It Was A Week Ago Today Caitlin Moran On Harry, Meg

13/6/2018 It was a week ago today… Caitlin Moran on Harry, Meghan and the royal wedding | The Times
ding | The Times Magazine | The Times
It was a week ago today…

Caitlin Moran on Harry,
Meghan and the royal wedding
‘The first indications that this occasion was not
going to be like other royal marriage
ceremonies came with the arrival of the earliest
guests’
From left: the Queen arriving at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, May 19; Caitlin Moran as
the Queen, photographed by Jude Edginton
EPA
The Times, May 26 2018, 12:01am
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13/6/2018 It was a week ago today… Caitlin Moran on Harry, Meghan and the royal wedding | The Times Magazine | The Times
It was 11.56am on the morning of the royal wedding when the

CNN commentator said, sombrely, “And a poignant occasion for
the Queen – as this must be her last wedding.”
At the time, we were watching Her Majesty turning up at St

George’s Chapel in the May sunshine, dressed in her neon fluoro
suit with mad mauve flourishes, looking a bit like the Bristol
Rave Granny that readers of a certain age might remember from
the 1988 Summer of Love.
The Queen’s wedding gift to Harry was easy – a quick

text, ‘Keep the chin-rug. Love, Nan’
British viewers blinked and looked again. Did CNN know

something we didn’t know? Had they heard a whisper that the
Queen was on her last legs? She seemed pretty chipper to our
eyes – rocking her usual fistful of pearls and a handbag, and
still imbued enough with royal power to have granted Prince
Harry permission to wear a beard, despite him being in a
military uniform, which usually necessitates the shaving of said
beard.
All said, the Queen’s wedding gift to Harry must have been easy
to sort – a quick text reading, “I’ve had a word with Field
Marshal thingy – you don’t need to shave after all. Keep the
chin-rug. Love, Nan.”
The other CNN commentators made sympathetic sounds. Yes,

yes – the Queen’s last wedding. How poignant. Poor Britain.
Meanwhile, in Britain, viewers were yelling, “Hang on! Princess

Eugenie is getting married in October! You don’t think the
Queen’s going to make it until then? Screw you, America!
There’s plenty of life left in our Queen! Don’t nay-
say ourMajesty!”
The Americans, we reflected, must have got the actual Queen

mixed up with Claire Foy in The Crown. Yes, she won’t be
attending any more weddings, because she’s getting replaced by
Olivia Colman for the next series. But the actual Queen has had
her contract renewed for a good few years yet. Long live Her
Majesty, you mad American bastards! We reckon we can keep
her alive for a good while yet! The evening before, she’d popped
over to see Harry and Meghan, and drove away with Meghan’s
dog in the back of her car – to look after it during “the big day”!
Well, get her courtiers to look after it during “the big day”!
Queen be taking care of shit! Sit back down, Uncle Sam!
‘Do I know you?’ George and Amal Clooney show how it’s done
GETTY IMAGES
The point...
GETTY IMAGES
The wink...
GETTY IMAGES
The joke
GETTY IMAGES
But then, in a way, this is an indication of how this £32 million

wedding, watched by around 2 billion people worldwide, is
changing things. The royal family isn’t just ours now – for
America has given us one of its smart, campaigning, charismatic
daughters as our newest duchess, and so they have a stake in our
institution. They’re allowed to comment on it. We can’t be all

like, “Oh, it’s a ‘having a royal family’ thing – you wouldn’t
understand,” because the Americans have got skin in the game
now. They’re going to ask questions like, “So, run me through
this whole ‘Princess Michael of Kent’ thing again. She’s a chick,
yeah – but she’s called Princess Michael. Is she non-binary? And
why did she recently wear a brooch shaped like a blackamoor’s
head to a banquet? I’m not getting any of this. ‘Tradition’ is just
another way of saying, ‘We have spent a long time being weird.’
”
Or, as the CNN commentators encapsulated the whole incident,

