Tears coursed down the cheeks of 16-year-old Meghan Markle and her friends as they watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, and never more so than at the poignant moment when the cameras zoomed in on the Royal coffin.
There, perched among the white flowers, was an envelope on which was written the one word, ‘Mummy’ – Prince Harry’s last note to the mother who had now gone for ever.
To Meghan and her classmates, it was an inconceivable tragedy: how could a glamorous humanitarian in the prime of life die in the cruel banality of a car crash?
Diana’s death in a Parisian underpass is at the heart of the profound discomfort he feels with being in the public eye
According to family friends, Meghan was intrigued not just by her style but by Diana’s independent humanitarian mission
In the days following Diana’s death in August 1997, she pondered the life of this remarkable woman.
With her friend Suzy Ardakani, Meghan watched old videos of the 1981 wedding of Lady Diana Spencer – as she then was – and Prince Charles.
Inspired by the Princess, the two girls collected clothes and toys for less privileged children.
According to family friends, Meghan was intrigued not just by her style but by Diana’s independent humanitarian mission.
Such was Meghan’s interest that Suzy’s mother Sonia gave her a copy of my biography of the Princess, Diana: Her True Story, a copy which remained on her bookshelves for the next few years.
As another of her childhood friends, Ninaki Priddy, would one day observe of Meghan: ‘She was always fascinated by the Royal Family. She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0.’
Today for Harry, and increasingly for his wife, all roads lead back to Diana.
His mother’s cause-driven life and the tragic manner of her death has not only coloured Harry’s relationship with his family, and the wider public, it has shaped the couple’s world view.
Diana’s death in a Parisian underpass is at the heart of the profound discomfort he feels with being in the public eye.
No matter how friendly the media can be, every camera click and whirr reminds Harry of her terrible fate.
He cannot let that feeling go: ‘Every single time I see a flash, it takes me straight back,’ he said in an ITV documentary in 2019.
As the Sussexes embarked on their own journey together through Royal life, not a day went by without a reference, a memory or a decision that related in some way to Harry’s late mother. Diana was the third wheel in their marriage.
The tone was set at the public announcement of their engagement, on Monday, November 27, 2017.
Meghan’s ring, dominated by a conflict-free diamond from Botswana, the country where they fell in love, included small diamonds from Diana’s jewellery collection so that Harry’s late mother would be there to ‘join us on this crazy journey’.
In a 20-minute interview with BBC presenter Mishal Husain, the Prince was clear about how his mother would have responded to her American daughter-in-law.
‘They’d be thick as thieves, without question,’ he said. ‘I think she would be over the moon, jumping up and down – you know, so excited for me.’
But the ghost of Diana would loom over the lives of Prince Harry and his new wife in less happy ways, too, as time passed and as Meghan grappled with a set of challenges uncannily similar to those that once faced the mother-in-law she never met.
In Meghan, Harry found a woman who embodied the qualities he had been missing
Without a mum, without a steadying, nurturing influence, Harry went off the rails
Looking back, Harry was the first to admit that his life descended into ‘total chaos’ in his 20s.
The Prince struggled to process the black cloud of grief that enveloped his life from the moment he was woken from his sleep at Balmoral and told that his mother was dead.
Millions around the globe watched as the 12-year-old walked behind his mother’s coffin during the televised funeral. Many shed tears for him.
But that was no help to a young man whose life was in pieces.
Without a mum, without a steadying, nurturing influence, Harry went off the rails.
He became notorious as an angry drunk who lurched out of London nightclubs, more than ready to lash out at the paparazzi who dogged his every step.
For years, he was protected by highly paid public relations professionals who smoothed over his escapades – any night-time indiscretions compensated for with charity work and, of course, his life as a professional soldier.
By and large, the Prince retained the affection of the public. And, gradually, he became happy to express his personal hopes and dreams.
At a birthday party in February 2016, he told television presenter Denise van Outen: ‘I’m not dating and for the first time ever I want to find a wife.’
And in Meghan, he found a woman who embodied the qualities he had been missing.
When news first broke of Prince Harry’s romance with Meghan, I was frequently asked would it last.The unhappy marriage and eventual divorce of his father and mother were hard to ignore.
At the time I felt it was the wrong question. As anyone with even a passing knowledge of Harry would have realised, it was he who was the eager supplicant in this romantic drama.
Meghan Markle was not some shy girl from finishing school, but a divorced woman of the world – an active promoter of gender equality, of women’s rights and, to use a Markle phrase, of ‘being the change’.
It’s hardly a slogan that springs to mind when considering the Monarchy, an institution defined by precedent and the past.
As Diana once joked: the only thing they change is their clothes.
Yet Meghan was beginning her Royal adventure at a critical moment in British Royal history.
The House of Windsor very much needed a bit of gloss and glamour, some international appeal. Like Diana, Meghan was more than capable of providing it.
Unlike Diana, however, Meghan was camera-ready, not camera-shy. She arrived at the gates of Buckingham Palace fully formed: a successful actor, a popular blogger and an acknowledged humanitarian.
The only puzzle remained as to whether this ambitious, intelligent, modern and successful woman would stay the course.
Had the Princess of Wales been present at Harry and Meghan’s wedding reception at Frogmore House in the grounds of Windsor’s Home Park, she would have admired Meghan’s chutzpah and self-confidence in breaking protocol, taking the microphone and giving her own short speech.
Diana, in contrast, had been the one who stood at the back in school plays and pantos, terrified of being given a speaking part.
Although they grew up a generation and a world apart, much still connected these two women.
Both were glamorous and charismatic, both believed that they were invested with a power to do good in the world.
At first, Meghan was seen as a bridge between the Monarchy’s past and its future.
That sunny wedding day in May 2018 was a signpost to a glorious, more inclusive tomorrow. Yet, for many reasons, the young American was absorbed into neither the Royal Family nor the country.
And from the earliest months, her complaints of loneliness, isolation and a lack of support had an all-too-familiar ring.
Meghan, a girl in a hurry, took quite some time to get to grips
