Meghan Markle Believes Her Americanness Caused Her Problems in the Royal Family
She thinks she was too involved to fit in.
The Royal Family comes with a whole host of traditions that can seem oddly formal even to everyday British people, let alone to the rest of the world.
So when Meghan Markle, an American actress, married into the family, it wasn't without conflict.
In a new interview with The Cut, the Duchess of Sussex expanded on what we already knew: that the transition from Hollywood to Holyrood (funny joke) was far from easy. And for her, it was due in large part to her sheer Americanness.
"By her own analysis, her problems stemmed from her being an American, not necessarily a Black American, she explains," the interviewer wrote. "Her desire to ask lots of questions and to never be involved with something she couldn’t totally have her hands on seemed to violate an unspoken social norm."
The duchess admitted that she and her husband took on any and every international royal tour they could in order to not spend too much time in the U.K., where they were consistently hounded by the press.
"Anything to just … because just by existing, we were upsetting the dynamic of the hierarchy. So we go, 'Okay, fine, let’s get out of here. Happy to,'" she said.
She also added that their relatively conservative demands weren't accommodated by the Firm, even though other royals were allowed to do much more as they pleased. "That, for whatever reason, is not something that we were allowed to do, even though several other members of the family do that exact thing," the duchess said.
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The writer, Allison P. Davis, then advanced a possible explanation for why Markle might have been treated so differently to other royals, which is that she had her own life, her own career, her own success before her marriage. "That specific type of very American ambition just isn’t really compatible with being a princess," Davis hypothesized.
So, overall, the duchess is much more free to be herself within her new life in Montecito, and it seems like it was the right decision for her own wellbeing and that of her family.
Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.