Keep smiling, Meghan

This article is published in Vanity Fair number 32-33 on newsstands until August 17, 2021

Cara Meghan,
as they say in those work emails that you stubbornly continue to want to read, despite the fact that fate has offered you a very valid alternative, I hope this one finds you well. I am writing so that you receive my esteem, my affection and my best wishes for a happy birthday: this year there are forty, and I know how it feels.

Benjamin Franklin said that «At twenty the will reigns; at thirty, wit; and forty, the judgment ”and, if I may say, you have been recognized too often, and not without malice, that you have the first two, while many still harbor doubts about the third.

Strong-willed on the verge of arrogance, so anarchic and courageous as to border on premeditated contempt of the Crown, of an irresistible charisma for any adult male endowed with sense and self-esteem (but only if that is not the queen’s personal assistant by trade), in short, I understand that for many you are a mysterious animal who has not well understood what trouble she got out, after all the only one who had accustomed us in those parts to keep our heads up, we know what happened to her.
I saw that you are on vacation with Harry and the children in California and that you are planning to produce an animated series for Netflix with an “Extraordinary Women in History” theme, and before I forget, say goodbye to your friend Priyanka Chopra, who apparently he would have completely ignored Kate and William’s entry to Wimbledon, explain to her that in such situations a missed applause makes more noise than a standing ovation. In short, I read about you around, I’m happy to recognize the same fearless cazzimma in everything you do. But, here, Meghan, far be it from me to ruin your birthday and offend the royal person of the Duchess of Essex, but at forty, my friend, do we want to calm down? You have settled down, you have two children as beautiful as the sun that you have also wisely protected from the greatest humiliation of their childhood, that is Gigio Donnarumma, you are beautiful, you are healthy, if you have a problem you can go and vent at Oprah Winfrey, what else do you want ? Meghan, do you understand that at our age pitting karma can be frankly dangerous?

Look at Kate Middleton: for years we have seen in her eyes the effort of keeping up, enjoying the nobility but remaining friends with the people, the exhausting ballet between the Crown Jewels and the fast fashion polyester dress; do you want to end up like her, who no longer smiles? I like to think of you as a battering ram breaking through the right-thinking wall of Buckingham Palace head by head, but at forty, all I can wish for an intelligent woman is to go to sleep without a headache. We must thank you, of course, you risked and resisted, and we know that anyone who does it publicly now does it in the name and benefit of all, you have taken the liar, the ungrateful, the American even, the greatest offense to people who can’t even bear to be around Europe, and you have given up on the perfect little theater that they instill in us as children in the sentimental-existential wishlist: for the first time «They lived happily ever after» involves a move from the building and the abandonment of the WhatsApp chat «Royal family». Not all of them would have done it, and you can and must claim this. But that’s enough, you’ve done yours, enjoy your forties in peace, you’re free, you’re free, don’t cry anymore on live TV. And I don’t say it just for me, because we are friends and my heart breaks, I say it because for every story, whatever the plot, there is a crowd of girls watching. And if the dream is no longer falling asleep and waking up with a kiss and a kingdom (speak for yourself, I am dead tired and full of F24 to pay) now it is evidently claiming the sacrosanct right to live as you want, all, regardless of social belonging, starvation and princesses, all of us, all of us, all together.

Meghan, you gave us the illusion of a citizenship income of the heart, you are the only one who told the subjects that love is the same for everyone and we believed you. But now you have to tell us what happens in the story from the last page onwards. Does the prince without a kingdom know how to do the washing machine? Can you take care of children? How are things between you? Does this love that endured the media divorce from the most paparazzi family in the world stand up to isolation and lack of inheritance? Is there a life after the abandonment of privilege? I don’t want to put any more social pressure on you, I know that’s exactly what you escaped from, but I remind you that your husband at Carnival disguised himself as an SS guard and so maybe, just maybe, I’ll throw it there, they could forgive you a few small blows head even after the wedding, but no, you’re right, you go all the way, if you marry a cause you don’t look back. I just want to know it was worth it, that another world is possible, I want to be able to tell all the wannabe princess girls of the future that instead no, do as Aunt Meghan, that even if she ended up living incognito in Tor Pignattara she is fine and she doesn’t miss anything. And above all, as you will read on the birthday card I wrote you, no regrets but also no revenge.

No regrets, but no revenge: enough with the obsession of the dig, of the royal teasing, abandon the subtle fun of the constant provocation to the queen, it seems that every action is moved by the perverse taste of making her angry, of making the difference, of remembering that it is not she who has you fired, you’re the one who left. It may be true, my friend, but you are out of it, do not cry anymore, enjoy the puppets and that goodness of your husband and dedicate yourself to the life you have chosen, as a free citizen, as an adult woman. Also because Meghan, let me tell you, are little girl’s games, and you, and I, now have an age.