“There is the princess who wore the brooch with racist
tendencies.” That’s her new name now. Forget “Princess
Michael of Kent”. She’s “Princess with Racist Tendencies
Brooch”. Let’s face it – it makes more sense. The Americans
have called this one correctly.
Oprah’s bosoms looked like the centre of all power in

the western world
Of course, at the beginning of the wedding, none of this was

apparent. On the Friday night before the wedding – wedding eve
– BBC One presumed it was business as usual. This was a
British royal wedding, happening in perfect English spring
weather – horse chestnuts in full bloom; swifts screaming

overhead; bunting a-flutter – and the BBC was going to show
the world just how we rock this shit, old-school stylee, with a
broadcast live from Windsor. Windsor looked like Trumpton in
its tiny, bizarre perfection.
We started off in a fudge shop. Of course. Nothing more British

than fudge!
“They say there are going to be 100,000 people here tomorrow –

more people than I can make fudge for!” a man in a white coat
and hairnet, sweatily stirring a massive cauldron, told presenter
Ore Oduba. It was, it was clear, a fudge-mergency.
Meanwhile, The One Show presenter Alex Jones was at some

stables, interviewing a horse.
“Can I pat him?” she asked the royal groom, hovering near a
gigantic Windsor Grey. The horse side-eyed her, severely, while
munching.
“Oh – he’s into his hay, isn’t he?” Alex said, lowering her hand
again. “Fair enough.”
Oprah Winfrey outside St George’s Chapel ahead of the service

GETTY IMAGES
Presenters Kirsty Young and Dermot O’Leary then showed us a

picture of a nursery in Rainhill, where all the children had
dressed up as members of the royal family, wearing gigantic
cardboard masks. If you didn’t see it, and you want to know how
terrifying a three-year-old in dungarees looks with the giant
cardboard head of the 96-year-old Duke of Edinburgh, I can tell
you right now: VERY.
At 8pm, Kirsty and Dermot left us with shots of Windsor

preparing for the big day – everything looking as miniature,
British and clockwork as one would expect.
“See you tomorrow for the event of the year!” Kirsty said,
cheerfully.
The next day, I had my TV on at 9am sharp. I had lined up: tea, a
scone, my laptop. Since the invention of social media, being on
Twitter during a massive national event has been one of the great
treats of the modern age. I still remember with fondness Gary
Kemp from Spandau Ballet and Simon Le Bon from Duran
Duran tweeting each other all the way through the wedding of
the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Zara looked like a UFO had landed and several horses

had galloped out
When the very ordinary-looking coaches turned up to take the

royal family to the reception, Kemp sniffed, “Back in the day,
Spandau would never have got into a coach,” with Le Bon
joyously replying, “Yeah. Limos all the way for Duran.”
The first indications that this royal wedding was not going to be
as others came with the arrival of the earliest guests. Usually, at
a royal wedding, the first guests are a succession of old white
people, who give the impression of spending every weekend
between April and October attending posh weddings, and
wearing the same old morning suit, pastel dress and jacket, and a
“seen it all before, I was at Princess Margaret’s wedding and we
all know how that turned out” face.
By way of contrast, the first guests down Windsor’s cobbled

street for Harry and Meghan’s wedding were Oprah Winfrey and
Idris Elba – Oprah in a ravishing, structured, rose-pink Stella
McCartney dress that made her bosoms look like the centre of
all power in the western world, and Idris looking dapper as f***
in textured navy blue and a gold ring.
On CNN, Bonnie Greer knew what Oprah’s huge hat meant.
“That is a church hat,” she sighed, with satisfaction. “Oprah’s

going to church.”
Prince Harry awaits his bride’s arrival

PA
The fact that the first people through St George’s rose-festooned

doors were an African-American woman worth $2.8 billion,
followed by the black British man many think should be the next
James Bond, set the tone. For the next hour of arrivals, there was
a massive racial divide. Put simply, the people of colour turned
it out, while the white guests looked like yesterday’s news.
Meghan’s friends, from darkest black to palest coffee, turned up
in rose pinks, tea-dance polka dots, emerald greens and fringed,
orange capes – hair, nails, shoes and hats like some Olympics of
elegance. With every frock, I was on Facebook with my friends
screaming, “What is that? I didn’t even know they made dresses
this beautiful!”
Amal Clooney, the Lebanese Druze human-rights lawyer, turned

