Meghan Markle’s marriage and family are beautiful assets to the Duchess—and they induce a great deal of envy. She and her husband, Prince Harry, continue to choose each other, and it drives some people positively batty with frustration.
Some have even tried to reduce Meghan to the pejorative stereotype of a trad wife. But can anyone reasonably accuse Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, of being a trad wife?
Meghan is independent, ambitious, politically aware and entirely comfortable having a voice of her own. She has built businesses, created television programmes, written books, supported charities and maintained an identity beyond the man she married. She does not appear to believe that a woman must make herself smaller so that her husband can feel larger.
I mean, she nestles into her husband’s ribs, holds his hand as if she actually enjoys it, cooks and takes pride in their homes—but none of that makes her a trad wife.
And yet Meghan is clearly a woman who believes in traditional family values.
Not the internet’s prettified version of tradition, with its sourdough starter, flowered apron and carefully edited submission, although, if that is what she likes, more power to her. I mean the other things: two parents present and actively engaged; children protected rather than exploited; a solid home base; dependable structure; healthy discipline; emotional security; mutual respect—and a marriage treated as something worth defending.
For all the fashionable chatter surrounding the Sussexes, Harry and Meghan appear to have built something rather old-fashioned in Montecito: a proper family home. And they have brought that with them to the Cotswolds.
They are raising their children together. They seem fiercely protective of Archie and Lilibet’s privacy. They celebrate birthdays, tend gardens, keep dogs, make meals and return, after every dazzling appearance and transatlantic flight, to the same domestic centre. Their life may contain cameras, contracts and famous friends, but its foundation appears remarkably conventional.
Home. Marriage. Children. Safety. Belonging.
That may be one reason the endless speculation about the state of their marriage feels increasingly peculiar.
For years, their detractors have predicted separation with the enthusiasm of people waiting for a soufflé to collapse. Every independent engagement becomes evidence of estrangement. Every professional disappointment is supposedly a marital crisis. If Harry travels alone, divorce must be imminent. If Meghan appears without him, trouble is brewing. If they arrive together, their affection is dismissed as performance.
The story is repeated and repeated, as though banging the same gong loudly enough might somehow summon the outcome being predicted.
But why such emotional investment in the destruction of someone else’s marriage? It’s so bizarre.
Is it simply the irresistible appetite for royal drama? Or is there, somewhere beneath all that noise, a little envy? Envy of a relationship that—judging only by what the public can see—continues to display the characteristics of a strong, healthy and affectionate partnership?
Two people who touch one another naturally. Two people who speak proudly of each other. Two people who survived an extraordinary rupture with an ancient institution and somehow emerged holding hands.
None of us lives inside the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. We cannot know its private rhythms, negotiations or difficult days. Marriage is not easy, even without a palace, a tabloid industry and half the internet rifling through every facial expression. Royal marriage appears to be harder still.
Just look at the bloodbath.
Princess Margaret’s marriage ended in divorce. Princess Anne’s first marriage ended in divorce. Charles and Diana’s union disintegrated before the eyes of the world. Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson divorced, even if their enduring closeness subsequently became one of the Royal Family’s stranger love stories. Even William and Catherine—long presented as the dependable couple at the centre of the monarchy—have faced periods of public rumour and speculation.
In other words, the Palace gates have never been particularly effective at keeping marital unhappiness out.
Harry understood this long before he met Meghan. He watched his mother suffer. He saw what institutional pressure, press intrusion and emotional isolation could do to a woman inside the royal machinery. Whatever one thinks of his decisions, his determination to protect his wife and children cannot be separated from what he witnessed as a boy.
He was not going to stand by and watch history devour his family twice.
And Meghan, for her part, appears equally committed to protecting the unit they created. She may have married a prince, but she did not marry an institution at the expense of herself. She chose her husband, her children and the possibility of a healthier home life—even when that choice brought gale-force winds of discontent, ridicule and outright hatred.
And after all of it, Meghan still wears the T-shirt.
It’s giving Mrs.
Remember that?
Not Mrs. as surrender. Not Mrs. as disappearance. Not Mrs. as a woman reduced to her husband’s name.
Mrs. as declaration.
Mrs. as this is my family, this is my marriage, and I remain proud of both.
That distinction matters, particularly for women over 50. Many of us were raised between competing models of womanhood. We were told to secure a husband, then warned never to depend upon one. We watched traditional marriage romanticised, rejected, reinvented and marketed back to us through social media as a beige lifestyle trend.
By this stage of life, we understand that the most aspirational marriage is neither traditional nor modern merely for appearance’s sake. It is the one—if we even bother to get involved in marriage in the first place—in which both people are permitted to be fully themselves and still choose to build a life together.
There is something deeply grown-up about Meghan’s model of femininity. She can be maternal without becoming invisible. She can be glamorous without abandoning substance. She can make jam, tend a garden and create a beautiful home while also negotiating contracts, launching brands and standing in her own authority.
That is not a contradiction.
That is a complete woman.
And it is precisely why she remains such a compelling aspirational-life muse for The Marion Chronicles. Meghan represents the possibility that reinvention need not require the abandonment of romance, family or softness. A woman can pursue financial independence, personal style, meaningful work and adventure—and still place enormous value on the sanctuary of home.
The Sussex lifestyle is not aspirational simply because it includes a beautiful house in California, exquisite clothes or tables laid with flowers. Those things are lovely, certainly. But the deeper luxury is having somewhere safe to return to—and someone who continues to return there with you, wherever you both shall dwell.
Harry and Meghan have been subjected to pressures that would strain any relationship: family estrangement, litigation, security battles, professional setbacks and relentless public hostility. Yet every visible indication suggests that they remain on the same side.
That may be the secret.
A solid marriage is not one in which storms never arrive. It is one in which both people remember that the storm is outside the house—not seated beside them at the kitchen table.
Whatever the detractors predict next, Harry and Meghan appear determined to keep building: a marriage, a family, a home base and a life organised around the wellbeing of their children.
The winds have howled for years.
And still, the lights at the House of Sussex remain on.
