"With Love, Meghan" is the Ultimate CopyKate
After watching Meghan’s show, “With Love, Meghan,” I have a theory. My theory is pretty simple: Meghan is copying Kate’s lifestyle. As all my longtime readers know, I have always said that Harry and Meghan didn’t want to leave the royal fold. They thought they’d be able to strong-arm the Queen. They misjudged, and, as a result, their pride forced them to walk. It was never the plan to leave fully. Being royal is desperately important to both Harry and Meghan. Since then, I think that most everything Meghan does is run through the test: “what would a royal do?” In “With Love, Meghan,” Meghan is debuting the ultimate royal lifestyle—that of the country lifestyle of the Princess of Wales.
We know the lifestyle Meghan is presenting is not anything like the life she was raised in. Meghan explained in the course of the show that she was a latchkey kid who watched Jeopardy while she ate fast food on a tray. It also isn’t a lifestyle she pursued until very recently. She explains she started beekeeping a year ago and still is afraid to open the beebox (she has a beekeeper); she began canning when she and Harry bought their Montecito house, which has bunches of fruit bushes; she told her stylist friend that she “didn’t always cook like this,” although she watched cooking shows back in the day; and almost all the primary dishes Meghan makes on the show are things she is making for the first time or just learned recently. As to gardening, Meghan says Mr. Ben her science teacher taught her how to grow things and how to compost, but while she might have “retained” those lessons, there is no indication she put them into action until she moved back to California. She lived for two years in a country known for gardening, in a family obsessed with it, and nothing indicates she did any gardening.
In episode 2, Meghan prepares a children’s party. She explains how to create a balloon arch (doesn’t every parent do this for their child’s first birthday?), makes child-friendly tea sandwiches, and a rainbow fruit platter. She also creates little party bag favors for the children. You know that in the two years that Meghan was a royal, she attended birthday parties for the Wales (then Cambridge) children. We know she stayed at Anmer Hall over Christmas in 2017, and very plausibly visited at other times over the next several years. As I watched Meghan stuff party favor bags on her Netflix show and explain the ways to make a children’s party special—I felt like I was listening to her recite interviews of Carole Middleton explaining how her business Party Pieces was born. It all kind of clicked for me.
Meghan has seen this all in action before, and not just the party favor bags that made Carole millions—the beekeeping, the fruit preserving as gifts, the love for gardening, the joy of cooking for your family. She didn’t see it modeled as a child; it wasn’t part of her social set when she was a single girl in Toronto frequenting Soho House. She saw this whole lifestyle modeled when she got the complete, intimate view into the private lives of the royals, especially her chief rival, the Princess of Wales.
Kate is a documented beekeeper. She keeps bees at her country estate in Norfolk:
During a 2021 visit to the Natural History Museum’s Urban Nature Project, Kate brought her own honey for students to try.
In the 2016 documentary “Our Queen at Ninety,” the then-Duchess of Cambridge shyly explains to the camera that on her first Christmas as a royal, she struggled to decide what gift to give the Queen, and ultimately made her grandmother’s chutney recipe—a thoughtful homemade gift, made with love, you might say. Just this month, Kate told a group of youngsters at the Meadow Street Community Garden and Woodland that she would send them her plum jam recipe. Obviously, preserving and gifting preserves is something Kate has been doing in the country for many years.
Kate has a documented love of cooking. She is known to be a big fan of Mary Berry and a keen cook herself. From her days grocery shopping and cooking at home in her first cottage in Anglesey to baking with her children in the present, public statement’s from engagements over the last decade have reiterated that Kate loves to cook for her family—roast chicken is a family favorite, she loves spicy curries (and has to tone them down for her family), and the Waleses often make homemade pizza together.
Kate is a keen gardener. She has spoken about gardening with her children, and her passion for gardening is reflected in her charitable work, including her participation at the Chelsea Garden Show and incorporating gardening and outdoor time into her mental health work (Meghan explained the mental health benefits of getting out into nature to Nacho Figueras’s wife in one episode of “With Love, Meghan”).
I don’t have a problem with people seeing a beautiful lifestyle and the benefits of that lifestyle and choosing to live like that, too. Kate was raised in a loving and intact family with a rich family life. I am sure Meghan (and Harry) observed William and Kate’s happy homelife and admired it.
Still, when the lifestyle that is being modeled is that of the Princess of Wales, and when the person adopting it is Meghan Markle, and Meghan is presenting it to the world as her longstanding lifestyle, I find that interesting. It is especially interesting in light of my hypothesis that Meghan really does spend a lot of time feeling out every next move wondering, what would a royal do. Clearly, Meghan has decided she can live that royal lifestyle in Montecito, and she isn’t wrong! The only problem is trying to make it into a brand, when you are really just trying it all on for size.
