For Prince Harry and His Wife, Meghan, a Tricky Balancing Act

As the second son of Prince Charles, who has spent his whole life waiting to become king and is himself now a formidable 71, Harry has virtually no chance of ever becoming king himself. While Prince William, as the elder brother, has been tethered to the notion that he will succeed his father on the throne, Harry has had to find another path.

He served in the British Army for 10 years, did two tours in Afghanistan and founded the Invictus Games for injured and impaired members and veterans of the armed services.

Along the way, Harry developed a reputation as something of a bon vivant. His early girlfriends, at least the ones anyone knew about, were mostly young aristocratic women roughly from his own social circle. Meghan Markle, a divorced American actress with a white father and an African-American mother, represented a departure.

Sometimes it can be hard to tell if the British tabloids direct public opinion or reflect it. From the beginning, they had a hard time dealing with Meghan, writing articles about her prior marriage and divorce, and about her parents’ divorce and her half-siblings, and making veiled remarks that seemed just short of racist.

Making an unusually pointed statement while they were still dating, Prince Harry condemned the “wave of abuse and harassment” and the “racial undertones of comment pieces” that Meghan had been subjected to.

Their marriage, in 2018, seemed both modern and traditional, a meeting of past and present, America and Britain, Anglican and Episcopalian.

But after a honeymoon with the couple, the tabloids took a new approach of relentless criticism — of Meghan’s outfits, of her outspokenness, of her habit of jetting to America for such occasions as a star-studded baby shower, of her supposed desire to enjoy the trappings and riches of royalty without agreeing to take on the attendant responsibilities.