Meghan Markle has become, in a few years, much more than a royal figure: she embodies a radical transformation of public communication. Coming from the world of series, she is well-versed in the narrative codes of Hollywood storytelling. She has brought into the British monarchy a culture of reactive, emotive, and highly viral imagery. Thus, the release of a video where she dances, pregnant, in a hospital room is not just a simple intimate bravado. It is a symptom of a new grammar of exposure.
However, this grammar disrupts symbolic landmarks. Monarchies, long built on rarity, ritual, and distance, must contend with the logics of the digital flow. Yet, this flow devours, recycles, and dilutes symbolic signals. The image ceases to be an attribute of power to become a product to consume. It replaces official speech, weakens hierarchies, and confuses the intimate with the institutional.
A media personality with institutional effects
Meghan Markle embodies a shift: from the royal figure to the autonomous media personality. She imposes her narratives, chooses her appearances, and thwarts the classic timelines of monarchical communication. Thus, the strategy of exposure aims not only to produce visibility but to destabilize the norms of symbolic governance.
Yet, these individual choices have collective effects. By breaking the slow and sacralized rhythm of the royal institution, Meghan Markle introduces a competing logic. She weakens Buckingham’s monopoly on royal storytelling. Moreover, she reinforces a dynamic of personalization. Thus, the royal figure becomes an influencer among others, subject to algorithms and audiences.
A monarchical governance in rewriting
The British monarchy, under the reign of Charles III, attempts to restore a fragile stability. But it must contend with a new media environment. The narrative of the crown is no longer built through silence, solemnity, and verticality. It is contested on social networks, where immediacy takes precedence over tradition.
Thus, Meghan Markle‘s media strategies reveal an institutional flaw: the difficulty for contemporary monarchies to regulate their image in a decentralized media space. This flaw questions the very durability of monarchical power, founded on continuity and reserve. It questions the ability of inherited institutions to withstand the fragmentation of perception.
A democratic laboratory?
The evolution of the couple Harry and Meghan can be analyzed as a laboratory for observing the tensions between inherited power and contemporary influence. Their choices crystallize current debates on legitimacy: is it still necessary to descend from a lineage to be heard? Or is it enough to know how to capture attention?
However, this reconfiguration is not neutral. It redraws the boundaries of the political, blurs roles, and introduces a commodification of the royal image. It transforms the monarchy into a cultural product, alongside series or advertising campaigns. Yet, this trivialization weakens the Crown’s capacity for symbolic embodiment.
The screen against the scepter
Meghan Markle has not destroyed the monarchy. But she has revealed its vulnerabilities in the face of the contemporary world. By shifting the power from the scepter to the screen, she has moved the axes of authority. She forces institutions to think about the balance between visibility and legitimacy, between transparency and longevity.
The society of buzz is not just a spectacle ground. It is a new battlefield for institutions that still want to embody stability. And in this shifting field, Meghan Markle dances, but also imposes her steps.