The trouble with Harry and Meghan
With the first episodes in the hit docuseries produced and headlined by the duke and duchess of Sussex, history has reared its head — in more ways than one.
It’s an inevitable bane of this social media age to heap condemnation upon people we don’t know. Regardless of whether it’s our place to mandate how anyone expresses themselves, providing they don’t harm anyone else, we do it anyway. After all, how else to soothe the travails of our everyday lives than to heap venom on the rich and famous, finding glee in their setbacks? Pick up any tabloid at any supermarket to see how enticing it can be.
One of the consistent criticisms leveled against Harry and Meghan is that they stated during their controversial exodus that they needed to have a private life far from the camera’s relentless eye, yet here they are, back in our faces, streaming their grievances into household cortexes across the globe. They stand accused of being in it solely for the cash, never mind that Harry inherited $10 million from his mother, the late and much-beloved Princess Diana, and has significant other resources as a prince. Another persistent accusation is that they’re avid to maintain their status, though plenty of celebrities, if not all of them, cash in on their fame — and it can only go so far before we get bored. On the heels of these accusations lurks the misogynistic claim that the duke, a man of 38 years, is an impressionable weakling coerced by his avaricious, publicity-hungry American wife — another woman in the ilk of the infamous Wallis Simpson, who bewitched an anointed king, thereby branding Meghan as the scheming mastermind and Harry a guileless innocent swept up in her wiles. It’s as if they’ve broken an unimpeachable rule: Never say what you perceive as the truth, if you’re a member of the royalty.
To attack the monarchy as an institution, however, is fair game, considering they actually lived within it. And the truth is, Harry has learned, albeit the hard way, how to turn the press to his advantage. We tend to forget in the wake of her tragic demise that Diana did the same; one of the terrible ironies of her life was that she couldn’t escape it. She’s been posthumously exonerated from the backlash of her shattering BBC television interview, which rocked the monarchy to its core, by the fact that she was misled into it. The ruthless machinations behind that interview merit her exoneration, even if Diana, regardless of the betrayal, was primed for a platform from which to vent her pain. As were Harry and Meghan during their own interview, conducted by the doyenne of media, Oprah, where they detailed the overt racism the duchess was subjected to. Yet critics never falter to cite this interview as unassailable proof of their financially-motivated insincerity. Much like Diana before them, their error, if such it is, feeds the mill of condemnation.
The episodes in Harry and Meghan’s docuseries are hardly explosive; by now, anyone with interest in Britain’s monarchy is aware of the duke and duchess’s situation. Whether they channeled hurt feelings into retaliation against the so-called Firm or share a genuine desire to shine their light on the historic, systemic racial bias embedded in the very fabric of said Firm, is not, however, what people want. People want to know how to catch them out in a lie and claim they saw their falsehood all along.
The Sussexes may be profiteering on their suffering, which, again, is hardly comparable to the injustices pervasive in our world. We could say, not without reason, that the duke and duchess have had it easy as far as hardship goes, though quantifying someone’s suffering is no reason to claim they have no right to it. What we cannot reasonably deny is that when it comes to slavery and its long-reaching aftermath, Britain has, by and large, evaded the immense trauma and reparations for descendants of those who were enslaved because of its regal standing. Yet transatlantic slavery began in the 15th century under Queen Elizabeth I — virgin icon of feminist rhetoric. The British monarchy continued to profit by it until the abolishment of slavery in the British Empire by King George III in 1807. By then, slavery was a juggernaut fueling America’s economy. It stands to reason that like in the U.S., its horrifying echo taints modern-day Britain — and the duchess of Sussex became a target of it.
