Opinion | Meghan Markle Is the Duchess the Royal Family Needs

We hear of dawn messages to staff, requests for heating in medieval chapels — did she ask why Windsor Castle was built so close to the airport, one wag reportedly asked — and a semi-transgressive attendance at a baby shower in New York City. She moved from Kensington to Berkshire, which was reported as a “schism” between Harry and his older brother, Prince William, potentially as deadly as the feud between Richard II and his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke, which led to Henry usurping the throne. The break is reportedly so bitter that there is talk of Meghan and Harry spending a few years in Botswana to regroup.

Then there is the role that only a self-made actress would have the daring to invent for herself: feminist progressive duchess who writes inspirational mantras on bananas for sex workers and hugs — hugs! — well-wishers across metal barriers thick with metaphor.

And now, feminist progressive duchess, and mom. The new royal baby will be raised a feminist, as well as being the first royal to be skilled in yoga. The nursery at Frogmore cottage is reportedly, outrageously, “gender neutral.” And the couple will not have a Norland nanny, traditional choice of the British aristocracy, who dresses like a depressed Mary Poppins. They are looking for an American nanny, showing that the duchess’s “heart is still very much in her homeland of the U.S.,” The Daily Mail lamented.

And yet, Meghan is not a radical. She is a monarchist. Her feminism has nothing to say about solidarity. It cannot. It is the feminism of the 1 percent, a unique woman with great power. It is Elizabeth II’s feminism — hell, it is Elizabeth I’s feminism. Under these criteria, Harry is a feminist too for marrying her, which surely came as a great surprise to him.

As to quasi-progressive credentials, the couple is well matched. Harry is a hugger and a moonlight dancer whose public utterances, though likely heartfelt, are like ripples on a pond. Together they talk about a mental health crisis but not its causes; about environmental catastrophe but not its causes; about the Grenfell Tower fire but not its causes. There is nothing on austerity, inequality or poverty. He wore a garland of flowers to announce scholarships to study climate change. She wrote a foreword to a cookbook from the Grenfell Tower community kitchen.

So you see, the duchess’s critics have nothing to fear. In the 1970s Queen Elizabeth II was enticed to greet crowds by saying “hello.” Previously she had ignored them. In 2019, hugging and other acts are welcome and even necessary as what is considered good manners changes. Meghan’s style may be different from that of other members of the royal family, but she is still a monarchist.

Of us and yet above us; exalted and common. People thrill to the knowledge that Elizabeth II uses Tupperware and a two-bar electric fire in her palace, presumably while wearing the Imperial State Crown and National Health Service spectacles. Meghan’s status as a feminist who supported women’s suffrage in New Zealand a mere 125 years after it appeared is similarly disarming. And the enchantment grows until even I am fascinated by a woman who inspires the headline “Meghan Markle’s Inspirational Banana Messages Slammed as Offensive by Sex Worker,” and I am a republican.