Tsunami, 38 & 39. Royal Marriages.

There has been a hullabaloo on all the media about the interview given by Prince Henry and Meghan Markle to Oprah Winfrey. Charges of racism, ostracizing, and plain nastiness shown to an American who dared to marry into the very British family. How much is true, how much is hype, can only be known by the people in question. That it is all a very public way of airing family laundry, is obvious to all. Yes, they are public personages, but even people who are public have a certain right to intimacy. Perhaps the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk wanted to tell what they consider their side of the story, perhaps they were simply out for the money and a bit of vengeance. Each person can believe what they will.

During all this family fiasco, I was reminded of another American who joined the Royal Family, Wallis Simpson. Edward VIII, Elizabeth II's uncle, had to renounce the throne to finally marry her. It was a love story that surmounted all the odds. And Wallis was a woman who was also misunderstood, perhaps like Meghan.

By all accounts, she was an ambitious woman, and not very subtle. She had been divorced once, and her second marriage was on rocky ground. She met the future King and started an affair with him while she was still married. Back then, as well as now, a woman's morality was more important than a man's morality. The Prince of Wales had already had various affairs, and was not a paragon of virtue. Even so, it was (and still is) much more important that a woman comport herself virtuously.

She had divorced her first husband on incompatibility issues, and her second for adultery. Yet, while she claimed in the second divorce that her husband had had an affair with her childhood friend, she lied when she was asked if she had committed adultery. It seems there had been ample evidence that she and Edward were having a very physical relationship, but that evidence was not presented before the court. 

Even so, at that time it was an impossibility for a British monarch to marry a divorced woman while her ex husband was still living. Like the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church did not admit divorce. (In recent times, Queen Letizia of Spain had married earlier in a civil celebration, which the Catholic Church does not recognize as marriage in the eyes of God. So, the Church allowed her to marry Felipe canonically.) The marriage of a divorced person was considered bigamous unless the ex spouse had died. Edward, as monarch, was also the Head of the Church. For him to go against Church doctrine was sacrilege. It was almost the same as if Pope Francis suddenly decided to marry. So, he abdicated, Wallis' divorce came through, and they married the following year in France, and became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

But, aside from the morality business, Wallis Simpson was not kindly regarded by the British public. She was considered pushy, loud, irreverent. Definitely not queen material. When she and Edward were gone from public life, it seemed that Americans were stricken from the list of possible suitors of royal family members. Until Meghan.

She was always quite popular with the British public, and her feud with her father even made her more relatable to many. I think that the rocky existence of Princess Diana, Henry's mother, had made Meghan's arrival in the family much easier. Diana's divorce from the Prince of Wales brought about a change in how the Anglican Church allowed divorcées to remarry in the Church, even though the ex-spouse was still alive. Of course, cynically speaking, if they hadn't done so, Prince Charles wouldn't be able to accede to the throne as a divorcée living in sin with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Diana brought modernity into the family, and made it much easier for her younger son to marry an American actress of mixed race. 

Wallis Simpson's appearance hurt the Royal Family. Meghan's appearance buoyed it in popularity. Her and her husband's exile in the United States isn't helping that popularity. Airing out grievances in public isn't helping either. Though it all goes to show that blue blood doesn't mean those whose veins it runs in aren't human. 

Life continues.