The unremarkable Meghan Markle

Two days after a May 24 elementary school shooting left nineteen children and two teachers dead and another seventeen injured, the wife of Britain’s Prince Harry made an unannounced visit with her camera crew to the Texas town of Uvalde.

Vanity Fair said, “She was spotted placing a bouquet of white flowers near a makeshift memorial,” not bothering to rewrite the press copy. Was spotted? In real time during the outing, aggressive publicists at Archewell were shopping and circulating copy and photos to media, getting instant pickup by Yahoo News, People, Elle, and other outlets worldwide.

“The forty-year-old Duchess of Sussex — wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a blue baseball cap — reached down with her head bowed,” articles said, one after another. “She also walked around the memorial, looking at the white crosses bearing the names of the victims of Tuesday’s carnage.”

Uninvited, Meghan Markle had hopped on a private plane in Santa Barbara “as a mother.” Flying with staff, bodyguard and camera crew to a private airfield near Uvalde, she was whisked into a black van, amply photographed and home before dark, job done, it’s a wrap. Was this some strange, sick, unspeakable parody of a royal visit? What the hell was it?

While any right-minded human being would steer away from such a ghastly charade, Meghan did not. Is she insane? Not exactly, although many of her least attractive qualities are tucked into the DSM-5.

With Meghan, there are too many fibs and fatuities to recount. “I grew up with that farm-to-table dining before it was sweeping the nation,” she says. “I do think there’s some value to really throwing yourself into food and embracing where it comes from.”

Remember the rescue chickens? “I just love rescuing,” Markle said, talking to Oprah Winfrey about basics and authenticity. They stood outside the chickens’ new home, cloyingly staged as Archie’s Chick Inn. At this emetic Oprah moment, any insightful person would say this phony is trolling us, click off the television set and walk out of the room. Meghan’s fans go in for this kind of dreck.

Remember biracial Althea Bernstein, the eighteen-year-old Madison, Wisconsin girl who improbably claimed “four classic Wisconsin frat boys” threw lighter fluid on her while stopped at a traffic light, and tried to set her afire? Major media tried to bury the obvious hoax, but Meghan had heard about Bernstein’s story. According to reports, she arranged a forty-minute call and the two “talked about the importance of self care and allowing herself to heal.” Her publicists triggered a brief media flurry on women’s and fashion sites to highlight Meghan’s racial consciousness — just before Bernstein’s full exposure.

But this faux pas was mere fanfare. As everyone knows, Meghan and Harry played the race card in March 2021 for Oprah. During the interview they professed that relentless racial hostility prompted their decision to leave the royal family.

Merchandizing Sussex in the US involves promises yet to be fulfilled: to provide exclusive Netflix content, Spotify podcasts and a four-book deal with Penguin Random House. The dollars are staggering. But Netflix has already canceled one venture, Spotify is waiting for product and the Harry memoir is delayed. The Archewell Foundation administered by a Beverly Hills sports and celebrity lawyer bespeaks 501c3 non-profit abuse for private ends.

After on-and-off drama before the Jubilee visit, the pair reportedly tried to secure photographs or film with the Queen and Prince William to use as part of the Netflix series they are filming. Palace officers worried they would share any photos with television networks. They never got the money shot. Royal choreography at the St. Paul’s Thanksgiving Service and elsewhere signaled cool distance and Harry’s secondary rank. Prince Harry and Meghan’s failure to land pictures, it is claimed, has dismayed Netflix executives. It might have led to their abrupt, early and rude departure from the Jubilee, again on a private jet.

From the age of twelve, Queen Elizabeth II as princess received tutoring in English history and British constitution from Eton’s venerable provost. She grew up respectful of the monarchy’s limits and demands. By all accounts reflective and kind, she spent down time in the countryside, horseback riding and walking her Pembroke Welsh corgis. (She has had thirty in her lifetime.)

By contrast Meghan is terminal LA bread and circuses. When she discovered how dull royal rounds and duties were, and that her silly causes were to be tabled, she yearned for the bright lights and the vapid glamor of SoCal, a place where she could flash dance and shine among sycophants.

Meghan has no clue about English constitutional history and the royal role therein. For her, it’s the celebrity A-list, the starring role, no more. Sovereign and state? Who knows, who cares. Her woke-lite, vegan today, climate change tomorrow nostrums — her dreamy Cinderella story with an equity angle — might enchant fans. She must have seemed dippy and crass to worldly London aristocrats.

British royals and peerage can be remarkably down to earth, even voluptuary in private (they hope) but manners, etiquette and codes of conduct in public are ironclad. Privacy and discretion are of paramount concern. Experienced, sympathetic advisers tried to school Meghan in how it’s done. They failed.

The English public resents Harry’s self-exile, an act thought to reveal a troubled soul overshadowed by his brother and sister-in-law. At Eton his academic performance was weak, and his behavior finally disruptive. The nation loved him nonetheless, as it did his late mother, Diana. Harry is an accomplished horseman and soldier. He is now widely seen as prey for a manipulative American adventuress, redolent of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII.

There are thirty dukes of England and more peers. Many sponsor civic projects and good works like Harry’s Invictus Games. Harry would be better off, some say, living the life of an English country gent in familiar social circumstances. Instead he is an alien in the land of trust funds and everything-has-a-price merchandisers, playing charity polo while his brazen wife parades for the cameras. He is overseeing a book with a ghostwriter on a $20 million advance, a project behind schedule. “Harry Under Pressure,” the tabloids say. “Mystery Behind Missing Memoir.”

Despite her pretensions, Meghan is a very limited threat to the constitutional order. She will make trouble. But the majority of the British public has turned against the pair. The good will overflowing at the 2018 wedding, forbearing in style, has vanished.

Meghan’s flacks talk of a future run for the Senate from California, or even the presidency. This is DSM-5-level fantasy. Good judgment and introspection are not the pair’s strong suit, it seems, but don’t they know? The caravan moves on, always. As their hollow selves grow tiresome, the brand will likely fade. The Netflix cancelation and their unsteadiness suggest more psychodrama to come. The Sussexes are not emotionally prepared for derision or pity — nor are they ready to go away unnoticed.