Honi soit qui mal y pense remains a great motto
I said it back then and still feel that way after watching this interview. Aside from a few bombshells (a family member asked Harry what their child’s skin tone would be? Seriously?) there were two overarching themes: (a) the decisive issue for the Sussexes was the need for personal security, which Buckingham Palace was allegedly unprepared to provide to their child even when they were still fully active participants in royal work and (b) the way that the Palace will throw anyone not in the direct line of succession into the maw of the tabloids if it suits their purposes. The latter allegation is strongly corroborated in both of the recent books I’ve read that touch on this situation. Who can blame them for wanting out? And needing to figure out how to finance their future?
They’ve got all my good wishes. They won’t ever live anything close to a normal life, but they’re well out of that mess.
Me + Richard Armitage 
Disclaimer: I haven’t watched the interview in its entirety.
ad b) I believe it simply because of what has happened earlier. I understand perfectly that the nightmare of what happened to Princess Diana continues to haunt Prince Harry.
ad a) I doubt this. But it’s their truth. If they had stayed on, security would have been provided for at great-grandchild of the sovereign and a grand-child of the future sovereign. I don’t believe the British royal family is any different from other European royal families in this respect.
However, when these grand-children (Harrison + more) reach adulthood, they will not have the “whole package”; they will enjoy more freedom than those in direct succession line, which is something these young members of royalty embrace (to my knowledge). So I wonder if the Sussexes may have wanted assurance of safety for their children into adulthood (premature assumption of risk), but – let’s be frank – the children of Prince William will always be more interesting in the future than the children of Prince Harry. This is the price that “no. 2” always has to pay.
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My post was sent off before I had a chance to make corrections, but I stand by what I’ve written.
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(a) is pretty solidly grounded in information outside of the claims they made last night. It’s not a secret that Prince Charles has been agitating for a “streamlined” monarchy, with fewer people who get payments from the civil list and hereditary rights to this or that, and limiting full privileges to the direct line of succession. They’ve been moving in this direction for years. It’s his perception that the public sees the Windsors as free loaders so that they need to get rid of the “fat” and only give true honors to people who are very actively involved in royal activities, full time.
Harry is not in the direct line of succession, and not going to be the future sovereign short of some huge catastrophe. His royal cousins (Beatrice, Eugenie, Zara, Peter, Louise, James, etc.) have been paying privately for their own security for ten years now, or gone without, as has Edward (Charles’ youngest brother) and his family. Andrew (Charles’ younger brother) was supposed to lose his this year, but the Queen intervened at the last second. The main argument for Harry continuing his private security was precisely that he was a target (of the press, of foreign militaries and terrorists). I also think given Charles’ long term plans, it was probably very convenient for the palace that Harry and Meghan struck out on their own right now, as they will always have plausible deniability: “It was going to happen anyway.”
The only thing that was new last night was Meghan’s veiled hint that the reason they didn’t want Archie to get royal status was that he is a mixed race child. (That is something I can’t say anything about, but it doesn’t strike me as totally implausible; on the other hand it is also totally in line with the “streamlining” plans.)
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I watched it last night too. They both come across as very credible to me. I think that their revelations are not surprising, given what we know about how Diana was treated and her mental health struggles under the strain. They were very careful to make the distinction between the firm/institution and the family and to say that for the most part the family was supportive… but that the family just says that this is the way it is and everyone is expected to be able to cope with it. I think it is very tough for someone not bred to that restrictive and controlled life to be able to cope with it. And then with the racism evidenced in the press (and in at least one case in the family), that would greatly add to the difficulties.
What I found quite interesting was Harry’s disclosure of the state of the relationship with his father. That at a certain point, Prince Charles stopped taking his calls because he didn’t agree with what he was doing. And it was surprising to me that Harry was surprised that his father had not been very supportive, given whathis father had experienced himself. But I think there is a huge difference. Harry loves his wife and would do anything to keep his family safe and mentally healthy. Based on what we’ve heard in the past, that seemed not to have been the case with Prince Charles. He reportedly had very little sympathy for what Diana experienced from the press and in terms of mental distress.
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I read a book earlier this year, Robert Lacey’s “Battle of Brothers,” that talked a fair amount about the history of Charles / William / Harry with the tabloids from the sons’ births, leading up to Harry’s marriage and beyond. He demonstrated repeatedly how Harry got shredded in the UK tabloid press precisely as a means of making William look more royal. (Which makes you wonder a lot about how the same dynamic might have affected Charles and Andrew a generation earlier.)
One of the central threads of the book was how much press management and image management is done by “courtiers” and Palace staff, most of whom don’t have a very progressive or proactive vision. Before I read that I’d been thinking, “well, they could have predicted what would happen to Meghan based on what happened to Diana and then Kate and then Harry’s earlier girlfriends, one of whom was said to have dumped him because she couldn’t handle the thought of joining the Firm,” but Lacey — in a book that implies as much as it says — seems to imply that once Diana was dead, and perhaps even before, they almost needed her as a martyr to save their personal and royal reputations. Paradoxically her behavior and her death created sympathy for them and so publicly they had to get behind a particular image of her that in turned shaped all of their public images — e.g., although both William and Harry were big “partiers,” William was portrayed as the grieving, hyperresponsible older brother and Harry as the troubled, irresponsible rascal, and this was all engineered by their press people inside the palace. In other words, it’s implied that this stuff keeps happening because people in the palace want it to keep happening. It serves their larger purpose.
