Royal Wimbledon moment that changed everything

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Ahhh, Wimbledon.
The quintessence of British summer - strawberries and Pimms and Little Britain's David Walliams inexplicably being invited to the Royal box.
But it was right there in the SW19 that a particularly disastrous chapter in the short and definitely not sweet story of Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex, jobbing HRH and trooper paid to rep the crown, played out.
Only six months after it happened, Meghan's royal career and that of her husband Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex - would come a cropper.
It was, ironically, US Independence Day, July 4 in 2019 and if ever there was someone who needed a day out at that time, it was new mother Meghan.
Barely a year after the Sussexes' wedding the dizzying high of public adoration had plunged to a certain sour tenor with the fault lines between them and William and Kate, then the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, coming into view.
So, on the day, Meghan arrived at the tournament with her university friends Genevieve Hillis and Lindsay Roth to watch Serena Williams play. It should have just been a nice bit of sunshine with maybe a sneaky G&T squeezed in - instead it would be a PR debacle exhaustively dissected in the UK press.
What played out was this. Arriving at court one (not centre court where the royal box is) for a reason that has never been explained, the duchess, her friends and a few staffers were not just given good spots but watched the match from the middle of about 30 empty seats.
There were a whole heap of empty seats around Megan. Picture: James Veysey/Shutterstock
It was a conspicuous difference to when Kate, The Princess of Wales, had attended Wimbledon only a couple of days beforehand, happily sitting in the back row of court 14 surrounded by tennis fans all hopefully wearing enough Rexona to handle the heat.
The contrast between the two royal WAGS could not have come at a worse time.
Then, things got more controversial during the match when Meghan's security were seen to approach people nearby who raised their phones in her vicinity, 'ordering them,' according to the Telegraph, to not take photos as she was there in a 'private capacity'.
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Pippa Middleton attend Wimbledon 2019. Picture:The catch - Buckingham Palace itself had reportedly earlier sent out an operational note confirming the Duchess of Susex was going and how much privacy, the press would later argue, could Meghan expect, when she had chosen to sit in a stadium with 12,000 other spectators and live BBC cameras?
It all looked heavy-handed, especially when some of the people spoken to by royal bodyguards then started popping up in the papers.
Grandfather Hasan Hasanov was 'warned off' by the duchess' protection officers, The Sun reported at the time, only for it to turn out Hasanove had 'no idea' the duchess was theremand had actually been taking a selfie.
Kate and Meghan pictured together at the 2019 Wimbledon Championships. Picture: Ben Curtis / POOL / AFP
Also in the crowd was Sally Jones, a former sports presenter for the BBC, who was left 'utterly confused,' per The Daily Mail.
'I felt this tap on my shoulder and was asked not to take pictures of the Duchess – but I had no idea she was there until then,' Jones has said.
'There were around 200 photographers
snapping away at her but security were sent to warn an old biddy like me.'
Let's be clear. As far as royal disasters go, we aren't exactly talking about Tampongate here or Squidgygate or Nazi uniform-gate or naked billiards in Las Vegas-gate or any time a certain young HRH managed to make a bit of a tit of themselves exiting a nightclub.
But the thing about the Wimbledon mess was that it added fuel to the already crackling fire around the Sussexes and for months the press had reported the Duchess of Sussex was 'demanding'.
We now know that behind the scenes, in 2019, Meghan was privately going through the most extreme mental suffering, later telling Oprah Winfrey that royal life had left her suicidal and that she 'didn't want to be alive anymore'.
Things were different back then. Picture: Ben Curtis / POOL / AFP
During one royal engagement earlier in January 2019, the duchess told Winfrey, 'every time that those lights went down in that Royal Box, I was just weeping, and he was gripping my hand.'
At one stage the Duchess of Sussex said she had only ' left the house twice in four months' and 'I could not [have felt] lonelier'.
She told Winfrey of royal life, 'It's nothing like what it looks like.'
But no one knew any of this back in 2019, only that the public love-in with the Sussexes had gone off the rails as they were buffeted by a series of public relations messes.
There had been months of stories about things being not so very merry between Meghan and Kate; a media circus after Meghan flew to New York to be feted by friends with an A-list baby shower; and the ongoing drama of her estrangement with her father Thomas Markle.
Meghan's move sparked controversy. Picture: Ben STANSALL / AFP
In April the Sussexes moved away from Kensington Palace to Frogmore Cottage, with a stream of stories about the $4 million plus of taxpayer money used to renovate their new home.
(Side note- years before, William and Kate spent $9 million of public cash to do up their apartment at Kensington Palace.)
In May came the clumsy handling of son Archie (now Prince Archie's) birth, the Palace announcing that the duchess had gone into labour - only for it turn out that the bub had actually already been born hours earlier.
In June, Harry and Meghan formally split from the charity foundation he had set up with brother Prince William a decade earlier.
Less than two weeks after that came Wimbledon and then a day after that, the Palace would announce that, contrary to usual royal form, the Sussexes would not reveal their son's godparents.
In August they would take four private jet flights in ten days despite Harry publicly banging the drum about the climate crisis.
Kate stunned at Wimbledon back in 2019. Picture: Ella Pellegrini
Kate pictured at Wimbledon in July 2025. Picture: AP Photo/Kin Cheung
However, the benefit of hindsight and six hours of the Sussexes' talking to camera and the 400 pages of Harry's book, is that we now know that actually in 2019, they were having a horrible time of it.
They were struggling to strike some sort of bargain between the competing forces of their mental health, the public demands of royalty, living in the captivity of the monarchy and struggling with a deeply hierarchical Firm that believed in only the stiffest of upper lips at all times.
It is now clear, the centre could not hold. The crescendo came months later when 'Megxit' would become a noun and a verb.
If you really want some heavy-handed symbolism, six years later, on July 4 2025, the Duchess of Sussex proudly marked what is American Independence Day.
Daniela Elser is writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years' experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles
Originally published as Meghan's Royal Wimbledon moment that changed everything