up in a buttercup-yellow Stella McCartney number seemingly
made of sunshine, and walked the cobbles looking like a sexy,
liberal giraffe.
“You can tell George Clooney is a good husband – walking nice

and slow, because she’s in heels,” Dermot O’Leary said. “You
know what,” Kirsty Young rejoined, “Amal Clooney is an
accomplished human-rights lawyer. I think cobbles are the least
of her worries.”
There was feminism everywhere.
The ’Pippa’s bum’ of this occasion turned out to be

‘Victoria Beckham’s face’
All the outfits told stories. The Duchess of Cornwall turned up in

a gigantic pink feathered hat, which seemed to be her personal
“F*** you” to every flamingo in the world. When Princesses
Beatrice and Eugenie arrived, their rig-outs were simple, almost
sombre – Beatrice in a “hat” that consisted of merely six navy-
blue Alice bands, and Eugenie in a modest pillbox. As their bold
hats at the wedding of Kate and William had become a viral
mocking point – Beatrice’s “mad horns of Satan” number
coming in for a particular ribbing – it was clear that these hats
had been chosen to avoid all international merriment.
“My pillbox hat is the kind worn by Jackie Kennedy. You can’t
mock a Jackie hat,” Eugenie’s head said, clearly.
A similar tale was told in the outfit of Pippa Middleton. As we

may recall, at the wedding of Kate and William, a star was born
– Pippa’s amazing, tiny bum, in her clingy bridesmaid’s dress.
As soon as it appeared out of the bridal car, the whole world
shouted, “BUM! LOOK AT THAT BUM! BUM FEVER IS
HERE! WE HAVE BUM-MANIA!” and by the time the bridal
party left Westminster Abbey, it was more famous than Kate
Middleton, the person who had just become our future Queen.
Accordingly, at this wedding, Pippa was wearing a floral silky

dress, very loose on the bum, as if to say, “Not this time with my
bum, world. Nuh-uh.” For this occasion, Pippa’s bum was

strictly, “No comment.”
In the event, the “Pippa’s bum” of this occasion turned out to be

“Victoria Beckham’s face”. As the live broadcast of the guests’
arrival continued, Victoria was notable as the only guest who did
not smile. Obviously, we all know that “not smiling” is her thing
– it’s part of her brand – but we usually only see it in photos, or
very brief clips on the news. Watching a woman walk 300 yards
from her car, into a chapel, and then mill around, greeting guests
– all while maintaining a perfect, glassy stare into the middle
distance – was oddly unnerving.
“It would be nice if Victoria smiled,” Kirsty Young said.
“The Beckhams, there – clearly having a wonderful time,” Huw

Edwards sniped.
Had the Beckhams had a row? Did she have cystitis? Or perhaps
it was simply hunger – as later on in the service, when the
congregation sang Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer,
aka Bread of Heaven, she sang the word “bread” as if it was
something that had never occurred to her. “Bread?
I vaguelyrecall it. From the Nineties? Did I wear it?”
Similarly struggling with the service was actor Tom Hardy,

whom the cameras caught going, “Mwah bwah mwah bwah,”
during the Lord’s Prayer. At first I thought he might be an
atheist, refusing to pray – but thenI remembered his infamously
muffled delivery as the bemasked Bane in The Dark Knight
Rises, and realised: it wasn’t the mask that was muffling him at
all! This must be how he speaks all the time! Mystery solved!
On Twitter, the commentary had divided into certain gangs.

