In a gushing new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Meghan Markle wants to let everyone know how “authentic” she is, starting with the way she appeared to not wear any make-up while posing for the fashion magazine cover.
But of course, the wife of Prince Harry was probably wearing enough makeup to look glamorously au naturel so that her fans will praise her for being so brave. Meanwhile, that claim of authenticity gets challenged by the way Meghan and her P.R. team seem to have arranged a hagiographic profile that brushes by her many controversies, including the multiple staff-bullying allegations or that a Spotify executive famously called her and Harry “(expletive) grifters.” This profile certainly doesn’t mention journalist Tina Brown’s view that she has made “one terrible professional decision after another” in her ambition to become a media mogul and lifestyle influencer.
Another “terrible professional decision” may come from doing this interview, according to Tom Sykes, the Daily Beast’s royal expert. That’s because the profile reveals Meghan’s “astonishing self-importance” when it comes to trading on her connection to the British royal family by apparently insisting that she be referred to as the Duchess of Sussex in one key moment in the story, Sykes wrote in his Royalist newsletter. Sykes also expects that this interview could further inflame Prince William, who is reportedly keen on stripping Meghan and Harry of their royal titles when he becomes king.
The big reveal about Meghan comes near the end of the profile. Writer Kaitlyn Greenidge describes how the Los Angeles-born former TV actor apparently expects to be announced as the Duchess of Sussex during a visit to a friend’s New York City mansion, which she’s using for the interview.
“We’re in a grand brownstone on the Upper East Side that belongs to one of Meghan’s friends,” Greenidge writes. “When I enter, the house manager announces, ‘Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,’ even though we appear to be the only other two people in the house.”
With this anecdote, Meghan “has catastrophically misjudged” people’s reactions to her ongoing insistence on being called the Duchess of Sussex, especially in American settings, Sykes said.
“It is almost impossible to imagine a normal reader getting through this anecdote without exploding into hysterics at the sheer pretentiousness of it,” Sykes said. Over the years, royal watchers and critics of Meghan have pointed out that she only gained this title by marrying Harry and that she spent fewer than two years as a working member of the royal family.
Sykes joked that he “loves a trumpeter announcing his arrival in the kitchen as much as the next man.” He also wondered if the writer was indulging in some “pure, uncut snark” that slipped by her Bazaar editors or Meghan’s P.R. team. Some readers of the profile tended to agree, with one person responding to Bazaar’s X post about the interview: “The trolling is next level.”
Sykes also pointed out that, traditionally, such announcements are only made when a royal walks into a crowded room –not when they walk into a friend’s house — leading him to surmise that Meghan staged this “absurd scene” for the benefit of the journalist. “It feels like a desperate attempt to drill into the journalist that Meghan is to be referred to in the copy as the ‘Duchess of Sussex,’ not Meghan Markle from ‘Deal or No Deal.’”
Certainly, for now, Meghan can call herself Duchess of Sussex, or Meghan Sussex, as she famously explained to friend Mindy Kaling in one episode of her “With Love, Meghan” Netflix show. On X, one fan stirred debate by saying Meghan earned the right to use her duchess title “by virtue of the family she married into.” The fan also said: “Those titles mean a lot to her husband so by extension to her. And … most importantly, she makes those titles look good, and modern and cool.”
But others said that Meghan’s continued use of the title reveals “the hypocrite she is,” after she publicly criticized the royal family for being cruel and racist. They said Meghan is only using the title so she can monetize it. “Her title will shortly be revoked!” one person said. “Her title only means $$ to her.”
To Sykes, it’s “deeply uncool and painfully embarrassing” for Meghan to be so insistent on using her duchess title in America. He said that true British aristocrats “always used to know better than to flounce around waving titles” when visiting the United States, while Winston Churchill once wrote: “Titles count for nothing with Americans.”
Sykes expressed certainty that William will take away Meghan and Harry’s titles, if the couple continue to exploit them. When that happens, “it will be an even bigger story because Meghan has made such an enormous point of using them.” Sykes said.