This article was published in 2020 on Vanity Fair and we propose it again today to retrace the changes of which Vanity has been the protagonist for the last 20 years. Here are all the articles we are republishing.
“Never let where you come from decide where you can get to”. I like to imagine that Meghan Markle heard this phrase from her mother as many times as I heard it from mine, and with the same excellent intentions. AND a challenge to the presumed determinism of destinyor, especially true in the United States, where – despite the fable of the American dream – it is often your zip code that determines who you will be in life. Five numbers, a place and a census: all things you haven’t decided, yet that’s where the ascent or descent you will make starts.
Meghan Markle grew up in a place called View Park-Windsor Hills, something like “Hills overlooking Windsor Park”, and many years later those who believe in destiny already had enough material to say that the place where she came from end really decided what she arrived at. High up, it would seem. Your Royal Highness Meghan, wife of Harry Mountbatten-Windsor and member of the English royal family. This was Meghan until last week. But not anymore.
The sensational announcement of the Dukes of Sussex renouncing their royal status it transformed the bourgeois princess into Meghan the witch and Meghan the bitch, the manipulator with the innocent face who plagiarizes the fragile Harry to take him away from his people and take him overseas. Yet at first she had given hope to many lovers of the monarchy precisely because she came from the middle class. A few years ago a local prince explained to me that the bourgeois are often considered a guarantee in aristocratic contexts, because they aspire to rise socially and there is no quicker way to become what you want than to behave slavishly as if you already were. For this reason, those who come from that step are generally willing to reproduce the rituals of the higher classes, to the point of putting on all their forms like a glove in order to appropriate the substance.
With the same wealth, only antique dealers now know the difference between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. The first goes into the shop to have items valued that she will sell to keep herself alive; the second will open the door to buy them, under the illusion of acquiring a past with them. It seemed to me that the prince’s explanation worked in general, but as long as we don’t forget that the aspiration to formality of the bourgeoisie is like a scabbard that hides an always sharp blade, because the bourgeois class still remains the class that sooner or later makes revolutions. Meghan must have tried as long as she could to be the velvet scabbard, but the blade finally came out and what she is cutting off, as in all revolutions, is someone’s head.
It’s mostly simple people who hate her now, those that had initially been reflected in her, also encouraged by the propaganda of the Windsor house, full of hints at how democratic the monarchy had proven to be by marrying off her younger son to the divorced, Creole and foreign American. What openness, what concession to crossbreeding, what modernity! However, all that flexibility came at the cost of irreversibility: one cannot redeem oneself from a destiny that everyone considers wonderful. When you get to the top of the fairy tale you can only freeze in an eternal “happily ever after”, because no one would forgive you for trying to escape, but least of all the little girls who spent their childhood playing with Barbie princess of dreams . Meghan has the face of someone who played with Wonder Woman, not Barbie. She wanted to be an actress, not a princess, and unlike many who just dream about it, she actually achieved it as an actress. It’s easy for me to imagine her in socks in the afternoons after school watching American college films for hours or romantic ones where the heir to the throne rebels against conventions and escapes towards real life with normal friends. Watching those films from a state like America, where the monarchy doesn’t even exist in memories, it’s easy to ignore the fact that avoiding court duties only becomes literature if you were actually born into a royal house.
The princess of rebellious blood inspires sympathy, the free spirit of the daredevil prince makes the heart beat and the restraints are beautiful toys to break, but only for those who received them as a gift on their first birthday. For born princes, occasionally shirking the obligations of rank does not cause them to lose their position. If, however, that state is an acquired fortune, who will not say that it is ungrateful to refuse it? In a world where you are just the middle class girl who went to high school in the provinces (seen from Buckingham Palace, that’s still the States) and who at most could hope to marry a producer, giving up the royal tiara is an insult to the millions of girls you grow old waiting for a prince charming who never arrived.
I, who didn’t believe in Prince Charming even for a day, am rooting with all my heart for this crazy bourgeois capable of giving perhaps the last thrill of the unexpected to the too composed old age of Elizabeth II. The lucky one in the end is Harry, who unlike his brother was able to fall in love with a woman who learned Diana’s lesson and didn’t wait for the breaking point – to be worn down by psychotropic drugs, betrayals and scandals – to take her freedom to be herself together with him. Even elsewhere, why not, so as not to let the place where you come from decide where you can get. If Meghan’s mother was right about her, then it makes sense that the hills overlooking Windsor Park didn’t win out over the horizons of the girl who grew up facing the ocean. The price of a golden freedom, however, is no less expensive than that of a golden slavery: if Meghan wants a fairy tale she will have to write it herselfbecause in the books even for the sad princess there is a legend, but for the bitchy princess there isn’t even a word. The difficult part begins now, with the ceremony brokenbecause whether you are a princess or an actress, true freedom is not getting the role, but deciding the story.
Source: Vanity Fair

I’m Susan Karen, a professional writer and editor at World Stock Market. I specialize in Entertainment news, writing stories that keep readers informed on all the latest developments in the industry. With over five years of experience in creating engaging content and copywriting for various media outlets, I have grown to become an invaluable asset to any team.