Harry and Meghan: The British monarchy’s ‘Obama moment’

Eighty-one years ago this month, King Edward VIII was preparing to surrender his throne because of his love for Mrs. Wallis Simpson.

“We will not stand for an American divorcee as the wife of our King,” wrote an angry correspondent quoted in one Canadian newspaper. “If the monarchy will not observe tradition, then we had better give it up altogether!”

In November 1936, most of Britain and the empire — and certainly the British government of the time — agreed.

How times have changed! For many years divorced persons were not admitted to the Royal Enclosure at the Ascot race course. Now Britain is actively welcoming an American divorcee, Meghan Markle, into the royal family as the future wife of Prince Harry, currently fifth in line to the throne — with an extra attraction: Ms. Markle is of mixed race.

“I’m half black and half white,” she explained in ELLE Magazine two years ago. “My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African American.”

In a world of euphemism and verbal tip-toeing around the truth on racial matters, it would seem that Markle can add forthrightness to her roster of attractions.

“You create the identity you want for yourself,” she wrote of her racial origins, “just as my ancestors did when they were given their freedom.”

Royal families are proud of their family trees, and the House of Windsor’s latest recruit feels the same pride in hers, describing in ELLE how her great-great-great grandfather on her mother’s side was one of the American slaves who was freed in 1865. Whoever doubted the ability of the House of Windsor, with its own invented name, to reinvent itself? Megan Markle shows every sign of being caring, hard-working and intelligent — “all useful ingredients,” says one trusted Windsor friend, “for members of our royal family.”

Prince Harry has learned much about his sweetheart, of course, in the same way that we all have — through television. As Rachel Zane, the paralegal assistant and would-be lawyer in the TV series “Suits,” Meghan Markle impressed as an actress, and also as a character determined to make her own way in the world, expecting no favors from the wealth and status of her on-screen father Robert Zane (played by African-American Wendell Pierce).

Grace Kelly, the last actress to marry into high-profile royalty, was light, charming and beautiful, but her “High Society” screen profile was of a mischievous fashion plate. Meghan stands for sterner stuff — can there be such a thing as a self-made princess? The essence of Rachel Zane is her determination to move ahead on her own terms without fear or favor — and Meghan herself has identical ambitions.

She was a philanthropist long before she met Harry, travelling to Rwanda to work on a clean-water project, and is now developing future plans, it is reported, to set up her own foundation helping vulnerable young women around the world.

“I’ve never wanted to be a lady who lunches,” she told a UN women’s conference in 2015. “I’ve always wanted to be a woman who works.”

She is certainly heading for the right place now — look at the formidable work rate of her future aunt, Princess Anne, not to mention, of course, the unremitting schedule of our 91-year-old Queen.

The infamous treatment handed out to Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend by press and politicians in the 1950s derived from the concept of the whole royal family having to “set a good example.” Well, in contemporary terms, Harry and Meghan are now doing precisely that — with plans for much more. We hear that Meghan will become a partner inside the innovative and adventurous Royal Foundation created by William, Harry and Kate to support and develop creative charities like the Place2Be, with its emphasis on the mental health of the young. 

People frequently give credit to Diana, the “People’s Princess,” for the progressive and open instincts of her two enterprising and mold-breaking sons — and so they should. But let us not forget the contribution of their father, Prince Charles, and the hell that he went through to win the right to marry his own divorced partner, as a divorcee himself. Prince Harry and Meghan are now the beneficiaries of that battle.

Most of us may not think of Camilla Parker-Bowles as a “sweetheart” in the same romantic terms as we view the glamorous young Rachel Zane on our television screens. But in legal and dynastic terms, the two women’s situation is exactly parallel. Prince Charles fought for the freedom that his son will now enjoy to publicly acknowledge and marry the woman of his choice — and didn’t we give him a hard time in the process?

This all comes back to us, the general public in Britain and abroad, with all the prejudices and the stereotypes that we impose upon our public figureheads. But history moves on — and sometimes in a positive fashion. Who would have imagined, even in the first decade of the 21st century, that an heir to the throne (Prince William) could “shack up” with his girlfriend Kate for the best part of eight years before making a “decent woman” of her? When his grandmother came to the throne in 1952, that sort of behavior was called “living in sin.”

But his grandmother Elizabeth II — herself a deeply committed Christian, who is said to kneel beside her bedside every night in the style of her own mother — blessed this potentially controversial waiting time. So, all of this goes back to the open-mindedness and the tone set by Her Majesty. We know that Elizabeth II (tutored herself by a constitutional historian) took personal charge of Prince William’s lessons as a future king, inviting him up to Windsor when he was a teenager to study the confidential government papers in her “red boxes” and instructing him in the topmost protocols of the monarchy.

On Monday, we learned how the key event triggering the engagement announcement was the visit that Meghan and Harry paid to the Palace a few weeks back to take tea with the Queen, who conferred her blessing on their match. Was Prince Philip there as well? He was certainly there in spirit, since the free-thinking modernity of our representative monarchy owes much to Philip’s no-nonsense impatience with formality and convention.

So now we can look forward to seeing Meghan with Harry at Sandringham this Christmas, taking her first public steps in her new life as a future princess. The omens seem promising, with the news that she is importing her two beloved rescue dogs, a beagle and a Labrador-shepherd, to Britain. The corgis have taken warmly to Meghan apparently, though they still growl at Harry, and it remains to be seen how they welcome Guy (beagle) and Bogart (Labrador-shepherd).

The Queen has made clear that she very much welcomes the broadening of the monarchy and the royal family that this new recruitment represents — but what about the rest of the country? Will Harry’s marriage to Meghan — the British monarchy’s Obama moment — prove a problem for the more prejudiced amongst the general public?

I trust not, but who knows? The actress has related how her great-great-great grandfather, the last slave on her mother’s side, decided to give himself a new surname following the emancipation of 1865, picking out the word “Wisdom.” Let us hope that Meghan and Harry’s happy news will inspire all of us with a generous measure of that wisdom this Christmas.

• Robert Lacey is the author of “The Crown — The Inside History” (Blink Publishing), companion volume to “The Crown” TV series, the second season of which will commence transmission on Netflix on Dec. 8.