Last week, after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced their engagement, a photo of Meghan and a friend, taken when they were teen tourists in England, outside Buckingham Palace, was published by the Daily Mail. This weekend, that same friend, Ninaki Priddy, made available over 50 photos taken during the course of their friendship (30 years) and those too appeared in the Daily Mail. I’m going to assume that the Daily Mail did not break into Meghan or Ninaki’s home and steal the photographs.
Earlier this week, on Monday, an 8 minute home video of Meghan, shot by Ninaki, was posted at the UK Sun. She’s just about to head to college. She’s driving around LA, excited about what’s ahead. So she would have been about 18 years old. At one point, for like 10 seconds, her dad comes up and she says that they’re not really getting along right now. Because what 18 year old gets along with their parents all of the time?
Still, this ended up being the front page of the paper to go with the story:
Meghan Markle will marry Prince Harry. So she’s a person of intense interest right now, especially to the British public. The pretext here, then, is that everyone just wants to know more about her. But there’s a subtext too, isn’t there? The subtext is…
Is she good enough for him?
That subtext has been a problem from the very beginning, when it was first revealed that Meghan and Harry were dating. All those headlines about her being “straight outta Compton”, all that coded language about the fact that she’s biracial, it was not just about finding more about her, it was about asking whether or not she was suitable – and basing her suitability on race and, now, class. Is she from a “good” family? What’s the definition of a “good” family? All families, rich or poor, titled or not, have their sh-t. Molesters exist in rich families. Dukes and duchesses have been racists. Billionaires can be abusers.
But this is what certain segments of the British media have been leaning into. And of course they have a willing participant in someone who knew Meghan Markle very, very well in her previous life. When I wrote about Ninaki Priddy a couple of days ago, I wondered if she was sending Meghan an “or else” message and holding back more bombs. Then this video came out. And it’s relatively innocuous. It can’t be the only video though, right? Are they as innocent as this one? What will she do with the rest of them?
Meghan Markle has a friend problem. What is the friend’s end game?
