Meghan Markle was once seen as a very exciting addition to the royal family. She wasn’t from the world of royalty, and she wasn’t even from the U.K. When her engagement to Prince Harry was officially announced, it seemed as though she could be just the shakeup that the family needed.
Instead, Harry and Meghan have left the royal family, and decided to live a more independent life. That decision wasn’t always completely inevitable, but one expert thinks they know when it became almost predetermined.
For Ann Gripper, one of the hosts of “Pod Save the Queen,” she knew that Harry and Meghan were moving too fast when they went on their Australia and New Zealand tour in 2018.
“We have talked a bit about, maybe they should have eased themselves into royal life at the beginning, maybe it wouldn’t have become so overwhelming,” Gripper said. Daily Mirror royal editor Russell Myers agreed, suggesting that the intense schedule would have been daunting for even the most experienced couple.
“It was a relentless schedule,” Myers said. “And I get that it was their first tour and she wanted to hit the ground running, they were the hottest ticket in the world.[But] I’m at a loss to explain it, really, and why they found it [royal life] so hard. Maybe they did try to do too much. Maybe that is a lesson that they will take forward in their new life.”
Myers also suggested that the schedule may not have been the only issue the couple had with royal life.
“But I think it is, honestly, to do with the constraints that they felt they were both under,” Myers said. “Whether it will be any different in the private, corporate world, I don’t know. Only she will know, really, the straw that broke the camel’s back. She said she wasn’t being supported within the family.”
Myers pointed out that Prince William and Kate Middleton took things much slower, and Middleton only started to ramp up her public appearances in the last year.
“It’s a lifetime job, and you have to take the advice that is there for you,” Myers said. “And undoubtedly, they as a pair never did that, and it’s been to their detriment, unfortunately.”
Since they officially left the royal family, Harry and Meghan have spent most of their time in Canada. More recently, though, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where they have been living through the coronavirus pandemic and encouraging their followers to respect safe social distancing guidelines and look out for their own mental health.
