The pictures published around the world this week of Meghan Markle snuggling son Archie to her chest while Kate Middleton played with her three children nearby and both women watched their husbands compete in a polo match were a heartwarming and, most consumers of the international media might assume, candid portrait of the royals at play.
Well, much as one hates to be a killjoy, the fact is that these photos were just as meticulously staged as were the notorious photographs of Thomas Markle lifting weights on a municipal waste site, checking websites about the British monarchy, and getting measured for a suit.
The pictures were taken with long lenses by photographers kept at a decent distance to give an illusion of candor, but a select band of photographers were authorized to be there and briefed, just as they are for this same event every year, on exactly where the royals would be parked and in what time window they would like to be snapped.
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Meghan and Kate knew they were being photographed and played happy families to perfection. The young royal wives of Windsor shrewdly used the polo game to present a united front to counter the feud rumor—one picture showed Meghan and Archie in the foreground and Kate pulling a face at Louis behind her.
While it was refreshing to see some evidence of joined-up thinking at the rival courts at last, it struck a curious contrast to a story that exploded in the British press this week alleging that Meghan’s security team, apparently embarrassed at being asked to do so, told a man at Wimbledon to stop taking photos of her, only for pictures to show that he was actually taking a selfie.
To be fair, it did look from Meghan’s perspective like the man was holding the phone right up in front of her, but, as it turned out, this fellow had the good manners not to thrust his camera in people’s faces.
The debacle with the selfie guy didn’t deter Meghan’s team from continuing their campaign against anyone wielding a phone at Court No. 1, where Meghan’s pal Serena Williams was playing.
Journalist Sally Jones claimed she was awkwardly asked not to take pictures of Meghan, who was seated 15 seats to her left and several rows in front of her, by an embarrassed bodyguard.
Jones, a sportswriter who competed at the tournament in her youth, said she was asked if she would refrain, “as the duchess was there in a private capacity.”
Writing about the incident in The Daily Mail, Jones said: “Half-amused, half-angry, I pointed out to the officer how barmy this seemed—and asked him why he had not also tried to control the 200-odd punters around the court joyously clicking away and posting the results to Facebook, or the BBC’s cameras which had briefly switched away from the court to record the Duchess’s presence.
“I even mentioned the vast contrast between this control freakery, so alien to typical royal behaviour, and the Duchess of Cambridge’s calm, restrained demeanour two days earlier when there were plenty of amateur snappers, thrilled to encounter their idol with not a shoulder-tap in sight.”
The general consensus is that Meghan made what tennis pros call an unforced error here. Picking their battles shrewdly when it comes to privacy is essential for the royals, and trying to prevent someone taking a photo of you in a public place, where they have the perfect legal right to do so, and there are multiple press photographers anyway, is completely crazy.
To do so, and then take part in what is effectively a staged shoot the following week, with your newborn kid whose right to privacy is what you are presumably seeking to defend, does not help to convey a message of authenticity either.