I guess a lot of the people in these courtier and staff positions switch around, sometimes working for one royal or another in different capacities, and the royals also develop loyalties and rivalries with these various staff. There was a big shift in 2017 when Charles and Andrew (who are normally opponents in all of this intrigue) succeeded in pushing someone with a more progressive vision out, and his replacement was not as good at the job and also more traditional. When people in the Palace are unhappy or can’t get what they want at work, they leak to the press to try to push the decisionmakers in their direction. So some of the hostility to Meghan probably came intentionally (from this new staffer) but some of it was probably the result of infighting over other things that just made it out into the press. I can also imagine that there was probably tension over Meghan’s huge popularity given that Kate seems to have created a role / image for herself that makes her seem about a generation older than she is.
So, yeah — absolutely if you were dumped into this toxic work atmosphere as an adult after having a built a whole career and life for yourself, it would certainly drive you nuts. And I think it’s fair to say — it also probably creates a certain amount of disbelief amongst insiders that you have other expectations. Part of the calculation on the part of the insiders might even have been to use the press to discipline Harry to stay with the Firm just because (a) what marketable skills does he have and (b) how can he possibly handle the cost of the security requirements that have been created for him over the years?
re: Charles — I have read a lot about him over the years and I never know what to think about him. I mean, seriously, in 1980 he made his marital choices based on what his uncle and father thought based on ideals from two generations earlier? But I don’t think he ever got all that much sympathy or understanding from his own parents, so maybe he really didn’t understand how to deal with his own children who would want something different. As far as not loving Diana — true — but I wonder why the experience of finally getting to be with his beloved Camilla after all that time wouldn’t influence his behavior more.
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The book sounds interesting. It’s true that we never heard a whole lot about partying that William may have done, but lots and lots about Harry’s exploits. There wasn’t even a big deal made of the idea that William and Kate must have spent lots of overnight time together over the years. I remember when Charles was poised to marry Diana, that she was subjected to medical exams to prove that she was a virgin! At least some things do change, however gradually, and maybe this whole situation will help to cause a shift as well.
That whole palace staff/media relationship is very interesting. It sure does seem that the firm is kept very conservative and uses the media for their own purposes, as you say, promoting the heirs potentially at the expense of the others. And family at the expense of non-family — so, protecting Andrew for example.
I guess you’re right that Charles and the rest of the family were made to seem more sympathetic after Diana’s death. Although what really got me in the gut at the time was seeing the card that said “Mummy” propped on the coffin. Poor kids.
When Diana got married, it seemed like she was a lucky girl. But then the reality is not that at all. Would be very hard to adapt to those “working conditions”.
Charles getting to be with Camilla might almost reinforce the idea of stiff upper lip and going along. She just fit right into the expectations and, of course, the fact that the focus is on the younger generation now allowed her to do so.
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William and Kate lived together without benefit of clergy, so. Times really have changed. (And think about how that would have looked in say 1880 when Edward VII was sleeping all over the place. He certainly couldn’t have married a mistress after that — but he couldn’t have married a commoner, either.)
I’ve read a lot of analysis of the Windsors over the years and this is among the more illuminating ones. It’s a bit gossipy in tone and I didn’t buy everything he said (or felt some of it would need better justification), but what was enlightening about it was how the spin gets placed. For example, there’s a chapter on how Kate supposedly angled to meet William, first by changing her major and her campus after she’d already been admitted in Edinburgh. I don’t know that I buy that alone as an argument and the rest of the case is much more circumstantial than that. There’s quite a bit about William supposedly having an anger problem that gets consistently suppressed in the press. (Who could blame him, though?) But one thing about Lacey is that he really has no sympathy for any of them. For instance, he points out that a lot of Diana’s public / press behavior could be seen as very callous to her sons. That’s a refreshing perspective. it was a better book than “Finding Freedom,” which came out at about the same time and is really one non-stop justification of Meghan’s (and Harry’s) position. Lacey’s the historical consultant on “The Crown,” after having written multiple biographies of some of the family members.
I used to be sort of mildly positive about the persistence of the English monarchy. I didn’t want one in the US but I enjoyed the spectacle, and before Diana was killed I enjoyed the soap opera aspect of it. I didn’t get why some people are so vehement anti-monarchists. It seemed to me that the Windsors provided mostly good press for the country and maintained stuff (buildings, collections, traditions) that created tourism and other economic benefit. And you do need a head of state, so why not them, if they wanted to hang around? But after a week in London in 2020 while this was going on when that was all the news was about, I started to get it. They take up a hugely disproportionate amount of public energy, and it seems inevitable as the family members are so rigidly controlled that it’s unsurprising that they break out into all these questionable behaviors. The thing with Andrew and their ongoing protection of Andrew makes me extremely angry. He needs to say what he knows. And now this stuff about how they have used “Queen’s consent” or whatever that’s called over the years to the active detriment of people who live in their properties — that needs to go.