There were those who were against the whole event, full stop.
LGBT campaigner Peter Tatchell had already weighed in with a
festive, “The #RoyalWedding is escapist nonsense. A real-life
soap opera for those who fantasise about fame, riches, status &
fairy-tale romance. Good luck to Harry & Meghan but I am not
besotted by their nuptials. This wedding symbolises privilege &
unequal UK.”
Y’all let a black preacher in. You just bought

yourselves five more hours. Hope somebody brought
potato salad
Jeremy Corbyn was “totally Jeremy Corbyn”, and

tweeted hiscongratulations – to Labour’s new Lewisham East
candidate, Janet Daby. This effected the reaction that everything
Jeremy Corbyn does these days – making those who believe he’s
the socialist republican Gandalf hail him as a “total ledge”, and

those who hate him roll their eyes and go, “God, could he be any
more Jeremy Corbyn?”
ITV reporter Damon Green, meanwhile – who obviously hadn’t

got the call for a shift that day – tweeted: “Unbelievable drying
day. I estimate that if I select the appropriate wash cycles, I
could get as many as four loads on the line.”
There were those who were just totally into it:

Russell GladiatorCrowe let loose a heartfelt, “It feels like the
world has just paused for a moment to witness love. Let’s get
together and do this more often. Meghan is cool. Harry is real.
All happiness to them both.”
And then there were the ones who were celebratory, yet also still
taking care of business, eg, Yeo Valley’s official Twitter account,
which posted a picture of the company’s special-edition royal
wedding yoghurt with the message, “Congratulations to the new
Duke & Duchess of Sussex!”
Presumably there had been a bit of an argument at Yeo Valley

HQ over whether to continue the message with, “You know, love
is a little bit like a healthy gut biome. You have to feed it with
care, respect – and a daily helping of Lactobacillus
acidophilus, Bifidobacterium and Streptococcus thermophilus!

(Also comes in strawberry flavour.)”
But the biggest divide on Twitter made itself apparent halfway

through the wedding ceremony itself, with the address given by
the Most Rev Michael Curry.
The new Duke and Duchess of Sussex make their way through Windsor by carriage
REUTERS
We had all had an emotional moment – first with the arrival of

Harry and William, getting out of what looked like an Addison
Lee minicab and walking towards the chapel. It’s burnt on our
emotional memories that these boys once walked together, like
this, in front of a global audience of millions, behind their
mother’s coffin – an event that Harry later described,
forthrightly, as something “no child should ever have to do ...

under any circumstances”.
To see them now as happy, grown men – walking together, on a

better day – was undeniably moving, as was the arrival of
Meghan with her mother; brown and black women being
cheered by a crowd that has only ever seen white women being
greeted by fanfares, princes, princesses and archbishops. For the
first time since the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, Britain
looked like the open, welcoming, progressive, multiracial,
forward-looking nation so many of us believe it must be, to
remain one of the countries with any hope in the 21st century.
One in ten Britons are in mixed-race marriages. It’s nice to see
the royal family finally catching up.
Then the bishop took to the lectern and delivered a sermon that
split the audience right down the middle.
Taking the Song of Soloman as his starting point, he quoted

Martin Luther King – “When we discover the power of love, we
will make of this old world a new world” – and, over the
following 13 minutes, took that concept out for a run all around
the block, out into space, through time, and back to the chapel,
on a rolling surf of words.
It was occasionally messy, occasionally repetitive – there were

many moments where you wondered, heart in mouth, how he
was ever going to land it – but also fiercely impassioned, multi-
referenced, bold, righteous and from the heart. It was someone
with 40 years of preaching and campaigning under his belt,
thinking, feeling and talking, right in that moment, and as far
away from a dry Church of England reading from a rehearsed
text as it’s possible to get. In front of the entire British
establishment, he talked about slavery, power and love. It was a
genuinely explosive sermon.
Four minutes in, on Twitter – as the bishop exhorted us to think

of love as like a fire; fire itself has changed the world, invented
new technologies, and could we not now use love in the same
way, to change businesses, governments, the way we see each
other? – and pretty much everyone white was going, “Erm …
this guy’s a bit of a loose cannon. THIS ISN’T WHAT
USUALLY HAPPENS! I THINK THIS IS GOING WRONG!
STICK TO TRADITION! STOP THIS NOW!!!! I’M
EMBARRASSED!!!! WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT
LOVE???? THIS IS A WEDDING, FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!!!”
The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall leaving St George’s Chapel with
Doria Ragland
PA
Black Twitter, meanwhile, knew exactly what was happening:

