Meghan Markle and the Fantasy of American Royalty
We all wanted to be Meghan Markle. Until she told us we didn’t.
But we can still fantasize about royal life.
I admit that I was a skeptic at first. To me, Meghan Markle was Wallis Simpson 2.0, the American divorcee whose romantic entanglement with a member of the British royal family was going to lead to disaster. (That part was right.) She was “Not Kate,” and my imaginary version of HRH Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, was too perfect to be spoiled by a pale imitation. The media frenzy surrounding Meghan’s engagement to Prince Harry, their wedding, and her pregnancy with Archie all meant pushing my beloved fantasy princess off the front page and into the margins. I wasn’t having it.
But quickly my attitude changed. As an American, Meghan Markle lived out the Cinderella fantasy that so many young women idealize. Her story was hardly the rags to riches of Disney’s floor-washing Cinderella; she was estimated by some sources to be worth $5 million at the time of her engagement. She was an actor who traveled in elite circles with plenty of privilege. But she was also one of us: ordinary American women without noble titles and with a past that our culture forgets in five minutes because in American society vision is always toward the future. Plain, regular folks. And she was joining a 1,200-year-old institution, gaining if not power, then at least more privilege and more fame. The glamour of the formal events, the posh perfection that is every carefully stage-managed royal family event. And, for women around my age (which is around Harry’s), she was also publicly claiming someone many had drooled over since his mother’s funeral thrust him into the spotlight.
A few weeks ago, in her interview with Oprah, Meghan-turned-HRH-turned-duchess-now Meg openly talked about how difficult that picture perfect fantasy was, how trapped she felt. (We see some of this in The Crown season four when a young Diana is literally stuck inside Buckingham Palace alone all day, a situation Meghan said she’d also experienced.) She was candid about the effects the publicity and death threats had on her mental health, and in ninety minutes, she shattered every illusion we had about royal life.
But that doesn’t mean we have to quit fantasizing.
In popular culture, the British royal family occupies a lot of space. In fiction, stories of romance with royalty are incredibly popular. From Cinderella to a dozen Hallmark movies, the story is usually the same: a prince falls in love with an ordinary woman, and love ultimately triumphs over history and protocol. It’s a wonderful fantasy for folks stuck in a world with a shrinking middle class, where we know we’re not the 1% and most likely never will be. There’s something a little distasteful about the American elite. How, after all, did they get so wealthy while the rest of us suffer so much? But by contrast, it’s not the fault of the old moneyed European royals that they’re rich. After all, the pillaging and plundering happened long before their time, right? And in most of fictional royal stories, the princes are busy shirking their royal traditions and denouncing all that money. They’re rich and privileged, but they’re the good kind, they assure us. The kind who get it — like Meghan and Harry do.
My current book, The Queen Has a Cold, will be released everywhere on April 13, and it feels like a timely follow-up to The Interview. In many ways, my heroine Sam gets the fictionalized happy ending that Meghan didn’t. She falls in love with royalty, and she sees how toxic that world can be…but she and her royal lover are able to change the monarchy into something more socially progressive.
In most contemporary royal romance, it’s a tough balancing act between preserving the fantasy of royalty and acknowledging the reality that any wealth and power must come at a cost to us regular folks. Sometimes, the monarchy gets dismantled. In Hallmark’s Royal Hearts, the American who accedes to the throne forces the country to strip him of his crown in favor of democracy. This is less common, however. In most royal romances, the American drags the royal family kicking and screaming into the 21st century while preserving the tradition of things like patrilineal inheritance. In The Prince and Me, the fictional Danish queen tells the American girlfriend Paige (Julia Stiles) that she is the best thing to happen to their family because she has forced them to modernize.
As unlikely as that claim might be, what brings me back, time and again, to the joy of royal romance is the glitzy fantasy and our choice to overlook these kinds of realities. I don’t think romance readers are naive or neglectful. We know that giving up personal freedom for fortune and fame might be a terrible idea, and we recognize that “old money” was made on the backs of Black and indigenous people and people of color just as money as new money is made on the backs of all of us. It’s just that it looks so appealing. The balls (for there is always a royal ball at the end), the fancy dinners, the learning to curtsy and learning when and to whom and all that other etiquette — it’s just such fun pageantry.
Another major problem with royal romances is, of course, the outdated gender expectations. Many European monarchies have, in recent years, moved to a system of absolute primogeniture, in which the oldest child of any gender inherits the throne. (And aren’t we all lucky to have Crown Princess Victoria to swoon over?) But for centuries, the laws dictated primogeniture, in which inheritance only passed to male children, and only to women in the absence of men to inherit. Such a system assumed women were less worthy or capable of ruling.
Because the laws are dictated based on inheritance, it’s vital that royals have children — “an heir and a spare” — to maintain the line of succession. This assumes heterosexual reproduction resulting in the live births of biological children, and that’s becoming a less common way the rest of us organize our families. What about adopted children of infertile couples? Children born via surrogacy to two royal dads? Two royal moms with their child who is the product of sperm donation?
Finally, there’s the problem with titles. You’re either a prince or a princess, a king or queen. One of the things I set to explore in The Queen Has a Cold was how a 21st century monarchy would respond to an heir who defied this gender binary. Remy, the main character, is intersex and nonbinary, and they’re ready for their country to stop misgendering them as a princess.
These contemporary problems with royalty don’t have to spoil the fun of royal romances. On the contrary, they give us a set of interesting what-if questions that new, socially-minded stories can explore. There can still be glitz and glamour, but there’s also social critique. There’s tradition, but there’s also social progress. In our literature and movies about royalty, we can get all things Meghan Markle didn’t, and our fictionalized kingdoms can be all the things we want them to be.
