See Meghan Markle's Stunning New Photoshoot and Intensely Private Revelations About Post-Royal Life
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Meghan opens up about her family's life in Montecito, Calif. and the one feature of their new home that sealed the deal for the former royals.
The Duchess of Sussex opened up about her post-royal life in an exclusive interview for the The Cut, for which she opened the doors to her home and invited journalist Allison P. Davis to observe a normal day for her family.
The article was accompanied by a stunning photoshoot that saw Meghan pose in a series of breathtaking outfits and jewels. Our favorite was the one in which she wore a black dress with a plunging neckline and a pearl necklace.
Describing Duchess Meghan and Prince Harry’s $14 Million California mansion as "the kind of big that startles you into remembering that unimaginable wealth is actually someone’s daily reality," Davis wrote that their home reminded her of a “Tuscan villa, a Napa vineyard, and a Beverley Hills country club” all at once.
For her part, Meghan seems to have found a measure of peace and contentment within the confines of this house and its grounds—which she described as “healing”—following the years of chaos generated by ‘Sussexit’ as well as the years preceding the moment that she and her husband stepped back as senior royals.
Related: Duchess Meghan Recounts Horrifying Fire in Archie's Bedroom and 'Amazing Nanny' Who Saved Him
Their 2018 wedding was like something out of a fairytale. But there was never any fantasy for the couple who exchanged their vows at the altar before a TV audience of 1.9 billion viewers—only successive layers of sad reality that resulted in both Meghan and Harry’s estrangement from their respective fathers.
Meghan said that the “toxic tabloid culture” that fostered a cruel obsessiveness with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex led to Harry telling her, “‘I lost my dad in this process.’”
She also criticized the structure within the royal family that expected her to grant the royal rota (the press pool that covers the British royal family) the right to release photos of her children before the Sussexes themselves.
“Why would I give the very people that are calling my children the N-word a photo of my child before I can share it with the people that love my child?” she said, going on, “You tell me how that makes sense and then I’ll play that game.”
Now they are busy rebuilding their lives in the Montecito house that features a swimming pool, a chicken coop and ‘many terraces.’
Related: Duchess Kate and William Are Moving Their Kids Out of London
They didn’t want to view the house at first, Meghan said, because they hadn’t yet secured the million-dollar contracts with Spotify and Netflix that would give the couple their financial independence. Eventually they cracked, and having toured the house’s grounds decided that they had to have it—without having seen the inside yet!
What might have swung the decision for the couple was the presence of two palm trees joined at the trunk, which Harry described to Meghan as “us” when they first viewed the house. Now their 3-year-old son Archie says hi to “Momma” and “Papa” whenever he walks by the trees.
Meghan also referred to herself and Harry as “salt and pepper”, which should always be passed at the table together. “That’s me and Harry. We’re like salt and pepper. We always move together.” Meanwhile, Meghan and Harry are currently teaching manners to Archie. “We always tell him, ‘manners make the man.’”
The couple are busy with their various enterprises —Meghan’s podcast ‘Archetypes’ that has just launched, their nonprofit Archewell—but their main job right now is raising their two children, Archie and one-year-old Lilibet, who Davis described as “unsmiling with watchful bright-blue eyes” on the day that she visited.
Related: Prince Harry and Meghan Are Back! Everything We Know About Their Upcoming Trip to the UK
Meghan also opened up about the bittersweetness of her and Harry’s return to the UK earlier this year, when she had the chance to retrieve some of their belongings from their home of Frogmore Cottage in the grounds of Windsor Castle. (Prince William and Duchess Kate, incidentally, have just moved into Adelaide Cottage on the same estate.)
The way Meghan described opening drawers in the cottage and finding her journals and socks, untouched from the day that the Sussexes left for Canada and subsequently the U.S., had echoes of a time warp. Still in Frogmore Cottage were the items she’d had shipped from her former home in Toronto, like her sofa and IKEA-framed art prints.
The $3 million of taxpayers’ money that Frogmore Cottage cost to renovate saw the critical stories about the couple intensify, even if most of them were untrue—there were no yoga studios with floating floors or gold bathtubs. Sussexit came after the couple’s request to no longer be funded by taxpayers (to be financially independent) while still working for and representing Queen Elizabeth II was denied.
“That, for whatever reason, is not something that we were allowed to do, even though several other members of the family do that exact thing,” Meghan said, which lead Davis to ask, “Why do you think that is?”
But Meghan left Davis, and the reader, to figure that out for themselves: “Why do you think that is?” she retorted.
She also spoke about the importance of forgiveness, but was careful to state that “it takes a lot of effort to forgive.”
She went on, “I’ve really made an active effort, especially knowing that I can say anything,” adding, “I have a lot to say until I don’t. Do you like that? Sometimes, as they say, the silent part is still part of the song.”
Next up, Can You Visit Princess Diana's Grave—And What Dress Was She Buried In?
