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Meghan Markle and Prince Harry share the same romantic working habit as a pair of the prince's royal ancestors, a recent interview has revealed.
In a startlingly candid interview given by Meghan to The Cut—a subsidiary title of New York magazine—released on Monday, it was revealed that the duchess and Harry oversee their business empire from the same home office where they sit side-by-side behind one large desk.
This echoes the example set by the prince's great-great–great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, and her beloved husband Prince Albert who famously worked from two adjoining writing desks throughout their marriage.
The revelation about the Sussexes' working practices is a small but romantic detail included in Meghan's interview which also covered the more serious subjects of the couple's relationships with the British royal family and media.
The interview was conducted at the couple's Montecito, California, mansion where they have settled with their two young children, Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1, after leaving the U.K. and stepping away from their roles as working royals in 2020.
Information about the Sussexes' working lives was provided in the interview as Harry and Meghan have launched an independent schedule of charity and social engagements since moving to the U.S. which will also include a brief return to Britain next week to attend events connected with organizations they champion.
Referring to the couple's organization Archewell, which was founded in October 2020 to "put compassion into action," journalist Allison P. Davis, who conducted the interview with Meghan wrote:
"The two run Archewell from their shared home office, specifically from two plush club chairs placed side by side behind a single desk, facing into the room like thrones."
The writer then revealed Harry's belief that his collaborative working practice with his wife is not something that is shared widely among his family members, with whom he has reportedly had strained relations since moving to the U.S.
"'Most people that I know and many of my family, they aren't able to work and live together,' Harry says in passing as I take a peek at their command center," Davis wrote, before adding: "He enunciates family with a vocal eye roll."
"'It's actually really weird because it'd seem like a lot of pressure. But it just feels natural and normal,'" the prince is then quoted as saying.
Despite Harry's comment, there is at least one couple in the history of the British royal family who relished working side-by-side in the same manner.
When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in February 1840 she did so as the first ruling queen to take a husband since Mary Tudor. There were concerns among her government, including the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, that Albert would rule over his wife and become a de facto king, though they underestimated the young queen's strong-mindedness.
At first, Albert was kept largely out of the queen's official royal working life, however, during her first pregnancy and the subsequent eight pregnancies after that, the prince became heavily relied upon for his input, even if it was Victoria's signature on all the official documents.
The couple first made an attempt at working together just days after their wedding ceremony. During a stay at Windsor Castle, Victoria wrote in her journal that the newlyweds "sat in my large sitting-room; he at one table, and I at another, and we both tried to write, I my journal, and Albert a letter."
The queen recounts that the exercise was a failure because "it ended always in talking."
This was rectified though by November where the couple's desks at the castle were intimately moved side-by-side. This was replicated in their residences at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, Balmoral Castle and Buckingham Palace.
Writing in her diary from the palace in the weeks before giving birth to her first child, Victoria states that: "After luncheon we went to my large room, which Albert has arranged differently, & placed our 2 writing tables, next to each other, as at Windsor."
When Albert died in 1861, Victoria had his desks preserved for the duration of her life. Today, at Osborne House, visitors can still see the couple's two writing desks side-by-side, kept as they were when Victoria herself died in 1901.
Meghan's interview with The Cut included a number of other anecdotes about the Sussexes' romantic and family lives, one of them being Harry's symbolic attachment to two connected palm trees at the Montecito property that they call home.
"'One of the first things my husband saw when we walked around the house was those two palm trees,'" Meghan told Davis.
'"See how they're connected at the bottom? He goes, 'My love, it's us.' And now every day when Archie goes by us, he says, 'Hi, Momma. Hi, Papa.''"
The couple's visit to Europe will take place from September 5 to 8 including two charity events in Britain as well as a trip to Germany to celebrate the one-year way-point to the 2023 Invictus Games scheduled to take place in Dusseldorf.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more