I wrote a lighthearted article about Meghan Markle – then her fans came for me

The comments came while I was cooking dinner. They continued throughout the evening, overnight, the next day and into the next week. I was told that I was appalling, vacuous and spiteful, “teeming with loser energy,” a “bitch, bitch, bitch!” How “f**king pathetically depressing” my own life must be, the trolls wrote on my Instagram. How could I sleep at night? It was an onslaught of abuse I’d been totally unprepared for. I felt shame and shock, but I was also curious: why were the Duchess of Sussex’s supporters so angry with me? And was any of it really warranted? A few weeks ago, I wrote for this newspaper about Meghan’s portrayal of the British countryside. The roaring open fire, well-behaved dog, pristine clothes and picturesque deer she showcased in an Instagram reel were comically at odds with my own chaotic, mud-splattered, ash-burns-on-the-carpet and wayward animals experience. Shorts I’m not a royal reporter or a natural provocateur and nor do I really have a strong view on Meghan. She’d simply provided me with a reason to write what I intended as a light-hearted riposte to clichés about rural living, as I did about David Beckham last year when he went full flat-cap-vegetable-growing-beekeeper. Calling his idealistic vision into question had raised no reader response stronger than, “Perhaps, Antonia, you are just crap at gardening, dear.” So then being asked, “Does bitch face come naturally to you?” after this one felt wildly unexpected. Then again, I doubt Anglican priest and London university chaplain Reverend Daniel French was prepared for the wrath he incurred from the Sussex Squad, as Meghan’s vast army of online supporters are known, this week either. Alongside a picture of Meghan unveiling her £112 luxury chocolate advent calendar for her lifestyle brand As Ever this weekend, French wrote on X [formerly Twitter]: “For £5.99 you can pre-order a Christian Advent Calendar with Fairtrade chocolate from the Meaningful Chocolate Company. A donation is made to The Leprosy Mission.” Hardly an unreasonable suggestion, you might have thought. Yet it inspired a furious backlash, in which Meghan fans called him things like “satan spawn” with “an ugly heart for a so-called Christian.” When his colleague Father Chris Phillips sprang to his defence, he experienced a similar pile-on. “Why are you joining in and trolling a woman for selling an advent calendar? You must be a shining example of Christianity to your parishioners,” one wrote. Phillips eventually shut down his X account, for which he was branded a “coward”. And when historian and journalist Alexander Larman wrote in the Spectator about Meghan’s “peculiar” decision to change her brand name from America Riviera Orchard to As Ever last year, he was “inundated with a level of online abuse that swiftly went from the intimidating to the unintentionally hilarious, so vitriolic and overblown was its content.” Among other insults, he was accused of being a troglodyte and a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry came back to the UK for their two children to attend school from September (Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth/Getty) Of course, zealous fans are nothing new. In 2013, when GQ magazine printed five different covers with each member of One Direction, fans were furious about both the pictures and the portrayal of their idols; one so livid about the picture of Louis Tomlinson they wrote on X: “I am going to find GQ and f****** bomb them. See you in jail.” The same year, when pop star Justin Bieber retweeted praise about himself that 15-year-old British schoolgirl Courtney Barrasford had posted online, admitting she wasn’t normally a fan, his “real” fans threatened to kill her and called her a “whore.” Since then, social media seems to have only accelerated the mob mentality. “Algorithms do tend to reward outrage, so the angriest replies are the ones that get seen, and a few hundred very loud accounts can very quickly look like a national mood,” says PR consultant Sophie Attwood, Founder and CEO of SA Group. “It also removes any sense of proportion.” When a group is convinced of its moral certitude surrounding its idol, “even light-hearted criticism gets treated as an act of hostility,” adds Attwood. “That’s why someone writing a gentle piece about muddy wellies and cold country winters can be met with real fury.” Especially because Meghan’s fanbase isn’t about music or sports, of course, or even, arguably, about Meghan at all. She is a lightning rod for myriad intersecting – and valid – grievances. “I think Meghan’s supporters often feel they are defending something bigger, whether that’s fairness, race, mental health or standing up to an institution,” adds Attwood. One of those institutions is obviously the press and as a result, says Attwood, “every critical headline, however fair or trivial, gets read as more of the same.” Given how much the Sussexes have spoken about the perils of social media and the “global crisis of hate,” as Harry put it in 2020, the viciousness of their supporters’ attacks feels ironic. As journalists commenting on public figures, we have to accept it. Perhaps we deserve it. But what about the vicar, entirely removed from the media? “Although at face value the vicar was commenting on an advent calendar, they were actually commenting on value and her most loyal community heard that as an attack on her,” says Attwood. “It’s treated as another round in a fight they believe they’ve been having on her behalf for the best part of a decade.” Another PR consultant, Fiona Harrold, thinks perhaps he should have known better. “It is a tad naive of him not to realise that he was setting Meghan up to be slammed by her critics – and that her supporters would rally to defend her.” Much of the anger, I think, started from a place of good intention. But painting Meghan as an ideologically pure victim, rather than as a flawed and contradictory human like the rest of us, and anyone who dares question her as a total villain, ultimately does her a disservice. “This is the paradox Meghan has to manage,” says Attwood. “A fiercely loyal fanbase is a huge commercial asset as she builds her own brands. But when that loyalty turns into attacking a vicar over an advent calendar, it can quickly impact the brand in a negative way.”