Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had the ultimate wedding goals, here are the best moments.
USA TODAY
Now that they’re the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, what happens next for Prince Harry and the former Meghan Markle?
Well, the honeymoon, obviously, but don’t expect to hear any details about that, and anyway, it’s rude to pry. Not that the gossip tabloids will care. (And it won’t happen right away in any case; the couple have an engagement Tuesday in London with new father-in-law, Prince Charles.)
Nevertheless, once they return, where will they live, and what will their new jobs be in the royal firm? How long will it take for Duchess Meghan to become a British citizen, not to mention accustom herself to driving on the other side of the road? Will she be able to curb her more political opinions, in keeping with the royal rule of staying above politics?
And dare we hope to see more of this royal couple here in America as California-born Meghan returns to visit her friends and family?
“There are three legs of the stool for royals: Their official duties on behalf of the queen, their philanthropic activities and their family life,” says Sally Bedell Smith, the American royal biographer. “For Harry, family life has always been the missing leg of the stool. Now they will have that.”
Let’s take a look at what might be in store for the new royal star couple:
Meet the new “Fab Four”
That’s the new moniker for Will and Kate and Harry and Meghan, the leading members of their generation of young royals. Smith says William and Harry have been a team since childhood, unlike their father and his siblings.
“Prince Charles and his (three siblings) always worked in separate silos, as it were, so when Kate joined the family, they became a trio, and now they’ll be the Fab Four, as the tabloids call them,” Smith says. “They are going to do a lot of things together, in part because Will and Harry are in alignment on many things, mental health especially but also wildlife conservation.”
Now that they’re married, Meghan becomes a named member of the young royals’ charity foundation, under which they pursue a number of joint projects, such as advocating for children’s mental health services.
But they all have separate interests, too. One of Harry’s major projects is the Invictus Games, where he and Meghan appeared together in Toronto last year, their first “date” in public. He also works with veterans, with a clutch of youth programs in Britain, and with Sentebale, the African children’s charity he founded in 2006 with a pal, Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, to honor their late mothers and to help kids orphaned by AIDs.
“Kate has (charity) interests of her own and I expect Meghan will pursue interests on own,” says Smith. “They’ll work together as the Fab Four for a number of philanthropic things and separately, and then Meghan and Harry will have their own (joint projects).”
Royal philanthropists:
The modern raison d’etre for all royals is to prove their worth through philanthropy and public service. In choosing Markle Harry has found the perfect mate for a life of humanitarian work: She was an active campaigner for good causes long before she met Harry in the summer of 2016.
Their first meeting was “a physical chemistry coup de foudre thing,” says Leslie Carroll, author of American Princess: The Love Story of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Then they started talking and connected on save-the-planet topics. Her humanitarian work dates back to her mother’s influence, plus the influence of the Catholic girls high school she attended in Los Angeles.
“She’s walked the walk for years,” Carroll says. “She’s built wells in Rwanda, she’s been an ambassador for women, she went to India to advocate for separate bathrooms and sanitary pads for teen girls who drop out of school. In Canada, she was involved in humanitarian projects . This is all stuff she was raised to do by her mother. One of her teachers said she had a humanitarian focus early on, gave money to homeless people.”
Their new role in the Royal Firm? Champions of the Commonwealth
One major new job for Harry, and thus for Meghan, was announced by the queen last month: He has been appointed a youth ambassador for the Commonwealth, the organization of former British colonies that is headed by the queen and close to her heart. Harry’s new role will include championing the more than 60% of the Commonwealth’s 2.4 billion people under 30.
As a biracial American (whose first wedding took place in Commonwealth member Jamaica), Meghan is a good fit as Harry’s wife representing the monarch in multiracial countries large and small that circle the globe.
Their new role was signified as a key element of Meghan’s lengthy wedding veil: She asked designer Clare Waight Keller of Givenchy to incorporate a distinctive flower from each of the 53 Commonwealth countries in the veil, “united in one spectacular floral composition,” according to Kensington Palace.
Ms. Waight Keller designed a veil representing the distinctive flora of all 53 Commonwealth countries united in one spectacular floral composition.
Find out more about the design, the fabric and the veil of the #RoyalWedding dress: https://t.co/flDwgm4LUppic.twitter.com/0t7MWZ3BpF
— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) May 20, 2018
It took a lot of work to research each country’s flora and ensure that every flower featured in the veil is unique. The result was stunning, stretching 15 feet behind her and held up by two pageboys as she walked to the altar in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
“Ms. Markle wanted to express her gratitude for the opportunity to support the work of the Commonwealth by incorporating references to its members into the design of her wedding dress,” the palace said in a statement outlining the details of her wedding outfit.
