Many of you have written about Princess Kate and other royal reaction, or non-reaction, during Prince Harry and Royal Meghan’s wedding. Like how they kept looking down, leafing through the order of service, instead of keeping their eyes on the altar. And whether or not that’s shade. And what it means, if anything, about the relationship between Kate and Meghan. One of the funniest emails I got was from someone who was like, I’ve long suspected that Kate had a thing for Harry and she couldn’t bear to see him marrying the love of his life. So is Kate like Susannah in Legends of the Fall to Prince Harry’s Tristan? Does that make Meghan Isabel Two?
It didn’t occur to me when I was watching that, apart from whatever expressions they were trying to suppress during Bishop Curry’s sermon, there was anything to the fact that Kate and the front row royals weren’t looking at the couple. It seemed totally on brand? Harry and Meghan, if you remember, as if you could forget, were all about each other during the ceremony. The way they greeted each other, gazed at each other, touched each other, that was intimacy on display. Which is not the royal way. And you know how it is with this family and with the British in general – they’re not exactly the most emotive culture. In fact, they’re practically allergic to it. I wonder if seeing Harry visibly moved, wiping away tears, and being in the presence of two people who were so clearly into each other in such a public way took them out of their comfort zone?
A friend of ours sent Duana and me a photo that of Prince Charles and Diana from their wedding.
Duana cracked up over how Diana is sitting in that shot. “Like a cowboy,” she said. Our other friend’s observation (I would name her but since this is snarky, she will remain anonymous for protection) was that Charles was too busy holding his sword to hold her hand. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. Probably there’s some kind of rule about what hand one must hold the sword in. But I brought this up because the difference between the respective vibes of the two weddings is illustrated in this image. In that sense, Harry’s the one who’s the outlier, at least in how unrestrained he can be with his feelings.
You remember that Love Shield that he launched in November 2016, when he criticised the British tabloids for their racist and sexist coverage of Meghan? Word out of the palace was that while, of course, Prince William was in full support of his brother defending his then-girlfriend, it was not necessarily The Way They Do Things.
So, moving on from however you choose you read into Kate’s expressions at the wedding, what’s more interesting is how the four of them will interact with each other now that Meghan has completed the square. Kate will be Queen. What is expected of both her and William is constancy – the collective over the individual, precedent over personality, duty over fun. How will the Cambridge stoicism meet the Sussex passion?
