Meghan and Harry at one of their final public engagements as working members of the royal family. But her death brought on change in the UK, a real shift in expectations of privacy for the royals and what constitutes harassment from photographers. “Editors couldn’t get enough of her,” Ian Down, a former Daily Mirror picture editor, once told Time. Diana was one of the first modern celebrities, and the appetite for photos of the Princess was unyielding. No one can deny that Diana endured and Meghan continues to deal with unrelenting scrutiny from the media. But that argument flattens the incredibly complex, somewhat symbiotic relationship the royals have with the press, and how it has changed over the past few decades. "You just want to shake these tabloids and say, can’t you see history repeating itself?" the actress said. I lost my mother, and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces."Įmma Corrin, who plays Princess Diana in The Crown, said something similar in Town & Country's November cover story. I've seen what happens when someone I love is commoditized to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person.
Prince Harry has also been quick to draw conclusions between how Meghan has been depicted in the media, and what happened to his mother, even once writing, "My deepest fear is history repeating itself. It's highly unlikely that she would ever become Queen, and in a family where hierarchy is at its core, the import of that birth order is critical.Īnwar Hussein // Getty Images Treatment by the Press And, Meghan wasn't marrying the heir to the throne, but instead, a younger brother. That doesn't necessarily mean Meghan was prepared for royal life, but her eyes were open to the world in a way Diana's were not. In contrast, Meghan had built her own career by the time she even met Prince Harry she'd had previous relationships and while she wasn't necessarily a household name, she was familiar with being in the public eye, and had experience dealing with the press. A part-time nursery teacher with no university degree, Diana immediately went from a life of relative obscurity to being one of the most famous women in the world: the future Queen of the United Kingdom. To start, Diana was still a teenager when she accepted a proposal from Prince Charles, a man 12 years her senior whom she didn't know well at all. It's important to recognize the nuance in each of their situations. Stepping into the blinding royal spotlight (and then choosing to step out of it) can't be easy, no matter who you are, and there are certainly parallels between Meghan and Diana's stories (some of which are played up in this season of The Crown), but the two women shouldn't be conflated.
The fact that she was different was a benefit and a hope-but anyone who has followed the Sussexes' story knows Meghan's time in the royal family, like Diana's, has hardly been a fairytale. People who had never felt represented by the royals could relate to her for the first time and by association, the monarchy as a whole. Simply by joining the royal family, Meghan, a feminist, bi-racial American divorcée, would help to modernize the centuries-old institution. When Harry and Meghan announced their engagement in 2017, the media narrative sounded quite a bit the Queen's words in The Crown. Emma Corrin as Princess Diana in The Crown.
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