Prince Harry is set to wed Meghan Markle at the St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle on Saturday. Although it is going to be the biggest royal wedding of 2018 (It’s not the only royal wedding of the year as Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank are tying the knot in fall), not everyone is looking forward to the nuptials, the reason being that many royal watchers aren’t keen on the prince marrying Markle.
Many oppose the prince, who is sixth in line to the throne— He was fifth, up until recently when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge welcomed their third child Prince Louis— marrying Markle. One of the main reasons is because she is a divorcée. Markle was previously married to producer Trevor Engelson from 2011 to 2013. While divorce has become a fact of life in Britain, the Monarchy has been reluctant to come to terms with marital split— Queen Elizabeth II has been married to Prince Philip for 70-years. Additionally, royals follow the rules of the Church of England, and up until recently, 2002 to be exact, the remarriage of a divorced person if their former spouse was still alive was prohibited. But Prince Harry won’t be the first royal to marry a divorcée. King Edward VIII married American socialite Wallis Simpson in 1937 after her second divorce became final.
Much like Simpson, Markle is an American who comes from non-aristocratic roots, which naysayers are not happy about. Before meeting Prince Harry, the American actress played Rachel Zane in the drama series Suits. The daughter of a former lighting director and a social worker, Meghan, who grew up in California, studied international studies and theater at Northwestern University in Illinois before launching her acting career (and lifestyle blog The Tig, which she shut down shortly after her engagement to the prince). When she ties the knot to Prince Harry on Saturday, she will become the second American to marry into the British royal family in nearly 81 years. However, a recent report by Ancestry has revealed that the bride-to-be has links to royalty. Reportedly, Markle is a descendant of King Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, who was a second cousin to Meghan’s 12th great-grandmother.
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When it comes to family affairs, Markle does not come from a traditional, nuclear family. Meghan was born in 1981 to Thomas Markle, a former lighting director, and Doria Ragland. In a 2015 essay for Elle, Meghan revealed her parents met while on set. “It was the late ’70s when my parents met, my dad was a lighting director for a soap opera and my mom was a temp at the studio. I like to think he was drawn to her sweet eyes and her Afro, plus their shared love of antiques. Whatever it was, they married and had me,” she wrote. Her parents divorced when she was 6-years-old. Markle has two half-siblings from her father’s first marriage, with whom she has no relationship with. Neither were invited to the royal wedding, and her estranged half-brother Thomas Markle Jr. penned a letter to Prince Harry recently, warning him against marrying Meghan. The letter is said to have led to her father’s recent heart attack, which is why he won’t be present to walk his daughter down the aisle on Saturday as he will be undergoing heart surgery. Her mother, whom she has a very tight-knit relationship with, will be at the wedding.
Additionally, the engagement has been raising eyebrows because simply put, Meghan is a biracial woman. Her mother is African American; her father is white. In 2016, soon after the couple’s relationship became public, tabloids and newspapers began harassing the 33-year-old actress. An early Daily Mail headline read “Harry’s Girl Is (Almost) Straight Outta Compton”, while the Daily Star Online reported that Harry “could marry into gangster royalty — his new love is from a crime ridden Los Angeles neighborhood.” The Kensington Palace went on to condemn the media by issuing a statement stressing how the press had crossed the line with their racist and sexist attacks on Markle. “Some of this has been very public—the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and Web article comments,” read the statement. “Prince Harry is worried about Ms. Markle’s safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her. He knows commentators will say this is ‘the price she has to pay’ and that ‘this is all part of the game.’ He strongly disagrees. This is not a game—it is her life and his.”
But that didn’t stop commentators from condemning the couple. Some of Vogue Arabia’s readers also oppose the union, taking to our comments section to write things like “She will never be a princess,” and “Prince Harry must marry someone else.”
Despite what the naysayers have to say, we believe that true love conquers all. Congratulations to the couple, and stay tuned for our royal wedding coverage on Saturday.
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