The Duchess of Sussex turns 37 years old on August 4th, this coming Saturday. This will be her first birthday as a duchess, although I’m reminded of the fact that Prince Harry took Meghan on holiday this time last year, and I’ve always believed he proposed to her during that vacation. As in, I still think the story of his proposal at Nottingham Cottage was nothing but a lie. But whatever. Anyway, Meghan’s birthday. Did you know that Meghan has the same birthday as the late Queen Mum?
Meghan Markle‘s 37th birthday on August 4 is a big day for the royal family. Not only does it mark Meghan’s first official birthday as the Duchess of Sussex, it’s also the birthday of another important royal: the late Queen Mum, Queen Elizabeth‘s beloved mother.
The Queen Mum, born Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon on August 4, 1900, was an important member of the royal family. One of nine children, she was intelligent and well-educated, and spoke French fluently by age 10 after receiving home-schooling lessons, according to the royal family’s official website. She met her husband, then Prince Albert, in her late teens and they married in 1923. The couple’s first daughter, Princess Elizabeth was born in 1926, and their second, Princess Margaret, in 1930.
Yes, People Magazine did this huge spread on why Meghan’s birthday is special to the Queen because Meg shares the same birthday as Queen Elizabeth II’s dearly departed mother. Do you think QEII has even made that association? I doubt it. That being said, People Magazine had another story about how Meghan and Harry will totally go to Balmoral this summer to spend some time with the Queen.
Royals on holiday! With Queen Elizabeth settling into her long vacation at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, travel plans for other members of the Windsor clan are coming together. For their first summer together as husband and wife, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will have much of the coming weeks to themselves (following the wedding of Harry’s good friend Charlie van Straubenzee this weekend!).
The newlyweds will likely head to Scotland to join the Queen for a few days, as is customary for royal family members during the summer holiday. The Queen, 92, expects everyone to join in the festivities at some point before she heads back to London in early October.
It will be Meghan’s first visit to the estate since her wedding, and she will be expected to immerse herself in everything from outdoor picnics and barbecues to joining her husband hunting or stalking deer (an activity the animal-loving former actress may decline!). In Scotland, the rhythm of daily life is very different. Long walks in the heather amid the nibbling midges are also likely to be on the vacation to-do list, while inside the castle there are traditional parties and dances.
There will be lots of outdoor fun, but Meghan won’t have to get her hands too dirty. At the loch-side barbecues, all the food and equipment is laid out by footmen who then are required to exit the scene so that a member of the family can take over as if they had done all the preparations (in the past it was always Prince Philip), according to Brian Hoey’s At Home With the Queen. At family picnics, the same footmen lay the tables and arrange the food, cutlery and china and then “move to a discreet distance where they can keep an eye on things and be within calling range if needed….The Queen pours the tea but that is the extent of her culinary efforts.”
I remember reading People Magazine back in the day, and finding out that Diana absolutely loathed being in Balmoral for the annual royal-summer holiday. Charles would make Diana and the boys spend, like, two months at Balmoral every year. Notice that William and Harry don’t spend that kind of time in Scotland now that they have a choice. William and Kate have barely spent any time at Balmoral during their marriage – in fact, the last time they went, I seem to remember that the Queen had to bribe them in some way. My guess is that Harry and Meghan won’t need to be bribed, but that they’ll only stay at Balmoral for a week, tops.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Backgrid, Avalon Red.
I love lazy vacations, but that sounds boring as hell.
It sounds nice… for a couple of days lol. I love family vacations, we take them all the time, but we do NOT have to have our “company manners” on at all times! lol. Can you imagine Meghan coming down to breakfast in her robe or jammies? Complete with bedhead? LOLOL. Yeah, no. Didn’t Diana once say you had many multiple outfit changes a day? Dress for breakfast, then for the morning walk, then change for the morning activity, change for lunch, then change again for the afternoon’s activity, then change again for tea, then once more (to more formal wear) for dinner. And of course, you get up and go to bed, begin and finish eating on the Queen’s schedule!
Yeah… I could take that 2-3 days MAX. Then, I’d be outta there! lol. Or perhaps we could think about a Hide-In-The-Heathers baby? 😊
I could not do four outfit changes a day! And walking through heather sounds like my nightmare. I don’t even think I could do the horizontal mambo in a field. City girl for life!
Balmoral sounds amazing… if you could do whatever you want. Wear comfy clothes, read all the books I’ve bought (but never have time to read), have people bring me food, while playing outside whenever it suited me? Sign me UP! It would be glamping turned up to 100!
Unfortunately, I imagine it’s not nearly as freewheeling as that. Outfit changes, schedules, and unending protocol would suck out most of the fun for me.
On the thing with the meals that’s only if you are eating with Lilabet. My money is on them staying with Charles at Birkhall ‘cottage’ anyway
ETA It will not be the Duke and Duchess going to Scotland anyway it will be the Earl and Countess of Dumbarton
@Enn – according to some of Diana’s bios, the Balmoral vacays drove her crazy, and she fled after a short while the very August after she married Prince Charles, and when asked why, said, “Boring. Raining.”
