You’ve got to hand it to the Duchess of Sussex. On Wednesday night, having graciously consented to attend a “Salute to Freedom” gala in New York intended to mark US Veterans Day, she did her best not to upstage the assembled servicemen and women – a number of whom were still suffering from wounds sustained in battle – by in any way standing out from the crowd.
Except, wait … let me start that again.
With the Duke in tow, the Duchess turned up for the occasion wearing (and I am indebted to the Mail Online for this information) in a “show-stopping” red gown by Carolina Herrera featuring a deep neckline and pleated skirt with thigh-high split. A pair of matching £700 slingback heels by Giuseppe Zanotti, “embellished” with crystal buckles, completed her ensemble. Among the former actress’s accessories were earrings by Maison Birk costed at just under £10,000, a £5,000 gold Cartier “love bracelet” … oh, and a poppy.
Liz Hurley, eat your heart out.
As Marine sergeants these days are no doubt wont to say as they order their female recruits over the top, “You go, girl!” – though in the case of the Duchess, “over the top” was always understood.
It would be nice to think that at midnight, as she scurried away, with the paparazzi at her Zanotti heels, her waiting limousine turned into a pumpkin. Yet somehow I doubt it.
Meghan Markle loves being a Duchess. It is the role she was born to play. When, one day, back in 2016, her Prince did come, in the shape of the sixth in line to the throne of the United Kingdom, it was surely a dream come true. Now she really could dress the part.
But as the wounded veterans looked on in shock and awe, some small part of the Duchess’s brain must have remained focused on events in London earlier in the week in which she fell foul of the Appeal Court during Season 2, episode 2 of her long-running feud with Associated Newspapers, publishers of the very same Mail Online that would so fulsomely describe – and cost – each item of her sumptuous gala gown.
The whole wearisome business is a legal nightmare that began with a letter the soon-to-be Duchess wrote to her American father, from whom she had been estranged for some years, in the lead-up to her wedding to Prince Harry. I think it would be reasonable to say that she was letting him know that he was not forgiven and his status in the new order of things would be not unlike that of Falstaff in the days following Prince Hal’s elevation to the throne as Henry V: “Fall to thy prayers, old man. I know thee not.”
But I could be wrong.
The Mail on Sunday’s publication of the letter quicky went viral, causing the Duchess well-publicised distress. However, when it emerged this week in court that as long ago as August 2018, six months prior to the publication of her letter to her father by the Mail on Sunday, she had discussed its form and content with her then press officer, Jason Knauf, who subsequently briefed the authors of Finding Freedom, an authorised biography of the royal couple, published in 2020, her case began, arguably, to unravel.
Three emails, written to Knauf, stand out.
In the first, she writes: “Obviously everything I have drafted is with the understanding that it could be leaked so I have been meticulous in my word choice but please do let me know if anything stands out for you as a liability”.
The second email is in reference to her father: “Given I’ve only ever called him daddy it may make sense to open [the letter] as such (despite him being less than paternal), and in the unfortunate event that it leaked it would pull at the heartstrings.”
Finally – and crucially given the Mail’s contention that she always intended the letter to be leaked – she confided: “(I) toiled over every detail which could be manipulated….And if he [her father] leaks it then that’s on his conscious [sic] but at least the world will know the truth. Words I could never voice publicly.”
In a witness statement, the Duchess apologised to the court. She had, she said, forgotten about these emails – much, we were left to surmise, as it might have slipped mind to put the cat out or cancel the milk. Collapse, some might say, of stout party.
The case, as they say, continues and judgement has yet to be passed. But will she get over it? Will she be able to resume her and her husband’s life as the Duke and Duchess of Santa Barbara, living down the road from her pal Oprah Winfrey, the Queen of Hollywood? More to the point, does any of this matter anymore? Does anyone care?
Those who have wasted time and sympathy on the most farcical and error-strewn of royal couples since, well, the Prince and Princess of Wales or Prince Andrew and the Duchess of York, could be forgiven for feeling that that enough is enough and that – as Keir Starmer said this week of the Prime Minister – the joke isn’t funny anymore.
But they would be wrong. For who could not laugh in response to the comic genius of a woman who opens her cold-calls to Republican senators in Washington, seeking to persuade them to soften their position on family leave, with the words, “This is Meghan, Duchess of Sussex”? At least Count Basie, Earl Hines and Duke Ellington – to say nothing of King Oliver – had talent.