We’ve all had to contend with familial drama, but having paparazzi bribe our father to pose for photographs, raid every detail of our past for dirt, become a pawn in a palace-run gambit to degrade us, and be labeled an N-word c**t is vastly different from what the majority of us experience. Meghan Markle, a biracial woman of significant accomplishment, was derided and hounded by the British press for not being what they demanded of her. The initial excitement and hope for change with a princess of mixed race turned toxic as the reality sank in, with reported debate as to her unborn children’s skin color. We sympathize with Princess Diana’s similar plight, who also became persona non grata in the family she wed into, but not the duchess’s. Why? Because Diana was white and aristocratic, her children guaranteed to reflect the racial requirement, her submissive gentilty celebrated until her anger burst out? Because Meghan is an ex-actress, a Hollywood parvenu too outspoken for her own good, who needed to prove herself worthy of marrying a prince?
Lest we forget, Diana was chosen as well — as a broodmare. And she kept her outspokenness in the closet until she separated from Charles. Nevertheless, she was not to be silenced. She secretly participated in the publication of a book about her marriage, a tell-all confirming Charles’s adultery that became an international bestseller; if Netflix had been around at the time and approached her to air her story, chances are Diana, in desperation to tell her version of events, would have leaped at the opportunity. And we would have flocked to hear it.
Harry is Princess Diana’s youngest son, the child most like her in temperament, who had to mourn her untimely passing when he was 12 years old . The lifelong resentment and sorrow he must carry at how his mother was treated and how she died is a wound that will never heal. He believes he must speak out in great part to honor Diana’s memory; he has said on numerous occasions, including in his docuseries, that he saw history repeating itself with his wife. Meghan has been a long-time advocate to empower women to feel they have the right to use their voice, and she is setting the example.
We might not like or agree with what they have to say. We can think they’ve caused tremendous upheaval, marring Queen Elizabeth II’s final years and her epic efforts to uphold the Commonwealth. Her late Majesty’s reign scarcely survived the fallout of Diana and Charles’s divorce, followed by outrage prompted by Diana’s death. At one time, as bouquets and condolences from thousands of grieving strangers piled at the shuttered gates of Buckingham Palace, it’s not inconceivable to imagine the queen fearing for her throne as her nation chanted against her for not behaving as they believed she should amid the outpouring of grief. Such is the turn of fate, that we should now chant that her grandson, Harry, and his wife, Meghan, are also not behaving as they should.
Diana defied the rules. Divorced and denied her royal title, she took up with Dodi al Fayed, a Muslim jetsetter and movie producer, whose father is reviled for acquiring the venerable, and very British, department store of Harrods, as well as the fabled Hotel Ritz in Paris. During her final, paparazzi-infested summer, the princess tipped off photographers to her cavorting with Dodi on his yacht, with friends allegedly-in-the-know claiming she did so to rouse the jealousy of her reluctant ex-lover, a Muslim heart surgeon. The princess perished in Paris alongside Dodi, emblazoned forever in our memories as a wronged woman cherished by millions, whose beauty will never fade yet who never found the happiness she deserved. It’s very likely that Diana’s attraction to men not deemed suitable to her position as mother of the heir to the throne would have sparked an outcry had she lived, much as racist poison was spewed against Meghan.
Harry fell in love with a modern woman we should embrace. Why can’t we bring ourselves to celebrate it? Perhaps they haven’t paid enough, as Diana did with her very life, to merit forgiveness. Or perhaps we detest their upending of the traditional finale. Instead of the palatial trappings and conformity, they fled the storybook and make no apologies for it. To hear them tell it, they had no other choice. That might be debated by armchair royal experts, but again, it’s undeniable that what they elected to do wasn’t spurred by greed or impulse. To see videos from their phones of press helicopters and drones circling their seclusion in Los Angeles, as Meghan whispers in distress, paints a vivid picture of a scene we’ve all seen before: that of Diana, battling her way through hordes of paparazzi while holding up a purse, a tennis racket, and her own hand to shield herself. To be pursued for a photograph that sells for millions is not something anyone should want to be or can endure for very long.
In the end, we want the fairytale to be true, the hospitable castle and magic pumpkin that becomes a carriage to whisk us away. We ignore the ugly truth of what comes after. The trouble with Harry and Meghan is that we don’t know how to contend with a prince and princess who threw it all aside to forge their own happily-ever-after.
And are daring to talk about it.