Of course, the year before, when she was still hot on Charles’s trail and got invited up to Balmoral to help her sister, Jane, with her first baby, she gushed over how beautiful it was, went walkin’ and fishin’, impressed everyone with her country girl aura . . . until she got the ring on her finger. Then it was back to the urban Sloane Square life that was her real persona.
Didn’t care but she has the same birthday as Barack Obama.
Isnt it tthe same late Queen Mum who wanted to marry the Prince of Wales, but he fell for Wallis Simpson and she ended up marrying his brother Bertie?
I don’t know about the Queen Mum wanting to marry the Prince of Wales, but he didn’t meet Wallis until 1931.
Bertie, Elizabeth’s father, had to propose to the Queen Mum three times. She didn’t want that royal life. When she finally said yes, she did so with no inkling that her brother-in-law would abdicate or that Wallis Smith would be the reason. In fact, Wallis Smith and her husband didn’t become royal hangers-on until well after Elizabeth was born.
And Meghan’s bestie Abigail Spencer who was born the exact same day as Meghan .There is a 3 hour difference between them .
Also, on the day MM arrived in the world, it was the same day ( a year later!!!!!) William was christened at Buckingham Palace. Both Diana and baby William were miserable. Charles was uncomfortable with William’s crying and made stupid faces when Diana consoled William.
Diana made a few faces at Charles too. Not a good day.
It’s not a particularly difficult association to make, all it requires is the Queen knowing her mum’s birthday, so I’m sure she’s aware. 🤷🏾♀️ Anyway, who cares? If I were Meghan, I’d be much more excited about sharing my birthday with someone fun like Barack Obama.
exactly and Queen Mum was a piece of work apparently.
I heard somewhere that she was described as a marshmallow made of steel..or something like that!
She was a piece of work who carefully smothered that sh*t up under a metric ton of charm. But underneath it all she had the capacity to be absolutely vicious and if you wronged her once she’d make sure you paid for it.
She was a gin-soaked old racist. But anyone who Hitler described as “the most dangerous woman in Europe” couldn’t have been all bad.
I don’t see why both proposal stories can’t be true, he might have proposed while they were in Botswana and then proposed again, this time with the ring, at their cottage in KP. From their engagement interview I got that the London proposal and probably the ring were a surprise to Meghan, which is rather sweet!
Two months at Balmoral sounds awful. It would be the equivalent of watching paint dry. I can’t blame Diana for hating it. I would be the same. A few days there would be lovely but no more than that.
Re Meghan having the same birthday as the queen mother, I was wondering how long it would be till the media honed in on it and tried to read something into it.
I suspect MM is not a fan of long-term stay at Balmoral. Also, MM is an animal lover, so hunting may drive a wedge between her and new husband Harry. Watch out!!!!
I suspect they’ll put in an appearance of at least a week, for two reasons: (1) Meghan is still “keen” to prove herself and show that she is a team player and committed to the family, plus this is all still new and exciting to her; and (2) probably most importantly, as this could very well be Prince Philip’s last summer, for Harry to spend some quality time with his grandpa.
Isn’t Balmoral really old and not updated? I thought I read they don’t have TVs and such and it’s really drafty.
Obviously the Queen is aware of the shared birthday but I can’t imagine that would have any effect on her relationship with Meghan.
I think I’d love being at Balmoral except for the hunting and constant clothes-changing. But I also like tent-camping so….
I can get behind those types of picnics. I would love for someone else to do all of the dirty work and all I have to do is enjoy the food.
Except for having to change clothes so often (but really, what else is there to do in between events?), I think Balmoral sounds nice. Roughing it but in a civilized way. LOL
I would love to spend time in a huge castle and run around in the Scottish woods, then spend time on and near a loch *sigh* I was meant to be an aristo haha
I said the same thing! I don’t get how awful it must be…sounds lovely to me.
For a young adult who wants to party in London, Balmoral would be a drag. And for older adults, Balmoral can be extremely dull and uncomfortable: HM sleeps with a hot water bottle because it gets so cold, damp and drafty. The weather can be miserable too: rain and more rain for several days. Cherie Blair reportedly disliked Balmoral. HM loves the outdoors and picnics and BBQs. I can see why Diana hated it so much while on honeymoon. She wanted and more importantly, needed private time to adjust to her new roles. It was a huge change for her but Charles continued with his bachelor ways and stayed in contact with Camilla.
Most importantly, August 4 is my wedding anniversary. LOL.
I think everyone will put in an appearance this year, including Will and Kate, and I actually kind of wonder if we will see Doria, or if it will take a few years for that.
Balmoral sounds boring but beautiful and I think I could suck it up for a week. I can see them tying it into time elsewhere in Scotland.
The whole appeal with Balmoral for the Queen is that she can be “normal” there, as in cook sausages over a camping grill and complain about the bad cell reception like the rest of us plebeians. Of course Diana didn’t care for that. And of course William and Harry don’t care for that. They want normalcy, sure, but they want the sort of normalcy that is more hip to their generation rather than Queen Victoria’s, and that involves zipping off to day drink on some yacht in Spain versus zipping off to day drink in some drafty old castle up in Scotland.