This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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Meghan Markle loves three things: flower sprinkles, fame, and Meghan Markle. But if you missed the part about how she’s basically in a long-term relationship with her own handwriting, we tapped an expert to weigh in on what Meghan’s calligraphy reveals about her soul.
If you’re expecting a heart of gold, brace yourself. This is the real Meghan Markle. Not even her fake-empathetic eyebrows can save her now.
It’s not like I was anticipating a glowing review, but I grabbed a bucket of popcorn when I got the results. “It is pretty damning stuff, but I’m afraid this is what I am seeing in the handwriting,” a leading analyst from the British Institute of Graphologists, Tracey Trussell, told The Daily Wire. “I’ve found that the handwriting never lies!”
After Markle’s latest newsletter from her As ever lifestyle brand dropped into my inbox, teasing a $58 box of chocolates, each truffle impressed with “A-s e-v-e-r” in tight gold letters, I could no longer ignore the situation. The rigid unevenness of her handwriting pierced my heart. Why was the Duchess of Montecito doing this to us?
Every As ever candle, jam, and tea canister is tortured by her signature script. But I wouldn’t care about Megligraphy, except for this: Along with her rinse-and-repeat story about demanding that an allegedly misogynist dish soap company change its TV ad when she was 12 (Vanity Fair couldn’t even verify the whole story), she’s been talking about her handwriting for decades — and loving every minute of it.
Meghan appeared on “Larry King Now” in 2013, two years into unremarkably starring on “Suits” and three years before landing Prince Harry. When King inquired as to whether Meghan was a calligrapher, she replied with characteristic pseudo-humility, “I, I, I … I used to be, yes. That was, um … I went to all-girls Catholic school. Handwriting class was one of those lost arts.” King held up the writing sample for the camera (it said “I Love Larry King”) while Meghan appeared pleased with the extra flourishes she added to drugstore cursive.
In 2016, she told AOL Build that she paid the bills with commissioned calligraphy while struggling as an actress. “I just had always had nice penmanship,” she bragged. “I’d done, I don’t know, celebrity correspondence for Dolce & Gabbana or The Four Seasons. I did Paula Patton and Robin Thicke’s wedding.” Oh, here, Meghan, it looks like you might have accidentally dropped these names.
Are you a survivor of the Netflix series “With Love, Meghan”? Then you saw her fawn over her own handwriting there, too. Lamenting an A-minus in penmanship class from like 100 years ago, she said of the “little swirls” she’s still obsessed with including, “You know what, I’ll take the ‘minus’ for a little bit of character.” So relatable, your majesty.
Unlike butter churning or lute playing, calligraphy isn’t some sort of ancient skillset we don’t see very much. Proving the writing style’s revived popularity, Etsy hosts thousands of shops peddling custom designs by crafters powering a $1.28 billion global calligraphy pen market. But these are gestural, flowing expressions of art. Meghan’s is the opposite of that.
“We know that Meghan is obsessed with appearances,” Trussell observed. “Everything in her world is hyper-controlled and super focused on perfectionism, which means she is forever teetering on the brink.”
Maybe you’ve heard of handwriting analysis helping to solve crimes. In the civilian lane, graphology can uncover roughly 5,000 personality traits by studying the spacing between words, the sizing of letters, and slanting and looping patterns, among other things. “Our handwriting is the unique pattern of our psychology expressed in symbols on the page, and graphology is the science of deciphering these symbols,” Trussell said. Of course I happily unleashed this resource on forensically dissecting the celebrated founder of fruit spread.
Trussell kindly accepted my request to analyze Meghan’s calligraphy from As ever brand packaging, along with Meghan’s handwritten notes that often accompany celebrity gift basket swag. Here’s what Trussell read between the lines.
“Meghan may be producing a polished performance, but from a graphologist’s perspective, it’s style over substance — a type of ephemeral pseudo sophistication that lacks soul,” Trussel shared, describing a style that functions like a tourniquet to natural flow.
You could say that someone who just teased a photo of their son Archie to possibly distract from less flattering headlines about how she’s living a separate life from her prince husband might be lacking in the soul department. At least when it comes to publicity.
Noting the stiffness and rigidity I saw on the chocolates, Trussell said of the “clockwork” nature of Meghan’s lettering, “This reflects her intolerant and inflexible approach to life, her affected, contrived and disingenuous nature, and further conceals underlying feelings of inadequacy.” That inflexibility is not at all shocking, considering how Meghan forced the Kardashians to delete photos of Harry staring at Kris Jenner’s chest from Instagram, when it was obvious guests would be photographed at the party.
Trussell also didn’t let Meghan off the hook when it came to the smoke-and-mirror messaging of her excessively flattering and flowery gift notes. “Whatever the truth, the fact that she feels the need to construct and project something so flawless is telling.”
Getting into the nitty-gritty, Trussell sees specific details in Meghan’s penmanship that tell the real story. “The way the writing tumbles forwards obliquely reveals Meghan’s passion and obsession, and her acute sensitivity. Plus, the letters are nearly all joined, so interrupt her at your peril!” Mirroring the line-crossing intimacy of the time Meghan awkwardly cradled her friend’s baby bump on a red carpet, her oversized lettering indicates manufactured confidence, Trussell says: “This is merely attention-seeking and an overcompensation for feelings of inferiority and anxiety, which are all lurking under wraps.”
While upturned strokes signal good intentions, Trussell says the fact that those lines always hook backward in the opposite direction reveals Meghan’s inflated ego and greed. “It’s all for applause and effect, without any real feeling or emotion behind the intention,” she shared. Those little frills Meghan compulsively adds reveal anxiousness, a desire for protection, and apprehension about the unknown.
This was all extraordinarily delicious. But my guiltiest pleasure in this analysis of Meghan’s handwriting might be best portrayed via the sweeping letter “A” in As ever. “Meghan’s consciously drawn large (disproportionately oversized) capitals tell of her immense personal pride and vanity, her arrogance and presumptuousness, whilst disclosing her craving for respect and approval,” Trussell says. “She’s got her head in the clouds.”
Case closed. Vain, insecure, and calculating, Meghan Markle’s calligraphy proves she’s thirsty as ever to be loved with a cursive capital L.
