On Thursday, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle took the world by surprise when they announced that they would be stepping back from their roles as senior royals, and they reportedly made the announcement without the knowledge of the other royals. Yes, that includes Queen Elizabeth.
Meghan was pushed into the limelight and became the object of scrutiny the moment she and beau Harry announced their engagement. From sneers and demeaning comments from the who's who of British elite society to constant attention (often unwanted, as Meghan has herself admitted) from the media, the couple haven't exactly had the fairytale journey that one would have imagined for them.
Post their marriage, you'd have expected that people would cut them slack, but alas. Things worsened when the duo announced that they were pregnant; in October 2019 after the birth of their son Archie, in a documentary by ITV, Meghan admitted for the first time on national television that she had been feeling vulnerable amid intense media scrutiny and that her husband Harry felt the constant need to protect her from a fate similar to that of his mother, Diana.
Meghan's journey as a royal has been one rife with controversy - from reports of her being arrogant and demanding to gossip magazines claiming that a rift between her and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge and wife of Prince William. Now that Meghan and Harry have announced their split, social media has gone into overdrive trying to decipher what exactly went wrong.
Were the Queen and Meghan no longer getting along? Was Harry scared of succumbing to the pressures of royal life like his mother? Why were the other royals not informed beforehand? As fans of the royal family speculate what exactly went down, we bring to you crazy conspiracy theories that have surrounded the duo in the months leading up to the split.
Rumors of a rift in the Royal Family
When Meghan and Harry got engaged, reports of the Royal family being not too keen on the marriage flooded our timelines. Nevertheless, the wedding was approved by Queen Elizabeth who offered her blessings to the happy couple. But that wasn't the last time we were hearing of a possible rift in the family.
Early last year, there were reports which claimed that Queen Elizabeth had "banned" Meghan from using the family jewels. While Diana and Kate had been welcomed to borrow Royal jewels, it seemed unusual for the Queen to prohibit Meghan from doing the same. The same reports also suggested that the Queen did so because she had been unhappy with the way Meghan conducted herself before and after the wedding and that it wasn't quite "according to protocol."
What was even more bizarre is the fact that some people believe that Meghan's breaking the "shoe protocol" was behind the split. Yes, you heard that right, there's an actual shoe protocol. Turns out, the Queen isn't too keen on wedges and prefers to have her granddaughters-in-law wear stilettos. We kid you not, several fans of Meghan seem to think that her breaking the shoe protocol on multiple occasions may have been the final nail in the coffin.
"What Meghan wants, Meghan gets." Really?
Meghan has no connections to the royal family. She's American, a divorcee, has a mixed ethnic heritage and is also older than Harry. Naturally, for a certain section of orthodox Britishers, bringing Meghan into the royal family was a move that was bound to end in disaster.
And the announcement simply served as fodder for critics to tear Meghan apart all over again. She has been called a fiend, a witch, a gold digger, a wrench, a family wrecker and whatnot in the last few hours.
It's always been easy to simply blame the family whenever there's a rift in the family. To be honest, it's always been rather convenient to vilify the woman. In most fairy tales, the evil always comes in the female form - an old hag or even a young, seductive woman. A study shows that this could very well be a product of an inherent fear of the power of women. Rings a bell?