the singer David Grant tweeting, “He just took the royal family
to CHURCH!!!!”, and Michael W Twitty, blogger at
Afroculinaria, tweeting, “Y’all done let a Black preacher up in
an English wedding … you just brought yourselves 5 more
hours. Hope somebody brought potato salad.”
Andie McDowell – as befitting an American actress who starred

in the peerlessly British Four Weddings and a Funeral – acted as
intermediary for the American and British audiences: “Hope the
Brits will ‘love’ this. It is very American, almost Southern
preaching. But Harry and Meghan look happy, and it was their
choice … I say way cool.”
Inside the chapel, the cameras caught these conflicting tides –

the sudden moment these two different worlds crashed up
against each other – on camera. Kate Middleton, Camilla Parker
Bowles, Princess Eugenie, Zara Tindall – women who have been
rigorously trained to sit through interminable hours of safe,
Church of England readings, not moving a muscle in their faces
– registered sheer “WTF?” Their eyes boggled. They caught
each other’s glances and giggled. Zara, heavily pregnant, looked
as if a UFO had just landed and several horses had galloped out
of it. The framework of their experience registered this as a
malfunction – someone was speaking elastically and with
passion, sleeves frequently catching the flame of the candles –
and this was, simply, an anomaly. It is not how anything has ever
been done, in a chapel, at a royal event.
But watching it at home, on TV – accompanied, on Twitter, by a

black audience, for whom this was entirely normal and proper –
I had a sudden, shivering moment of clarity.
I had started watching this wedding being absolutely sure the

person I was most intrigued by – the one whose story I was
invested in – was Meghan Markle. A mixed-race, anti-Trump
feminist campaigning against period poverty, mental health,
racism and sexism – that’s my girl, right there. I was all about
Meghan.
But in scriptwriting, in every film, there’s ever only one person

whose story it is – one person who is the central spine of the
narrative. And that person is the person who changes the most.
Who learns the most. The audience latches on to them – they are
the unknown ending we stick around to see, because, during the
film, we know they are going on a journey that will alter them.
We’re into the person who gets transformed – whether it’s by
love, in a love story, war, in a war film, or being able to pull off
a triumphant final number in a musical.
The couple leave for the Frogmore House reception in an electric Jaguar E-Type
GETTY IMAGES
And I thought – actually, this wedding, this romance – this

is really Prince Harry’s story. God knows the world is
underserved with women of colour attaining power and
happiness by dint of their own hard work and charisma.
This should be Meghan’s story. And yet, I have seen that story
before: fairytales are full of girls from unpromising backgrounds
who, finally, win their prince.
But never have I read, or seen, a story about the prince she wins:
the prince from an unhappy family who loses his mother and
spends years in chaos and misery. The prince who goes to war,
and takes from war not military glory and power – but, instead,
sets up the Invictus Games so that those who are injured might
find a new way to triumph. The prince who goes against all
narratives of masculinity, and is brave enough to speak openly
about his own emotional and mental problems, and
revolutionises the way we think of a heavily stigmatised illness.
The prince who rejects all the nice, blonde English girls he is
supposed to marry and finds a woman from a different continent
and culture, a woman who is emotionally stronger than him,
brighter than him, more confident than him – and gives her, in
front of a global audience of two billion people, hisplatform, to
show her world.
And the wedding was Meghan’s world. For an event filled with
the British establishment, the people there with the most cultural
power were all women of colour: Serena Williams, the most
successful tennis player of all time. Amal Clooney. Oprah
Winfrey. People whose power is so hot, inventive and
undeniable they have all recalibrated our idea of who it is that

succeeds; how it is we succeed; what we do with our success.
People with the billion-watt energy to reinvent our idea of what
it is to be human. And these women topped off by an African-
American preacher, descended from slaves, talking about
changing the world, because while the world of the white
establishment has not changed, materially, in 500 years – the
same castles, rituals, readings and pecking order – the world he,
and the women of colour in the congregation, come from, has.
The establishment’s existence rests on things not changing.
Those from Meghan’s world exist only on, and know
nothing but, change.
And that is what Harry married on Saturday. Change. He is the

first royal male to wear a wedding ring – Meghan Markle put a
ring on him. He is part of her narrative now – of change. What
happens to a prince who marries, and becomes, change? We
don’t know. It’s an entirely new story.
“Two young people fell in love – and we all showed up!” the
bishop said, four minutes in.
Looking around that chapel – the crowd outside, the audience on

Twitter – it was clear that “we” was a “we” that we have not
seen before. “We” are different, now. Who “we” are has
changed.

