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. 

Prince Harry as Surrogate Royal

Maclean's is suggesting the same thing I have--that Harry and Meghan be used for ceremonial functions in place of the Governor-General.

This could then justify paying for their security detail; they would be earning it.

Damn Yankees

This compilation from Buzzfeed makes a good case that Meghan Markle has indeed been unfairly treated by the British press.

It also shows how “straight” new stories can be deeply slanted fake news.

This does nothing to demonstrate, however, as so many want to have it, that the unfair treatment is based on MM’s race.

It looks to me more like anti-Americanism.

Everyone loves to be anti-American, after all. Everyone resents the top dog. Racism is far less socially acceptable.

But in the UK in particular, and in the context of the Royal Family…

To begin with, the monarchy operates on the metaphor of the nation as one big family. All Britons are symbolically the Queen’s children.

Looked at another way, in principle, all Britons are somewhere in the line of succession, by dint of being British.

So there is, I think, a natural resistance to some non-royal foreigner joining at a top level. Foreign royals come with their own credentials; British commoners seem all right in principle. But a foreign non-royal? Who the **** does she think she is? She’s jumping the queue.

This locks in naturally enough to a general impression among the Brits of Americans as, at base, an ill-bred rabble, a nation of materialistic parvenus who never did know their place. Intensified in recent years by the humiliation of seeing these scruffy ignoramuses supplant the mother country in international importance. They have, as a nation, no breeding, and no class.

The criticisms of Meghan Markle seem to reflect this: they seem to be built around the premise that she does not know how to behave, she does not understand proper royal traditions, she is acting above her station, she is money-grubbing, arriviste, and she had better bloody well not see herself as some kind of model.

The royal couple’s desire to spend more time in North America suggests some awareness on their part that this is the problem.

More on the Royal Renegades

The Duchess of Sussex. If you met her at a party, would it even occur to you to classify her as "black"?
Would this be somehow significant?

I make a point of not following the private lives of celebrities. That’s generally calumny. I do not follow closely the life of the royal family either. But the royal family is a special case. Their private life has public importance. They are a unifying symbol of the nation. So what happens in their private lives is not private.

One reason why Meghan Markle may have found the life too trying.

I have heard a variety of explanations for what turns out to have been a dramatic royal split.

One is racism.

I cannot discount that possibility. But false charges of racism are as socially and personally damaging as racism itself. In fact, false charges of racism ARE racism itself, in an especially pernicious form. Such charges should be avoided, when there are obvious alternative explanations.

When Harry’s engagement to Meghan was announced, my spontaneous reaction was that it was a bad idea, and that they were bound for trouble. Not because she has some genetic coding that originated in Africa—it is hard to believe that is significant to anyone. Because she is a divorced actress.

While common enough nowadays, marrying a divorcee was once enough to force Edward VIII to abdicate. Our ancestors were not total idiots; there was reason for this concern. It implies problems in forming a stable relationship, surely.

Worse was her being an actress. Anyone can see that actors and actresses have a particularly terrible track record in maintaining stable relationships.

And so it seems to have turned out.

It is not, as some suppose, that they have inflated egos and require attention. Just the opposite. Anyone with a large ego is not going to make it as an actor, because their whole job is to pretend to be someone else.

Had Meghan desired attention, nothing could have suited her better than becoming royalty. But that is not what actors actually want. They want to be someone else, and not to be noticed as themselves.

The problem is that actors live in their imaginations. Again, they have to, to be able to play a role. So they can have too-grand expectations of a relationship, and crash into depression when it turns out not to be as fairy-wonderful as supposed.

Worse, playing a role is very different from living a life. The wonderful thing about a role is that you can stop being yourself for a while, and nothing counts. But when you then cannot take off the role—ever—you are going to feel trapped.

Meghan Markle was going to feel trapped in any settled life; but a royal life is more confining than almost any other. Now EVERYTHING counts.

I have to feel very sorry for Meghan, very sorry for Harry, and very sorry for Queen Elizabeth. I hope they can sort this out.

Canada and some acting jobs for Meghan may well be the solution. Perhaps she gravitated to returning to Canada because that was where she last acted.

Just Wild about Harry

Postmedia has already done a poll that shows most Canadians would welcome Prince Harry as Governor-General.

I wonder, however, how this may play out. I wonder about Meghan Markle.

Their announcement of "abdication" does seem rash. Why the need for such drama? Rumblings are that Meghan is finding it hard to adjust to the life of a royal.

But is it the celebrity, the constant attention in public? Does not figure: she was an actor on TV. She must be familiar with that, and she signed up for it.

It seems more likely she is rankled by the need to stay apolitical.

If so, making Harry GG could end up a disaster.

The London View on Harry, Meghan, and Canada

Hat tip to Small Dead Animals for this.

The short version is that the Sussexes have been excluded from the ranks of senior royals in the UK, and Meghan does not like the life. So they are thinking of moving their base of operations to Canada.