Although I will write a post that addresses the substance of the show in a little more depth, I did not get the sense that Meghan is a passionate or super gifted homemaker. And that’s ok. Everyone has different strengths. And it’s great she is getting into gardening, and trying out beekeeping, and really embracing preserving. But maybe don’t launch an international brand and tv show representing a complete expertise in a lifestyle you are just starting to get into yourself.
In any event, I hope Kate is flattered!
Personally, I don’t see a narcissist, too many have thrown that word around and narcissists are much rarer than people think. I think you’ve actually hit the nail on the head, and I had the same thought today when watching the show and watching the episode with her friend Delfina. If you go back and watch that episode Meghan is always seconds behind her Argentine friend in speaking Spanish. A few times she even gets a look on her face that shows she doesn’t understand as much Spanish as she claims to.
When I saw that I was struck with what I think is the truth. Like the Wizard of Oz I saw behind the curtain, and what I saw was a little girl who grew up between two worlds. If you look back at pictures of her you see a little girl with African American hair which her mom left alone, and the skin of a pale white child. I see a little girl who didn’t fit into any box. As she herself has claimed.
I see a little girl who didn’t belong anywhere and because of that didn’t develop a sense of self. It’s called identity diffusion. It can happen when you don’t feel a deep connection as a child to the people around you and you feel different.
I think that’s what happened with Meghan. For the rest of her life that little girl chased after herself. Trying, even in her own words, to find a place to belong. She thought in acting that she had found that. She could be different characters and get paid to do it, but her acting skills weren’t enough to be a celebrated A-list actress (there is no shame in that, the majority of actors are not famous).
Instead, after years of work she was finally cast as Rachel Zane. In Rachel Zane she found connection. First, the shared name. Then, a director who was willing to mold the character to fit her background. If you watch Suits and look back at her life at the time you can clearly see not an actress creating a part, but a person crafting an identity based on a written character. She became Rachel Zane. It was Rachel Zane moving about in Canada, getting to know society people and becoming a foodie.
That was the person that Harry met. This smart, attractive, ball of energy who as she moved around in Canadian society realized that volunteer work was a way to expand her reach and flesh out her character. That was the person who Harry met. He didn’t meet Rachel Markle, he met and fell in love with Rachel Zane and now she has to be that person for the rest of her life.
We also understand from many accounts of people in her life that she was a fan of the royals, be it Diana or Catherine. Even she wrote a piece about “Princess Kate” in her blog. She was also a self-professed Anglophile. Can you imagine loving the royal family, wanting to believe in the magic of it and then you meet and marry one of them? Only the royal family are not warm in the way that Meghan expected. They were cold to Diana, The Princess of Wales and she was a member of the British Peerage! Imagine coming in as an American (I don’t think it had anything at all to do with being half black) and wanting to be welcomed into that family warmly and with open arms and then…being kept on the edge. We all know that there are rules and expectations. That there is a hierarchy in the role family. I am sure in her haste Meghan, searching for belonging didn’t really understand that.
Once again here she is in a place where she doesn’t belong. She’s not British. She’s a Duchess like Catherine but will never be a princess in name (who wants to be called Princess Henry?), she’s once again never going to be all in. So she tries to be Rachel Zane. She tries to be a go-getter, take charge, gutsy get up at 5 smart American with lots of ideas and grit. That falls flat. Rachel Zane was never going to fit into the House of Windsor.
And here we are. Out in the cold…once again. Never belonging, always on the outside of everything. On the outside of her real family, not one thing or another and on the outside of the royal family, not one thing or another. But because Harry loves her he blows up their world for her. They come to America and she decides that if she can’t be Princess Meghan she can be the American version of Catherine, Princess of Wales.
And really, who can blame her? Aren’t we all here because we love Catherine? She seems to be able to do everything. She can draw, she can take pictures, she can bake and cook and hike and be a Princess and do it all. Who wouldn’t want that?
What I see is a little girl just wanting a place to belong. A little girl playing dress up (in clothes far too old for her) trying to be Meryl Streep in It’s Complicated (a very California movie) crossed with Catherine, The Princess of Wales.
It’s a sad tale and I for one feel bad for her. I wish her peace. I hope she can somehow find herself for her sake, her husband’s and son’s sake but most of all for her daughter.
I think your analysis is again, spot on. Meghan has been jealous of Kate for years, and I believe she has been following her and fangirling over her since before she met Harry. I think she felt very hurt and disappointed that Kate wasn’t falling head over heels in love with her, and that made her bitter. But still, she wants to be like Kate and imitating her lifestyle. I do hope Kate sees it and laughs. Copying is the best form of flattery after all.