Meghan Markle dusts off Lady Di’s ghost at Buckingham Palace

London – For an entire generation of Britons, Diana of Wales is nothing more than a picture, a pop icon or, at least, the wayward actress in a television series. That generation is today shocked by the revelations of Meghan Markle, which sound familiar to many.

In the recent turbulent history of the House of Windsors, few events have caused more reputation problems than Lady Di’s 1995 BBC interview.

In it, he opened the channel to acknowledge that there were “three people” in his marriage (referring to Camilla Parker Bowles) and to confess that he had hurt himself out of desperation.

First, if that conversation showed anything, it was the iciness of Buckingham Palace, the inability to develop “normal” emotional relationships in it.

From that point of view, certain fragments of Meghan’s words on American television this Sunday seem like a copy of the words Lady Di spoke 26 years ago.

“I didn’t want to live anymore, and that was a very clear, real and constant thought, which was scary,” the Duchess of Sussex told Oprah Winfrey who attended her revelations with her mouth open.

“You have so much pain inside that you try to hurt yourself on the outside because you need help, but you are asking for the wrong help,” Diana admitted to journalist Martin Bashir in 1995.

Meghan: “I went to one of the highest people to seek help. (But) they told me I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution ”.

Diana: “I screamed for help, but I gave the wrong signals, and people used my bulimia as an excuse: they decided that was my problem, that I was unstable.”

Lady Di, who would die less than two years later in an accident in Paris while fleeing the paparazzi with her boyfriend Dodi al Fayed, protested that the postpartum depression she suffered after the birth of Guillermo allowed everyone to create a ‘wonderful label’. places: unstable and unbalanced.

That perception, she said at the time, was even shared by her husband, Prince Charles.

And it is here where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Enrique and Meghan, mark the true point of difference between two stories that sometimes resemble water droplets.

Because in the ordeal of the old American actress on this occasion a husband appears who, warned by so much suffering, manages to save his wife’s fate of her mother.

‘I think he saved us all. In the end, she made the decision to find a way out for us and (her son) Archie, ‘noted Meghan, before turning to Harry to say,’ You made a decision that certainly saved my life. And that of all of us ”.

In case there were any doubts in this search for contrast, Enrique himself later admits that he was very disappointed in his father “because he went through something similar”.

Few will now be surprised to find out that Buckingham is an ice palace. Diana of Wales made it clear before she died, and even those not born then had many doubts.

Courtiers and the pro-Queen Elizabeth II press allege that Meghan Markle could not ignore the restrictions on entering the business (as the Royal Household is known in the UK) when she decided to marry the prince.

And even less with the precedent set by Diana, who, all in all, was much more popular and loved than Meghan.

But the reality is that the palace is facing another earthquake, in perhaps more precarious circumstances than in 1995.

Prince Felipe, husband of the Queen and her great emotional mainstay, is admitted and is about to live to be a hundred years old, Elizabeth II herself, despite good health, is already 94 years old, and her son and heir, Carlos, is haven’t gained so much popularity since his then wife shook the foundations of Buckingham.