Katelyn Levesque

11/29/17

 

2017 marks an important year for Americans. The first official engagement of an American and a British monarch has just been announced from earlier this month. The last American to marry into the British monarchy was in 1937 when the Duke of Windsor married Wallis Simpson. This engagement wasn’t officially announced nor did the two announce it themselves to the public.

 

The engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is very important and unlike any other engagement in the British monarchy ever for many reasons.

 

Unlike Prince Harry’s older brother Prince William and wife Kate Middleton who were together for 7 years before getting engaged, Harry and Markle were together for 16 months before he popped the question. Meghan Markle has been married before and is now a divorcee, and Harry asked his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, for her permission to marry of course and she is expected to attend the wedding in spring 2018. Markle is also a mixed race person. Her mother is African-American and her father is White.

 

Even though this may be very different from past engagements, there are some minor similarities. There was another British monarch to get engaged to an American but it was not official, as mentioned earlier. They are expected to be having a short engagement, like most royalty does. Becoming a royal does have it’s duties that the Queen will expect from her like going to charity events, which she is no stranger to anyways.

 

One thing that Markle has  done is leave her 7 season show “Suits”. We don’t know for sure if it was her choice or one of the duties for the new coming royal.

 

Because Markle is not royalty or have royal blood in her, she can not get the title of Princess when she is married to Prince Harry. If they have children, their children can get the titles of Princes or Princesses.

 

Meghan Markle has been known to be an American activist, a promoter of gender equality, and a home for some rescue dogs. She has very impressively stayed out of the drama of her relationships with Prince Harry, which is not uncommon for people associated with royalty but surprising because she is an American.

 

When interviewed, both of the newly weds were saddened to hear that the world thought more about the races and religious backgrounds of the two, instead of thinking about their happiness in itself.

 

Prince Harry said in an interview that having them both be significantly different in many different ways was the perfect way to describe how the Monarchy actually runs, not some distorted all perfect Monarchy that most people imagine it to be.

 

They have both made sure to mention many times in their interviews that they are deeply in love and since they started off their relationship in private, and continued to keep it that way for 5/6 months, it helped them have more time to get to know eachother better. This is one of the reasons they got engaged so fast.

 

The couple are doing very well settling as a newly engaged pair in their small cottage near Prince Harry’s older brother, Prince William.