What Meghan Markle, Princess Diana, and Wallis Simpson have in common
Many points of history converged, as if to take their turns repeating themselves, for two hours on March 7 when—to release pent-up emotions? To air grievances? To exact revenge? To titillate an audience of millions? To secure their place in the public eye after having stepped down from their royal duties? Who knows?—Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, with Prince Harry on her side, spoke to Oprah Winfrey in a CBS exclusive about life at Buckingham Palace.
Suicidal, a loaded word, both in its implicit meaning and in the way that word is wielded now, in this time when mental health struggles, in both men and women, in both the young and the old, are the new damsel in distress, the worthiest of attention and sympathy and rescuing, is the word that the international press picked up the most from the 120-minute interview. Uncannily enough, the word didn’t exactly come from Meghan’s mouth. You could say Oprah put it there, with questions like “Were you thinking of self-harm and having suicidal thoughts at some stage?” and “…that you don’t want to be alive anymore?” to which, to the first question, Meghan replied, “I could not have felt lonelier,” and, to the second, a curt “Yeah” that, of course, spoke volumes.
And it spoke volumes because in that same bombshell interview watched by over 49 million people (and counting) around the world hovered two women of the same fate, inserting themselves between the lines, appending their memories into the pauses, filling up the awkward silences with their own tales of anguish—Princess Diana and Wallis Simpson.
If angels and demons existed, they might have been right there, one on the right of Meghan and the other on her left, whispering in her ear, egging her on, supplying her with their sides of the story that wasn’t any different from her own, or hoping, having been silenced by time and their sad deaths, to provide her with more ammunition through the secrets that, without a doubt, they had carried with them to their graves.
Wallis sat there with Meghan, sometimes taking over, alive again in the $4,700 Armani midi wrap dress, black save for a patch of Buddhist-themed white lotuses embroidered on the right side, reminiscent of the black dress completely covered in white florals that the Duchess of Windsor wore in an immortal portrait published in 1936.
As she did, back when she was the darling of the world, everybody’s princess, Princess Diana once again dazzled in the Cartier diamond tennis bracelet, once her own, that its new owner, the daughter-in-law she had never met, wore to the tell-all (almost) she and her husband shared with Oprah in the garden of their Montecito home in California.
You won’t love me when you see the wreck England has made me.
—Wallis Simpson
But Princess Diana came back to life more from the struggles that Meghan intimated, that sense of being trapped, that feeling of being alone, the persecution inflicted on her by unnamed people or people whose names she would not give because “I think that would be very damaging to them,” who put limits to what she could do.
It was all “unsurvivable.” But again that word was not from Meghan’s mouth. It was from Oprah, who to be fair only spoke of the truth. Did Diana survive the palace? No. Did Wallis survive the palace? No, she never even made it there. Did Meghan survive the palace? No, well, she left. And yet Queen Elizabeth has survived it for 65 years and counting, in turn incarcerating her son, her heir apparent, Prince Charles, to a lifetime of being a king-in-waiting, the would-be king who might never be. Woe to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who may never be queen consort.
Ah, loneliness. Is it the price to pay to be king or queen of the world—or prince or princess or duke or duchess or count or countess? I believe it is the price to pay to be human at all. But it is a price no one seems to be willing to pay for any more now that royalty is almost an anachronism, a throwback to times long gone, the stuff of a Netflix drama, nice to watch unless it were your life any of those larger-than-life characters is patterned after, like the chain-smoking Princess Margaret, the Countess of Snowdon, whom an elderly palace courtier quoted as having sighed, “Thank God the other one was born first” when she was lectured on royal behavior after having been caught cartwheeling down a Buckingham corridor.
Yet, if biographies were to be believed, Princess Margaret was lonely too. It was a lonely woman who rudely told Grace Kelly before she became Princess Grace of Monaco, “You don’t look like a movie star,” or Twiggy, “How unfortunate!” when, after ignoring her for most of the night at a dinner party, she asked for her name, to which the 1960s supermodel replied, “Lesley, Ma’am, but my friends call me Twiggy.” It was a lonely woman, bitter and envious and rude, whose reaction to the huge Krupp diamond Richard Burton presented Elizabeth Taylor with was “…the most vulgar thing I’ve ever seen.” Princess Margaret was forever looking for love, only to find heartache after heartache, especially after she was made to forego marrying the love of her life. She was the royal party girl nobody wanted at their parties, the fun-loving girl, who once declared “Disobedience gives me joy,” who died in the arms of loneliness, alone. But don’t we all die alone? Some say even the most tragic figures have as much fun as everybody else.
Royalty has come a long way from the time of Prince Margaret, the first ever divorce in the royal family for 400 years, even as after her Wallis Simpson was vilified for having a place in the life of Prince Edward despite being twice-divorced, not to mention non-British, non-Anglican, and non-royal. But, well, now we have the Duchess of Sussex, also non-British, also non-royal, raised a Christian, but chose to be baptized with holy water from the Jordan River and confirmed “out of respect for the Queen’s role as head of the Church of England,” and also a divorcee.
It’s not enough. Never enough. Nothing you do can make you happy permanently.
The public wanted a fairy princess to come and touch them and everything would turn to gold. Little did they realize that the individual is crucifying herself inside because she didn't think she was good enough.
—Princess Diana
Methinks it’s just Meghan, like the rest of us, having this sense that life isn’t anymore about playing the cards we’re dealt with. Empowerment, especially of the individual, is now the underlying theme of every self-help book, of every celebratory or cautionary tale, of every reality show, of parents telling their sons and daughters, “You can be anything you want, as long as you are happy,” of every song, from Madonna urging everybody to “Express Yourself” in 1989 to Bebe Rexha declaring, “I don’t need a hand to hold, even when the night is cold, I got that fire in my soul” in her collab “Me, Myself, & I” with rapper G-Eazy in 2015.
Oh, well, back in the day, everybody dreamed of becoming a princess—or a king. Time has changed. The secret is out: We all get lonely where we are and so we are always looking for escape. Sometimes we can do something about it, like yoga or positive thinking or sessions with a shrink or telling yourself over and over that “this too shall pass, this too shall pass” or an exposé care of Oprah. Sometimes there is nothing we can do. Often, there is nothing we can do, except our best, but even our very best is no formula to success, never enough.
Ask Wallis.
Ask Diana.
Ask Meghan now.