This Big Event of Prince Harry, Kate Middleton, and Prince William’s May Have Given Meghan Markle a False Impression of Royal Life — Commentator
A commentator says Heads Together, Prince Harry, Prince William, and Kate Middleton‘s 2016 mental health awareness campaign likely contributed to Meghan Markle‘s “wrong” idea about life in the royal family. How Heads Together didn’t accurately reflect the “mundane reality” of royal life. Plus, what the Duchess of Sussex later had to say about the campaign.
Harry talked about his own mental health during 2016’s Heads Together awareness campaign
Today, Harry opening up about his mental health is nothing new. In 2016, however, the topic hadn’t really been discussed by British royals, especially not their personal experiences.
Then, the now-Prince and Princess of Wales teamed up with the Duke of Sussex for Heads Together, and things changed. Harry, along with his brother and sister-in-law, talked about their mental health while promoting the campaign, which launched in May 2016. Most notably, Harry touched on the state of his mental health in the aftermath of his mother Princess Diana’s death.
“He acknowledged getting therapy publicly for the first time; he talked about his struggle working as a royal,” royal correspondent Jack Royston said on Newsweek’s “The Royal Report” podcast.
“Doing these events where he has to meet people, his unresolved anger, sometimes feeling like he wanted to punch someone. He said he took up boxing because that seemed to help. And this was all in the days when royals just didn’t really do this kind of thing.”
“So nowadays, we’re obviously quite used to Harry absolutely pouring his heart out,” the podcast host continued. “But this was unheard of at the time. And so he was on all the front pages, and it was massive.”
Harry and Meghan had their first date in London, England, on July 3, 2016, after Heads Together had launched.
Heads Together didn’t reflect the ‘mundane reality’ of royal life, likely gave Meghan the ‘wrong’ idea
Royston continued, saying Heads Together could be partly why Meghan entered royal life with an inaccurate description of the day-to-day.
“It was quite interesting,” he said. “Because Meghan — being kind of outside the fold but on her way in — would have witnessed this whole thing happening from afar. And I always actually thought that this was probably part of how Meghan wound up getting the wrong end of the stick about what being a royal working royal is actually like.”
“Because one of the first things she saw in the earliest days of her relationship with Harry,” he explained, “was this incredibly high-profile, very impactful campaign.”
“In reality, [Heads Together was] quite a long way away from the mundane reality of unveiling plaques and cutting ribbons. Which is another aspect of what the royals sometimes do.”
Meghan recalled seeing the Heads Together campaign at the Royal Foundation forum alongside William, Harry, and Kate in February 2018. She told the audience the amount of “news coverage” it received “was very impressive to watch from afar.”
There was never a ‘greater divide’ between expectations and reality of royal life than with Meghan
Tom Quinn discussed Meghan’s expectations of royal life in his 2023 book, Gilded Youth. The author quoted a Kensington Palace staffer who recalled how Meghan’s expectation was so far from reality.
“I don’t think in the whole of history there was ever a greater divide between what someone expected when they became a member of the royal family and what they discovered it was really like,” they said.
Meghan “suddenly found herself in an institution she found she couldn’t influence and that assigns roles to people that do not change,” the staffer added. Additionally, the royal family’s “pecking order,” along with “palace protocol,” left her “shocked.”
But, above all, the loss of independence in royal life bothered Meghan. “Most of all, she hated the fact that she had to do what she was told and go where she was told in the endless, and to a large extent, pointless royal round.”
