Is Meghan okay? We haven’t heard from her in four days

According to the noted broadcaster Trevor Phillips, Meghan Markle, formerly Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Sussex, was surprised to learn that Black History Month in the UK began in 1987 and thus has quite a history of its own. 

But then, of course she would have to have thought first, or checked. If she had asked her husband, Prince Harry, he might have told her that Britain abolished slavery as long ago as 1833 and that the UK today has a better record on racial integration than the United States. 

How, though, would that have played into her narrative that she and Harry were shunned by the Royal Family and the Establishment and – let’s face it –everyone in Britain who isn’t black? Why did she and the Prince leave Britain for a $12 million mega-mansion in Santa Barbara? Was it because she was stifled by royal flummery and expectations that she could never hope to fulfill? Was it because she wanted, desperately, to be the mixed-race Grace Kelly, but with a career? No, it seems it was because the UK had shunned her and her race, and her baby, and were ready to hound her into an early grave, just as they had another awkward outsider, young Archie’s grandmother, the Princess of Wales. 

The more prosaic truth is that Markle has lost her sparkle. When she opens her extensive mouth these days, as if fronting a toothpaste commercial, we tend to yawn or look away. We liked her in the long-running legal drama Suits, or at least we did if we subscribed to Amazon Prime. But whatever street cred she had when she first showed up as Harry’s latest squeeze, has long since been lost. 

And not just in Britain. In America, too, doors are shutting that were once thrown wide. They got an Netflix TV deal recently. Will anyone watch? Sussex Royal is like a TV drama that was piloted with huge fanfare, only to be cancelled half-way through Season One. The public on both sides of the Atlantic have demonstrated that they have more important things to worry about these days than the “relevance” of a gilded couple who seem to spend all their time telling us that we should spend all our time thinking about them.