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13/6/2018 It was a week ago today… Caitlin Moran on Harry, Meghan and the royal wedding | The Times

ding | The Times Magazine | The Times

It was a week ago today…

The Times, May 26 2018, 12:01am

It was 11.56am on the morning of the royal wedding when the

At the time, we were watching Her Majesty turning up at St

The Queen’s wedding gift to Harry was easy – a quick

British viewers blinked and looked again. Did CNN know

The other CNN commentators made sympathetic sounds. Yes,

Meanwhile, in Britain, viewers were yelling, “Hang on! Princess

The Americans, we reflected, must have got the actual Queen

But then, in a way, this is an indication of how this £32 million

institution. They’re allowed to comment on it. We can’t be all

Or, as the CNN commentators encapsulated the whole incident,

Oprah’s bosoms looked like the centre of all power in

Of course, at the beginning of the wedding, none of this was

weather – horse chestnuts in full bloom; swifts screaming

We started off in a fudge shop. Of course. Nothing more British

“They say there are going to be 100,000 people here tomorrow –

Meanwhile, The One Show presenter Alex Jones was at some

Oprah Winfrey outside St George’s Chapel ahead of the service

Presenters Kirsty Young and Dermot O’Leary then showed us a

At 8pm, Kirsty and Dermot left us with shots of Windsor

Zara looked like a UFO had landed and several horses

When the very ordinary-looking coaches turned up to take the

By way of contrast, the first guests down Windsor’s cobbled

On CNN, Bonnie Greer knew what Oprah’s huge hat meant.

“That is a church hat,” she sighed, with satisfaction. “Oprah’s

Prince Harry awaits his bride’s arrival

The fact that the first people through St George’s rose-festooned

Amal Clooney, the Lebanese Druze human-rights lawyer, turned

“You can tell George Clooney is a good husband – walking nice

There was feminism everywhere.

The ’Pippa’s bum’ of this occasion turned out to be

All the outfits told stories. The Duchess of Cornwall turned up in

A similar tale was told in the outfit of Pippa Middleton. As we

Accordingly, at this wedding, Pippa was wearing a floral silky

bum, world. Nuh-uh.” For this occasion, Pippa’s bum was

In the event, the “Pippa’s bum” of this occasion turned out to be

“It would be nice if Victoria smiled,” Kirsty Young said.

“The Beckhams, there – clearly having a wonderful time,” Huw

Similarly struggling with the service was actor Tom Hardy,

On Twitter, the commentary had divided into certain gangs.

Y’all let a black preacher in. You just bought

Jeremy Corbyn was “totally Jeremy Corbyn”, and

the socialist republican Gandalf hail him as a “total ledge”, and

ITV reporter Damon Green, meanwhile – who obviously hadn’t

There were those who were just totally into it:

Presumably there had been a bit of an argument at Yeo Valley

acidophilus, Bifidobacterium and Streptococcus thermophilus!

But the biggest divide on Twitter made itself apparent halfway

We had all had an emotional moment – first with the arrival of

forthrightly, as something “no child should ever have to do ...

To see them now as happy, grown men – walking together, on a

Taking the Song of Soloman as his starting point, he quoted

It was occasionally messy, occasionally repetitive – there were

Four minutes in, on Twitter – as the bishop exhorted us to think

Black Twitter, meanwhile, knew exactly what was happening:

Andie McDowell – as befitting an American actress who starred

Inside the chapel, the cameras caught these conflicting tides –

But watching it at home, on TV – accompanied, on Twitter, by a

I had started watching this wedding being absolutely sure the

But in scriptwriting, in every film, there’s ever only one person