Meghan Markle’s new podcast tells us the same thing as Kate and Will’s house move

For the inaugural episode of her new podcast Archetypes, former actor and one-time royal Meghan Markle spoke to the recently retired tennis star Serena Williams. The one-hour conversation, called “The Misconception of Ambition”, aired on Tuesday, with Markle and Williams delving into what it means for women to be ambitious.

“I don’t remember ever personally feeling the negative connotation behind the word ‘ambitious’ until I started dating my now husband,” Markle said, in an apparent reference to the ways in which she was treated once she began a relationship with Prince Harry. “And apparently ambition is... a terrible, terrible thing: for a woman, that is, according to some. So, since I’ve felt the negativity behind it, it’s really hard to unfeel it. I can’t unsee it, either, in the millions of girls and women who make themselves smaller – so much smaller – on a regular basis.”

The exchange eventually turned to children and the ways in which men and women are treated differently once they become parents. “The double standard between how men and women are treated after having kids is so, so real,” Markle said in the episode’s narration. “I’ve felt it.”

Both Markle and Williams have children: Williams gave birth to her daughter Olympia in September 2017, while Markle had a son, Archie, in May 2019, and a daughter, Lilibet, in June last year. “People always ask me: ‘How do you do the mom/work balance?’” Williams said. “And even my husband [Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian] talks about this all the time. He’s like: ‘They never ask me that.’”

Williams recounted a time when her young daughter fell out of her high chair and broke her wrist, the day before her mother was due to play a match. “I was just basically devastated. Like, I literally couldn’t think,” she said. “I felt so guilty.” Williams got maybe half an hour of sleep that night and went on to win her match the next day. “I would drop anything at any time to do whatever I had to do for Olympia,” she added. “Middle of a Grand Slam final – I would leave if I had to.”

In response, Markle shared a story of her own: back in 2019, when she and Harry (at the time still members of the British royal family) did a tour in South Africa, the nursery in which their son Archie was supposed to be sleeping caught fire. The couple, Markle said, didn’t find out until they had returned from an official engagement. “And of course, as a mother, you go ‘oh, my God, what?’ Everyone’s in tears, everyone’s shaken,” she said. “And what do we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement? I said: ‘This doesn’t make any sense.’ I was like, ‘can you just tell people what happened?’”

I have never found it hard to understand why Markle and her husband chose to resign from their duties as royals – but if I did, this story would probably bring me some clarity. There is something so relatably frustrating about that situation. Being confronted with a problem that could easily be solved with a little bit of pragmatism (they could have released a statement explaining what had happened and pushed back official engagements until the next day) and being told it can’t be for completely amorphous reasons (optics, stiff upper lip, “it’s not the way things are done around here”) is uniquely infuriating. It’s a brief story, but it’s one that exemplifies the complete dysfunctionality of life as a royal: no, you can’t do this very simple thing that would help you exist as a human being. Why? Well, because if you do an illegitimate and outdated institution might… look a bit bad? Maybe? To some people with an odd concept of what “bad” means? We’re not really sure, but in any case, no!

It doesn’t help the royal family’s case that Markle’s podcast is airing at the same time as Kate Middleton and Prince William are moving to a new home in Windsor. The couple are taking up a third residence in order to give their children – George, Charlotte and Louis – “a bit more freedom than they have living in central London”, according to a royal source. They will, per PA, still “retain Kensington Palace’s Apartment 1A, which was refurbished with £4.5m of taxpayers’ money in 2013, as their official residence and their working base”. The vast expense of this refurbishment was justified to British taxpayers – the ones footing the bill – at the time because Kate, Will and their children were expected to make it their permanent home.

“But they will also keep their 10-bedroom Norfolk country mansion Anmer Hall, which was a gift from the Queen, has a swimming pool and tennis court and underwent large-scale building work at their own cost,” PA reported. “The downsizing to Adelaide Cottage, which is not considered vast, means William and Kate’s full-time nanny, Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo, will live elsewhere for the first time, as will other staff including the housekeeper and the chef.”

For an institution that runs on optics, this is a pretty interesting decision. I’m no publicity expert, but perhaps unelected, high-profile figures in a country facing a devastating housing crisis should avoid acquiring a third home (they also have a cottage on the Queen’s Balmoral estate in Scotland) in addition to their already palatial one when inflation starts to rise. Or, as Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic (an organisation that campaigns to end the monarchy in the UK) put it: “While ordinary households are struggling with their energy bills and facing crippling inflation, why are we giving yet another home to William and Kate? This is disgraceful.”

Of course, you can’t blame William and Kate for wanting to afford their children more privacy and a more normal existence. I understand that part. But the more I hear about the royal family these days, the more it seems clear that the monarchy isn’t working for anyone – including the royals themselves. And from what we’ve heard on her podcast, it’s clear Markle made the right decision when she cut and ran.