I’m already feeling nervous about the potential conflict – real or imagined – between the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry’s girlfriend Meghan Markle. The British media really wants some kind of story there, good or bad. Bad stories will probably sell more copy, but good stories will also set up a potential comparison between Markle and Kate. I’ve been saying for two weeks that I seriously doubt Harry cares about his brother and sister-in-law’s opinions about his love life, but the tabloids absolutely care. We’ve previously heard that Kate was “keen” to “see what Meghan is all about,” which is still funny to me. We also heard a rumor that Kate and Meghan did meet while Meghan was in London last week and staying with Harry at Kensington Palace. So what now?
She has been staying with beau Prince Harry in his home of Kensington Palace and it seems that Meghan Markle is already making a good impression on the in-laws. The Prince’s sister-in-law the Duchess of Cambridge is reported to be ‘thrilled’ over the couple’s new romance.
New Zealand’s Woman’s Day claim a royal source told them that: ‘Kate is thrilled that Harry has finally found a girlfriend who looks like being a keeper. She only wants the very best for her lovely brother-in-law – and Meghan looks like she fits the bill.’
In their report the magazine also claims that the Duchess is doing ‘all she can to support Meghan’ as she eases into her royal relationship.
However, the palace is yet to make any official comment on the Duchess’s relationship with the actress. MailOnline has contacted the Kensington Palace for a comment.
My guess is that Meghan and Kate probably did meet last week, but it wasn’t anything major. Like, it was probably just a breezy introduction. That being said, Woman’s Day usually doesn’t know anything about anything. Kate probably is not “thrilled” about Meghan. But never underestimate Kate’s ability to play the long game. This is a woman who waity’d for a decade. Kate takes the long view, and Meghan has only been around for what? Five months, maybe. The Villainess Duchess is probably petting her sausage curls and plotting as we speak.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
That final sentence followed by that picture is gossip blogger perfection.
LOL! So true! Kate looked ridiculous with that huge side bun.
I wonder if Harry actually married Meghan, if Kate would ditch her fake accent and try to actually speak without sounding as if her mouth is full of marbles? You know Kate is going to be competitive with whomever Harry marries, either that or look down her snooty nose at her.
look down her snooty nose, as wife of (one) of the heirs to the throne she’ll be senior and I can see her and particularly Carol making a meal out of that position. I don’t envy the girl that marries Harry, she’s going to have to be tough to cope with the Middleton women.
I wouldn’t wish the wrath of the Middleton women on my worst enemy.
Y’know, if she’s got a sense of humour, I think she’ll be fine. If she’s “it’s important to you, so I’ll give you what you need, because it’s not really that important to me” she’s gonna be fine. Tho’ she may not care for the tradition, it’s not her tradition, so “performing” the curtsies and all that can easily be accommodated with a private grin and giggle. She has so much on the go, I don’t really think she’ll allow Duchess Catherine to mess with her head. She’s a fully-fledged adult living a full life. I don’t think she will be distracted by the “fluffy bits” of tradition. I hope not, any way. I hope she can deal with grace and then just get on with her own thing again.
I’ve never seen her look so stylish – someone finally stepped away from seventeen magazine. The hair the hat the coat- perfection.
I highly doubt either one of them cares about the other as much as these magazines would have them care. But, you know, we just have to pit women against each other.
Exactly.
Meghan is in it to win it so I think she cares a great deal about what Kate thinks.
Because Harry cannot be the one who is in it to win it?
Harry doesn’t care what Kate Middleton thinks, so Markle would be advised to ignore any “advice” given by KM or her family.
I would normally agree with you but given Waity and her past issues with other women around the brothers, its highly likely there will be issues between them further down the line if it lasts. She has never reacted well to female competition. Kate once famously told Chelsy that cheating came with being a royal GF and is allegedly one of the reasons Harry has always been cool with her. Also many of the stories comparing Kate and Chelsy were planted by the Middletons to make Kate look better as she was getting called out about her party girl, do nothing ways during the early GF years. People forget that the Mids have always had an in with the Fail, its Editor in Chief Paul Dacre is a close family friend who have been giving them PR advice from the get go.
Sad, then, that Kate feels like every woman is competition. It’s a hard way to live, and in had to get over it myself in order to live a healthy life.
Kate told Chelsy to ignore the rumors that Harry was cheating as they come with the territory. I don’t think she was actually telling Chelsey to ignore cheating.
If Kate has a cool relationship with Harry I would guess it is because he finds her so boring. William is the only thing I can think of that they have in common, and he seems just as boring as Kate.
