So he should be kicked out of the royal family
It’s time Meghan and Harry lose their titles
The couple is now snubbing the very institution from which they derive their power and celebrity – it’s bizarre and damaging to the monarchy
ALLISON PEARSON31 August 2022 • 9:00am
Everything is content to Meghan, the life of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex now being a wholly-owned subsidiary of Netflix CREDIT: Rosa Woods - Pool/Getty Images
The news that Her Majesty is even contemplating inviting her new Prime Minister to form a government, next week, at Balmoral instead of Buckingham Palace, tells you that our Queen is in frail health. A stranger to self-pity, the national super trouper would always be in the right place at the right time if she possibly could.
The significance should not be lost on anyone. What she needs at this time is the respect, affection and consideration which befits our longest-reigning monarch in the home straight of her life. This novel idea has clearly not penetrated the rosewater-fragranced designer-candled halls of that Palace of Positivity and Nurturing Goodness in Montecito where
Duchess Meghan has given yet another interview that could have been calculated to unsettle the Royal family.
Very little in the way of thoughtfulness is to be expected from a couple who, in March 2021, gave an inflammatory interview to Oprah when Prince Philip was seriously ill in hospital. All that matters to Meghan and Harry is the expansion of their flourishing grievance business in which they amusingly portray themselves as the abused, star-crossed lovers in a tragedy also starring Miser Charles, Wicked Fairy Camilla, Unsupportive William and Bully Kate Who Made Me Cry.
Actually, the interview for New York magazine’s The Cut by Allison P. Davis is not always the helpful hagiography its subject may have counted on.
“Your eye contact is good,” says Meghan unsettlingly to Davis, “You’re, like, looking into my soul.”
The journalist is not convinced it’s a soul. More a carefully managed stage-set in which the Suits star puts on a performance of “effortless, arms-wide-open, relatable affectation”. She smells calculation.
“She has taken a hardship and turned it into content,” observes the interviewer. It’s phrased like a compliment, but it really isn’t.
Everything is content to Meghan, the life of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex now being a wholly-owned subsidiary of Netflix.
Meghan’s The Cut interview in quotes
Prince Harry, meanwhile, is increasingly relegated to a sweet bit-part. Think Buttons in Cinderella. Sometimes, Meghan’s husband is glimpsed juggling through a window or he is allowed to say a few lines which burnish the legend of his incredibly modest yet somehow vain and self-obsessed wife.
A few things jump out. First, Meghan’s grievances grow ever bolder and more extravagant, floating free of any observable reality. She claims that, had the Sussexes stayed in the UK, she’d never be able to do school pickup and drop-off with Archie without a press pen of 40 people snapping pictures. Yet, Prince George and Princess Charlotte have been dropped off and picked up by their parents for several years without a single intrusive or unauthorised picture appearing in the papers.
Meghan also impugns the British media, asking why she would share photos with “the very people who are calling my children the n-word”. When did that happen? Oh. Never.
(Fibs are fine if it’s someone’s “truth”. The Duchess’s half-sister, Samantha, said it was dishonest of her to claim during the Oprah interview that she grew up as an only child. Meghan’s lawyers insisted that it was
not meant to be “objective fact”, but a “statement of her feelings”.)
What I would find troubling about this interview if I were Prince Charles or Prince William are the hints of emotional manipulation. Meghan points out, more than once, that nothing constrains her from speaking out – whether on her new, top-rating podcast, Archetypes, or in the wider media – about what she considers her dreadful treatment at the hands of the Windsors. “But it takes a lot of effort to forgive. I’ve really made an active effort, especially knowing that I can say anything,” she says, her voice full of meaning.
Until now, the Palace has confined itself to the exquisitely lethal “recollections may vary” when responding to Meghan and Harry’s hurtful accusations. How much longer can that Keep ‘Em Sweet strategy go on? It isn’t working. For all her mushy yogic musings about forgiveness, the Duchess is a world-class grudge-bearer who has ostracised her own father and now it looks like poor Prince Charles is getting the same treatment.
I have been told by a reliable source that Harry is homesick in LA, but can’t own up to the mistakes he’s made for fear of upsetting his wife.
It looks like the Sussexes won’t see Harry’s father, William and his family or the Queen during their visit to the UK next week. In effect, we have a quasi-Royal tour with the couple now snubbing (or being snubbed by?) the very institution from which they derive their power and celebrity. It’s bizarre. And damaging to the monarchy.
Clearly, it’s time the Sussexes lost their royal titles whose privileges they enjoy without the accompanying responsibilities and restraints. But who in
the Firm will have the courage to take on Meghan and her truth?
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