'British criticism of Meghan has always been: witch! It's not subtle'

The first episode of Meghan of Montecito’s lifestyle show With Love, Meghan aired this week on Netflix: the duchess’s latest moonshot at the appearance of a perfect life.

- TANYA GOLD

When I think of Meghan, I think: before she was an actress, she was a calligrapher, which is a search for beauty — for perfection — in the mundane, and there is something touching, and heartbreaking, about that. Due to a media as obsessed with royalty as it is unwilling to admit how unhealthy this is — princesses sell, dead princess sell more — Meghan is now an archetype, a thing, existing to be projected onto, and controlled. This is the royal fate. You can buy a Prince William doll on Amazon, or an Elizabeth II puzzle. They are toys, and, if they don’t want to go mad, they must know they are toys.

Meghan, raised in meritocratic America, obviously doesn't like this — who would?— and so With Love, Meghan should be called Meghan Fights Back (with salads) and Profits from the Content Herself! They need the money to pay for security; that is the essential fact of their lives. But she doesn't have the confidence to be this honest, and that is the most irritating thing about her: I should like to see her rage. I want honesty from royals, not play-acting, but I am a republican.

With Love, Meghan is silly and heartbreaking, but I don’t usually watch cookery shows born in the billionaire enclaves of California. It ties in with a line of yet-to-be-released lifestyle goods, once called American Riviera Orchard — a satnav destination for a fantasist — now renamed As Ever, which reads like a surrender from the perennially depressed. In the first episode Meghan tends bees, which she both envies and fears, and this is telling. "It’s beautiful to be this connected," she says, looking at them.