Megan: She said cheating not rumours of cheating.
Exactly.
I think Meghan could be the making of Kate. If Meghan really does hit the ground running (to coin a phrase), it might galvanize Kate to get off her laurels and do something.
Not to compare women. Not trying to do that at all. But there is something to be said for competition and perhaps even Meghan could be a help.
Thats the best case scenario, Kate is supposedly a very competitive person but based on past behaviour, take down via the Fail is the likely route of action.
@bluhare
Not going to happen. Kate will follow Billy Goat’s lead. If he does nothing so will she.
Kate is a dud.
5 years on and she still cannot give a decent speech. She has a timid walk and an insecure presence. She just lacks enthusiasm and I think a lot of that negativity has to do with William crappy attitude.
Kate will not compete in a fair game. She just doesn’t. Nor do the other Middleton women.
She will use the Daily Mail for backstabbing and hits-under-the-beltline against Harry’s girlfriend as she has done before to Chelsy Davy.
If Kate intended to play fair then she would do a lot more charities to improve her reputation. She would work with the Royal Family instead of keeping away from them. But instead Harry and the York girls are repeatedly thrown under the media bus in the media as a sacrifice so that nothing touches the heir and his precious.
Apparently Princess Anne keeps her distance, too, and I have an idea that is because she has few respect for the likes of Kate.
Unlike any of us she knows what it feels like to suddenly become part of the Royal family. She like Sophie Countess of Wessex will be able to help and advise on how to deal with the courtiers, the ones Diana had so much trouble dealing with.
Mama Middleton is plotting, little grown up girl will let Mama do the work.
Exactly, Mama Midds is the brains of their con. Carole’s opinion is the one Id like to hear. Does she see Meghan as competition or is she content with Kate being the queen bee one day
I’d love to hear Meghan’s impression of traveling back 200 years to meet the antiheroine of a Jane Austen novel.
Lol.
Yet, i think with time Kate developed into May Welland from Edith Wharton’s The age of innocence.
But who is the Countess? Jecca?
Given Kate’s determination to cosplay Jecca long after the wedding, i’m going to say *yes.
*Not saying Jecca is playing along, but her spectre seems to be alive and present in the Cambridge marriage.
Loved the book; loved the movie.
Loved that movie as well and I especially loved how the art was used to underscore the various characters, their personalities, dreams, tastes, social position/ambitions, etc. It is very subtly done but if you are well versed in the history of 19th century art then there’s this whole visual commentary running through the story that I find very interesting.
Me too ladies.
Love all of Edith Wharton’s books, but i think this one is my favourite.
The movie is a visual feast.
Except I can’t see Kate, when the girlfriend (let alone fiancee), nobly telling William not to commit to her if he was in love with another woman… however unsuitable she might be. Sad, but true: May Welland was less clingy by a country mile.
IMO, May Welland was horribly manipulative.
Superficially May was giving Archer permission to go with the long lost girlfriend, but she knew what it would cost him in terms of honour and his place in society. Archer prided himself on that honour and societal standing.
Further, by seeming to offer a way out, knowing he would never take it up, May appealed to his sense of (misplaced) honour and bound him to her irrevocably because he knew his dishonour would be her dishonour. And that was something he could not do to her.
May always presented as someone who was weak and needed protection whilst being wedded completely to the status quo system that crushed Archer. She was not the weakling she appeared.
In other words, she played him.
I agree she played him later – I didn’t read it that way at the earlier stage. I saw it as women being horribly trapped, at the time, and once she was married she was willing to be hideously devious to gain her ends. Having said that, I last read it at around 18, so my perspective would probably be really different now!
You are right about the openly obvious manipulation post-wedding.
She was much more subtle and calculating pre-wedding because it might have gone a different way.
May didn’t tell him to go for it with Ellen Olenska, though? He had an affair with another man’s wife as a young bachelor, which was socially just about okay – single men could cheat with other men’s wives, married men could never cheat and nobody could deflower an unmarried girl, was pretty much the code Wharton set out. And when he tried to pin May down to a very close wedding date, instead of the usual closer to two years, she turned round and asked if it was to shut down his temptation with his old mistress, and if it was, then he shouldn’t use her as a shut door to a scandalous choice, if it was what he really wanted. But it’s also fairly clear that Archer was not remotely interested by that point, so arguably it was a fairly empty gesture if she knew as much. I’ll have to reread it sometime and see how it reads to me now I’m more than twice the age!