“Meghan and Harry look like the Commonwealth because it is so multicultural,” Carroll says. “They are what the Commonwealth looks like so they are perfect ambassadors for a monarch in the 21st century. There will be an uptick her popularity around the world.”
A rude question: When do the babies start arriving?
Too soon for bassinet talk? We know Harry, 33, is a baby whisperer who’s good with kids. There are countless pictures of him playing with children he has befriended through Sentebale in Lesotho.
There seems to be no doubt in Britain that Harry was born to be a dad. Yes, his bride is 36 and will be 37 on Aug. 4, but pregnancy is no longer just for young women. Look at sister-in-law Duchess Kate, who just gave birth last month to her third child at age 36. Amal Clooney gave birth to her twins at age 39. British actress Rachel Weisz is pregnant with her second child at 48.
Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and Prince Harry on stage with the Basotho Youth Choir at the finale of the Sentebale Concert at Kensington Palace on June 28, 2016, in London. (Photo: Chris Jackson, Getty Images)
Still, “the reality is, if you’re getting married after 35 you just don’t have a ton of time to really contemplate when you’re going to start your family,” says Sheeva Talebian, an OBGYN and fertility specialist at CCRM-NY, a fertility clinic in Manhattan.
The couple should start trying “sooner rather than later,” says Adi Davidov, director of gynecology for Staten Island University Hospital. “The longer she waits, the more difficult it will be to be to get pregnant and the higher the chance will be that she may require help getting pregnant.”
Both doctors say the couple should start by trying naturally for six months, and if pregnancy doesn’t result, the royal couple should consult with Markle’s gynecologist and a fertility specialist for a workup.
And though many in the spotlight are loathe to speak of it publicly, fertility options abound, particularly if Markle decided to freeze her eggs in the years before she met Prince Harry. “We’re seeing many women who aren’t necessarily married between the ages of 30 to 35 who are coming in to freeze eggs,” Talebian says.
And if they’re just not quite ready yet? “If they don’t start trying immediately my advice to them would be: Go and talk to a fertility specialist, and speak about either freezing eggs or embryos,” she says.
Where will they live?
At the moment they live in Nottingham Cottage, a two-bedroom, 1,300-square foot “starter home” in the Kensington Palace compound, not far from the Cambridges’ sprawling 20-room Apartment 1A. (It’s also near Ivy Cottage, where cousin Princess Eugenie and her fiance, Jack Brooksbank, who are to marry in October, recently moved in.)
In fact, before they moved into Apartment 1A, Will and Kate lived at Nottingham Cottage, too, and were living there when their first child, Prince George, was born.
Like them, Harry and Meghan as a married couple are likely to get new digs in KP, long a sort of crown-owned housing estate for sundry royals, which is undergoing renovations, Smith predicts.
Smith says there is always the chance they might move to York House, one of the wings of St James’s Palace and the place where Prince Charles lived after he and Princess Diana separated. But it’s mostly used for staff offices now and Harry and Meghan will likely want to be close to Will and Kate.
They also might get a gift from grandmother Queen Elizabeth II of a country retreat on her Sandringham estate in Norfolk: York Cottage is tipped to be her wedding gift, and it’s not that far from Will and Kate’s own country home, Anmer Hall, also on the Sandringham estate and also a gift from the queen. (By the way, “cottage” in this case is used in the same way the robber-baron mansions of Newport, R.I. are described as “cottages.”)
Alas, York Cottage doesn’t have a very good image: Supposedly, it’s haunted by the lugubrious ghost of a 19th-century Prince of Wales who died young, and it has been described over the decades by various royal inhabitants as “a glum little villa,” an “ugly suburban cottage” and “a place of no merit at all,” according to the gleeful reporting of The Daily Mail and the Daily Express.
Meghan Markle (C) and her mother Doria Ragland (L) watch the closing ceremonies for the Invictus Games in Toronto, Sept. 30, 2018. (Photo: GEOFF ROBINS, AFP/Getty Images)
The “American” royal couple:
That is the X factor: how much time will they spend in the USA?
“This is pure guessing, but Harry loves America, he’s had adventures here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they spend some amount of time in California,” Smith says. “Her mother is there, her father is close, she has friends there, she’s a California girl.
“I would think California would be some small piece of their life.”
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