fiancee. Wouldn't it actually open a bigger door of opportunity for her? I'd say it's way better than this (current) mess.