The film version was a lot looser on it, but from memory, she was sincere at that point because if she’d wanted to seal the deal, he was offering to do it on a platter. My sense was that she was Machiavellian within the marriage because she believed he was physically cheating on her, and she believed doing whatever it took to remain in the marriage was morally justifiable. Archer even says at one point that she only had it in her to think for herself on a couple of brief occasions in her life, before settling into the predetermined ways – which included managing him, as her mother had her awful father. What was interesting is that at the end, her son says to his father that May had always known how much he’d loved Ellen and had told her son her father had given her up when she asked. Archer said that she hadn’t ever asked, and their son said words to the effect that no, their generation never actually spoke the words, they just danced around them, but everyone always understood what was meant. And the problem with that was her having warned Ellen off by lying about a definite pregnancy.
It’s also really hard because Archer’s perspective is the sole one shown, so you never really know if he is being overly or inadequately generous to May – or in fact Ellen. A novel in which you end up feeling terribly sorry for the faithless husband, for not being able to run away with his pregnant wife’s cousin, does make me suspect the narrative perspective may be a tad unreliable! And while I do remember loathing May, I understood, in the constraints of that society, why she made the choices she did. Women had so few options, really. I read it alongside Sense and Sensibility, where I hated that Marianne ended up this sober matron with a far older husband – it almost seemed like she learned the hard way to settle. And bloody Jude the Obscure – he manipulates Sue into shagging him by threatening to shag his ex-wife, and then when they have a million babies they can’t afford to feed because of said reluctant-on-her-part shagging, and his son by his first wife kills them all, she is somehow cruel and heartless for leaving him, because he just loves her so much.
I just feel like it’s always the fault of some woman in classic literature, whatever the guy does. Even when Marianne is screwed over, the implication is that she shouldn’t have been so undignified to begin with.
I agree with you as far as women’s lot in classic literature, but i think we, as a modern society, have taken to reinterprete most of it as romantic when it was not at all nor was it the intent of the authors. Exception Dickens who showed how awful society was without dressing it up as a romantic tale.
Every woman who doesn’t conform is punished and yet they all live in a prison whether they are poor or wealthy. The men can do what they bloody want and call it honour and respect. They are rarely punished. And it’s all such a burden to the poor lambs. And often it’s the women who have to change that ‘rebellious’ aspect of themselves to fit back into society and be accepted as good women thus reinforcing the system.
It infuriates me when i see the Middleton women cosplay all of this.
NO I don’t William was known to have dated other women after her and really why are we trying to do that to them He has a wife and two children she has a husband and one child this is disrespectful to both Catherine and Jonathan Baillie .
I don’t care about a potential conflict between Kate and Meghan but I find it interesting how Harry and William have two massively different ways to introduce and protect their ladies.
Harry shows up for his job in front of the public, his own family, he smiles to the press and in exchange, he asks for fair-play when dealing with Meghan, the woman he loves. He seems to be very aware about his own responsabilities and does not want to transfer the bulk of them to Meghan.
On his part, William hides from his job, from the public and his own family, behind Kate and the kids.
Kate really does give me villian vibes. She probably asks her mirror every morning if she is the Fairest Duchess in the land. Jealousy will consume her and Ma Midds. Meghan is prettier, more vibrant, charitable without being forced and actually has a job.
Kate lost her shine ages ago but she will work to get it back and by work I mean dispatch Ma Midds to discredit Meghan.
I always get the villain vibes when Katie unintentionally shows her hard face. It reminds me of Theresa Russell in the movie Black Widow.
Work for it? Or send the PR minions out to poison the public against Markle, her family, and Harry?
Well being in charge of minions can be considered work (see Gru in Despicable Me) even though it isn’t a 9-5.
Then it will have to be Carole who does it. Prickly Princess cannot even manage to get her husband to make his own cheese on toast.
Kate looks pregnant to me.
She has the same ‘barf’ expression she had when she was expecting Princess Charlotte.
“Thrilled” – I think not. Waity Katie, Duchess Dolittle, will not take kindly to anyone stealing attention from her. Between the Meghan and Harry relationship and Pippa’s forthcoming wedding her nose will be well out of joint. Baby 3 will no doubt be announced soon.
Not only all of that, but Meghan is *older* than she is. She is not going to like being upstaged by this one, not at all.
But she won’t do anything to steal back the limelight besides procreating again.
I’m curious as to what type of guidance Kate could possibly give Meghan, given that Kate herself is, in her own words, still “new at the job” after FIVE YEARS.
