Balmoral, the royal family’s Scottish holiday home, is the Queen’s favourite place. It’s where she’s unburdened by official duties for two months every summer, and where she walks on the moors with her dogs, rides on the 50,000 acre estate and drives around in her beloved Land Rover. For the other guests, there are picnics, home cinema evenings, games and bracing walks. It is a place to relax, recharge the batteries and reflect.
So it’s perhaps no surprise that, amid the unending stream of headlines driven by Meghan’s father Thomas, Prince Harry is said to be taking his new wife there this month for a break. Last week, Thomas gave yet another unprecedented interview, in which he spoke of hanging up on Harry during a row over his cooperation with the paparazzi and being ignored by Meghan. It led many to wonder if this is the biggest crisis to hit the royal family since Diana.
Many also wondered why Meghan and Harry are refusing to speak to Thomas to control it. The reason? “Both want to avoid direct contact with Thomas as they don’t trust him,” said a royal courtier. “Harry and Meghan are leading the strategy, and the other royals are bowing to them at the moment as they don’t want to muddle the thinking. Royal lawyers, who they have consulted about the best way to approach this, have advised caution. The couple are hoping that if they don’t say anything to him, there will be less for him to tell the press. They’re praying the situation exhausts itself.”
The subject will no doubt be in the air at Balmoral, where Meghan will come face to face with the Queen and other members of the family (every morning, the family sit together for breakfast, where pressing family matters are often discussed). But there will no hard feelings towards the new Duchess. Charles, in particular, has gone out of his way to embrace his daughter-in-law and make her feel welcome. The Queen will, of course, have sympathy for her grandson’s wife. After all, Meghan can hardly be held responsible for her father and half-sibling’s indiscretions. Nobody in the family blames her.
“Meghan has played by the rules at every turn, and has kept a close, very private circle since she met Harry,” said a source. “Despite her father talking about her, her private life is watertight: she has given very little away about who she is and keeps herself very much to herself. Her intention is to stick firmly to that strategy, and the other royals respect her for it.”
Thomas, pictured with a baby Meghan.
Many may wonder what the Queen will say to Meghan. Privately, she and Prince Charles are understood to be irritated by the ‘wishy-washy’ way aides paid to advise Harry and his wife have performed so far. But Her Majesty has never been one to interfere directly in private grief. She believes time is a great healer. The Prince of Wales, too, will always wait to offer advice until asked directly, particularly when it comes to his sons and their personal lives. If Harry or Meghan choose to ‘consult up’ and take the counsel of either the monarch or Charles, it will be for them to arrange.
Besides, Balmoral is no stranger to royal crises. It was over breakfast, after all, that in 1992, when Sarah Ferguson’s marriage to Prince Andrew was faltering, surreptitiously taken photographs were published of John Bryan, an American financial manager – apparently sucking on the toes of a topless Sarah in Southern France. (The Queen was not amused, and her private secretary told the Duchess that she might feel better if she left immediately for London.) Balmoral was also the backdrop for the royals as the tragedy of Diana, Princess of Wales’ death played out.
So for a few fleeting moments, when dancing the Eightsome Reel at the annual Ghillies Ball, Meghan may well forget her family squabbles. But many observers feel that, if she doesn’t want the now toxic relationship with her father to define her early royal career, she must take steps of a different kind to resolve it. And fast.
Via our sister site Grazia.
