Megan, Harry, and Oprah

 

Everyone is talking about Megan Markle and Harry Windsor’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. I have not posted on it. It looks to me like gossip: a family matter.

Everyone is upset at Markle’s claim that some unnamed member of the royal family was concerned that her princely son’s skin might be dark. This is apparently reason, in many minds, to abolish the monarchy.

Excuse me, but are we not aware that, for centuries, it has been prohibited for the British/Canadian/Australian monarch to be Catholic? Convert, and you are instantly deposed, or tossed from the line of succession.

And this does not bother us; that we have always been fine with. Yet we find a mere unsubstantiated assertion of a remark about skin colour intolerable?

We have our values badly messed up.

Not that I think it likely that any member of the royal family really fussed over skin colour in any racial sense. South Asian parents do; African-American parents do, according to Toni Morrison. I doubt any “white” parents do. And British royals traditionally care about class, but not race. They are happy to hobnob with maharajahs; but not with Eastenders.

Am I accusing Megan Markle of lying? Yes; I think she is playing the race card shamelessly for profit. Sells interviews; sells books. Or possibly utterly misunderstanding some chance remark.