Kate may have had many reactions to the prospect of a sister in law with ten times her looks and charisma, but I’d bet a month’s salary that “thrilled” wasn’t one of them. She didn’t care for Cressida Bonas, either, who was also 1) prettier than she was, and 2) a bona fide aristocrat instead of an arriviste poser.
But after a good look at Markle, Kate may be viewing bony Bonas as the better choice – be careful what you wish for, Kate. I think Markle would wipe the floor with Kate, Cressida, and Chelsy in terms of looks and charisma. Dangerous, very dangerous.
Cripes, you sound so 18th century.
Kate acts like a Victorian woman so it’s not far off from her mindset. What other woman born in 1982 do you know who literally did nothing with her life except wait for a man and make herself available until he proposed.
@Azurea – if anyone is out of the 18th century, it’s Waity Katy.
I do think Kate would be relieved if Henry eventually settle down with a woman being a commoner, an actress and a foreigner. He ending up with an aristocrat, navigating the same social circles to which the Wales boy belong, would have made her nouveau riche, middle-class, social climbing ways even more blatant.
A chunk of the public turned against the Middletons when the signet rings, family crest, and rumored titles came out. The Middletons were no longer successful middle class who didn’t care, they were outed and mocked for playing into the system
Markle would be able to prove that all of the Middleton attempts to ape the aristocracy are ridiculous. Instead of spending a lifetime trying to fit in to a ridiculous system that ultimately doesn’t matter, instead earn your way in the world and be true to who you are.
ITA, the tide turned against them when they outed themselves as crass social climbing middle classers who desperately wanted to be aristocrats – everything that was the complete opposite to the careful PR image that they spent years building during the GF years. The engagement was the watershed moment when they dropped the charade.
I don’t mind anybody striving for a title though I do find that concept rather ridiculous.
But wasting an education and not developing and basically not doing what you are paid to do and all the while keep bitching against others … this is a bit rich.
Basically not doing what you are paid to do is a crime. It is a failure to fullfill a contract and that can be legally persecuted.
Except with certain members of the Royal Family
As soon as the press start comparing the two of them Kate will be raging….Meghan is sooo glamorous…
I’d say she’s not thrilled at all.
The Middleton women don’t like female competition. Does anyone else remember Wimbledon a few years ago when Kate and Pippa were overheard whispering nasty things about Roger Federer’s wife Mirka? How fat she was etc?
I feel sorry for Meghan if she’s about to marry into that family.
Even more interesting if Harry bought a home near Amner. There were rumours he was looking at homes in Norfolk. Harry and Meghan would certainly outshine dull W&K. William in particular wouldn’t like it if Harry lived near Amner. William knows it would bring more press attention to the area and he wants to keep his life very private.
I doubt he’ll buy a private home. The protests over the security at a new property would be too much. Rumors of W&K private house hunting led to the Anmer situation. Any existing tenants of the Duchy, Crown Estate, or Sandringham can be tossed out, as they were for both of W&K’s properties. That is more likely.
Harry may end up in a Duchy property William can kick him out of, like Harewood. He could lease Frogmore or Belvedere at Windsor from the Crown Estate. Frogmore is already reserved for Philip if HM passes away first. It also has the negative of being a high-profile building, lacking privacy. Belvedere has the Duke of Windsor tie.
With the public scrutiny any lease from the Crown Estate or Duchy would get, my bet is grace-and-favor free rent at Wood Farm at Sandringham.
I disagree. Harry wedding when he does get married will be great for Britain because of Brexit situation. Also if history is repeated he will be granted a dukedom, a country home, and an official place maybe Apt. 8 and 9.
I’m not saying he won’t get a dukedom, space at KP, or a leased home on a royal property. I’m saying what the real options are related to those things. They will not be on the scale of what W&K received no matter how much you like him.
Royal weddings are a net loss to both tourism and the economy, which has been laboriously explained to you before. He will have a leased (not owned) country home that is part of royal property and a leased (not owned) London home at KP.
Wedding and housing will all be to the scale of the 5th in line to the throne, because that is tradition – no matter how much you want to pretend otherwise. As has been explained to you, he will not receive both 8 and 9. He will be leased a space in KP, but not space that has already been claimed by the heir for offices. What William wants, William gets.
They will not buy him a private home in the UK because the taxpayers would scream bloody murder. He won’t want to live at Windsor because it is too public and the Crown Estate lease would be publicly criticized. His petulant brother can throw him out of any house leased from the Duchy once Charles becomes king.
