In Prince Harry’s book, Spare, the Duke of Sussex recounted the time his wife told her sister-in-law she was a victim of “baby brain” during Louis’ pregnancy. A fall in style that, from Meghan, we just didn’t expect.
The promotion of Prince Harry’s book, Spare, has come alive with media coverage that rivals the Pulitzer Prizes: only on the evening of 8 January, the Duke of Sussex was the protagonist, a few hours later, of two exclusive interviews on British ITV and American CBS. And the next few hours will be no less excited. The biography, officially released on January 10, was mysteriously leaked and even arrived in Spanish bookstores earlier than expected and already on sale: in short, no one has officially read the prince’s 400 pages of memoirs yet, but it’s as if reading collection of the hottest excerpts from the book had given everyone the power to comment, review and analyze its content.
Among the most interesting excerpts from Spare – The Minor there are many that concern the relationship between Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton, which we now know never really worked except in favor of the camera. According to the prince, in 2018, the year of his wedding with Meghan and the birth of the third child of the then Dukes of Cambridge, Louis, his wife would have made a comment to Kate, who complained of having a poor memory and often forgetting details.
“You are a victim of baby brain,” Markle would have said to her sister-in-law, literally making her furious. So much so that, a few weeks after the royal wedding, celebrated with great pomp in Windsor on May 19, the two couples would have met in Kensington Palace to make peace. “We’re not close enough for you to talk about my hormones!” Kate would have said to Meghan, completely beside herself, as can be seen from Prince Harry’s story. Markle, for her part, would have been amazed at her sister-in-law’s anger, justifying her comment as the result of a substantial cultural difference between the US and the United Kingdom: “I would have said the same thing to my American friends”. Not enough excuses, it seems, to calm the waters: in the book we read that the reconciliation meeting would have ended with Prince William ready to point the finger at Meghan to defend his wife, visibly upset by the confrontation.
But Does The Baby Brain Really Exist?
Let’s start with science: according to many researches, the baby brain mentioned by Meghan Markle is a real condition of women during and immediately after pregnancy, a sort of cognitive fog which, generated by the great hormonal changes that the woman’s body undergoes during a pregnancy , would lead to moments of poor memory and recurring confusion.
The lack of sleep and the apprehension for the birth would be among the causes reported by the latest scientific research regarding this type of mental fog: Meghan’s comment to Kate is not incorrect from a medical-scientific point of view, but it certainly has another touched particularly fragile strings of the sister-in-law, who felt violated by the reference to her hormones, so much so that she harbored anger and resentment over the issue even in the following weeks.
From a human point of view, Meghan’s comment clashes with what the Duchess of Sussex has shown the public in recent years: the portrait of a woman who is a friend of women, close to the feminist cause and a healthy bearer of tolerance and inclusion.
Although the baby brain has entered the scientific literature relating to the “side effects” of a pregnancy, defining a woman based on her hormones and the way they work in an atypical period such as the one in which a child is expected can be offensive . If we add the cultural and personal differences between two women who are light years away in terms of backgrounds, attitudes and ways of doing things, the situation becomes explosive.
It is not known whether it was this comment that forever damaged relations between Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton, but, to date, thanks to Spare, we have a better picture before us to understand what was the context that led to the inevitable break up.
This article is originally published on cosmopolitan.com