Good bet is Wood Farm at Sandringham grace-and-favor, which he can live in until his brother becomes king and can kick him out. If he and any future wife are smart, they’ll purchase-and-secure something in South Africa out of his inheritance. That will be the escape plan.
Who gives a flying fu** what Kate thinks. She is the consort. She has no legitimate power and her his to produce babies and be a warm spot to put it for the king. Give it a break.
Off topic but, I truly think Charles will be the last monarch to the royal family. What happened to the mystique and aura of the royals? Did it die with Diana?
It started to end when Phillip let cameras into the coronation. That was the beginning of the end. Diana just ripped off the hanging bandaid to shore the “wound” to the world (IMO).
I don’t think the cameras at the coronation were the issue. I think it was the original Royal Family documentary Philip pushed, that showed behind the scenes every day life.
I don’t know if the mystique died with Diana but there’s a fine line between transparency, relating to the general public and overexposure.
I for one, appreciated the 1986 documentary In Private in Public about the Wales. Some people at that time believed it was an attempt by Charles and Diana to reassure the public about their marriage. That may have been part of it but it was primarily a way to generate interest and funding for Charles’ projects.
The key is staying relevant…. I think that’s why we collectively complain about W&K so much. How can any institution stay relevant without its senior members working hard?
The mystique died with Diana and will become much worse when The Queen passes as well.
The only thing that’s missing from that top pic is her twiddling a moustache…..
Also off topic but her eyebrows annoy me so much. All that money, all that TIME, and she can’t sort her fricking eyebrows out!!
AGREED! The eyebrows. They look like they belong on Millicent or Cruella deVille. And that arch! Does she practice making these bizarre faces in front of a mirror? There should be a coffeetable book – they could call it “Kate Face: a Lazy Retrospective”…
But maybe that’s not an evil arched brow. Maybe that’s the arch of the hangover headache grimacing at bright light of day.
Is she still smoking/boozing it up, does anyone know? Because her eye bags are starting to defy even her spa technicians’ best efforts to minimize. The word “ruched” springs to mind.
I’m nearly 10yrs older than her, and even I look younger than that!
I actually think Kate will be quite happy to have the attention taken away from her…means the focus will be on someone else and she can get on with doing…….nothing…
Nope, Kate loves the press attention always has. Its William who hates it and he would prob welcome the diversion for the press.
naah…sorry..don’t agree..Just feel that Catherine wants an ‘easy’ life..and that means doing as little as possible in her ‘public’ life. I WAS an avid supporter of Kate in the early days…she’s turned out to be a bit of a boring let-down…She doesn’t want any attention at all…just to do as little as possible… but with the kudos of being Prince William’s wife.
She loves the public attention when it is when she wants it. She always has, from the days she chose to leave out the front of club doors so she could get papped as the Prince’s girlfriend. She loves the attention at movie premieres. Front and center during the christening. When she’s with Ben Ainslie.
She isn’t going to want to share the spotlight with an accomplished independent woman.
Harry and Meghan are THE hot new royal couple – makes Willnot and kate look even older and more boring than they already are – Wills will be livid…..
My fantasy of Harry and Michelle Obama being the hot new royal couple still lives 🙂
Yeah I know, i’ve clearly been sniffing gas fumes too long to think that will happen 🙁
Omg! I don’t think I can post a link but I just saw a headline that Kate is planning a “girl’s only” trip to Hollywood to visit her “new BFF” Meghan. Lolol
Also, supposedly Meghan’s brother spoke to the Sun about a Royal wedding. Not good.
My brain so desperately needs a break from Drumpf-related news. Need to stay in the celeb threads for a while.
Her brother was talking about how a royal wedding can be possible. HAHA!
Her brother that she doesnt talk to?why cant her family shut up like shes doing. I wonder how much he was paid?
They are an extended family, with some half siblings almost a generation older. I can see all of them going rogue, nothing she can do about it.
If the Middletons couldn’t shut down Uncle Gary, the exotic dancer third cousin, the cousin who told the Top Brick in the Chimney story, the cousin who said Kate Middleton struggles to be engaged or to find anyone around her interesting?
It would be difficult to shut down half-siblings whom she may barely know. It was easier to slap a gag order on the teachers at Middletons former schools, because they could be fired if they talked. One eventually did, saying that anyone who remembers Middleton as anything other than completely bland and forgettable was lying for posterity.
There is a tremendous class system in England – Kate will positively encourage this relationship,
Doesn’t matter what Kate thinks. Its about what The Queen decides.