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(Sorry for the late reply… it’s been a hectic work week.) I thought I remembered that William and Kate had lived together. Yes, so change is always possible, even if oh so gradual.
Sounds like you’re managing to do more reading again. I always find spin and marketing fascinating. It’s funny… I was mentioning our conversation with my husband, about the idea that William was a partier too but it wasn’t spotlighted in the press, and my husband didn’t really believe it. So, the spin does work!
Living in Canada, we also need that head of state, being a constitutional monarchy. Our head of state is the Queen’s representative, so the Governor General for Canada and the Lieutenant Governor for each province. (Of course, we recently had a toxic workplace scandal with our Governor General!) I’m not really anti-monarch, and I think that they actually do have also that ceremonial role that can be somehow hopeful and uplifting. But they really need to do some internal navel-gazing and come up with how they should interact with the modern world. I agree that Andrew should come clean, but I wonder if there is a chance of criminal charges against him and that’s why they aren’t budging. Interesting about “Queen’s consent”. I hadn’t read about that before. Doesn’t sound good.
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partying: here’s a quick summary; the book goes into more detail. Essentially they were both at Eton (where Harry certainly wouldn’t have been if he’d not been born noble and rich); Charles gave them access to the basement of his Highgrove residence, which was also a bomb shelter with a fully stocked bar; both William and Harry had unsupervised access to it. William started having parties there with alcohol / drugs; Harry followed. However, Harry was at some point, while underaged, discovered seriously intoxicated at a local bar; it looked to become a big scandal; in order to avert this, Charles’ secretary / publicist granted the press access to stories about it to prevent an exposé of the whole extent of the behaviors; the stories were spun by the secretary to make William look responsible and Harry look troubled, but under the wise counsel of his father and brother brother.
The Daily Mail excerpted this chapter here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8808003/Prince-Harry-Prince-Williams-feud-began-long-Meghan-came-scene-new-book-reveals.html
I’m probably averaging a non-school book a week or so again — having to read for a new class has also upped my recreational reading. Thank heavens. But the British monarchy is something I’ve been intensely interested in for decades, although not in a scholarly way. They’re like, my favorite soap opera.
Andrew + criminal charges: I’m sure. But it’s doubly horrible to say you’ll speak and then not speak. A lot of the papers seem to think that it’s a win for the palace that H&M distracted everyone from thinking about Andrew.
I think there’s probably an inherent problem with selecting a head of state — in order to get into that position you need to be somewhat publicly prominent. If you’re publicly prominent, you’re exposed to frequent temptation and maybe you succumb to it. I mean, they’re not going to hire you or me to be a head of state — no one is interested in us. So precisely the think that makes you qualified for the job has the potential to disqualify you.
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I don’t remember ever hearing much about William’s antics, but definitely we heard about Harry! Thanks for the excerpt. They certainly can be a soap opera!
Have you ever seen the show, The Windsors? It’s a totally over-the-top parody which plays up all the publicly defining characteristics — Harry as dumb, Camilla as the villain a la Cruella De Vil, Andrew as the scheming business man, etc. The first season was quite funny in a cringey way, other than the female cat fights complete with rolling on the ground which I found offensive. Very over-the top.
Yes, you’re right on the head of state. They’re picking people for their ceremonial value and reputation, but they still have to be able to run an office in a way that isn’t toxic. Maybe an astronaut wasn’t really qualified.
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I’ll have to check that out — it’s something I would probably enjoy (apart from the cat fights).
Watching this stupidity unfold with Gov. Cuomo in NY: you gotta wonder if a politician is a good choice, either. Germany has had some good heads of state — Joachim Gauck, for example.
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It’s that whole absolute power thing… but the question is, how is it that only some succumb to it?
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Great question. Gauck became federal president after his predecessor stepped down due to political corruption allegations. So I don’t know.
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I have only seen bits and pieces from CBS Morning Show on YouTube tonight. I am a little shocked but yet not based on what Diana and Sarah said years before not. So sad that Megan was treated the way she was. I am glad that Harry has stayed by his wife’s side and doing what is best for his family. I have always kept up with the royal family since I was young and respected the Queen and her family, not so much now. Never liked the couturiers and how they “run” the royal family.
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You may be able to stream the whole interview from the CBS main site. I enjoyed it; they are obviously very in love with and supportive of each other in a way that I honestly don’t think they can fake (or certainly not him anyway, he’s no actor). They were both very positive about the Queen; Prince Charles, on the other hand, takes on the chin.
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This interview aired yesterday evening in Europe, and I had a chance to watch the interview in its entirety. These are my final comments on this matter.
I believe they have exposed themselves as being incredibly naive.
It’s their truth, I recognize that, but what did they expect after what happened to princess Diana (rhetorical question). Also, they give up after one year. This says a lot in my book.
The interview has other issues in its narrative, i.e. Oh, they are all so kind and welcoming in the royal family, but then there’s the racism card thrown in there pretty quickly (too easily) by the duchess, trouble over flower girls’ dresses, they can’t get security (when they are not working?), and apparently no psychological assistance. This is what has put such a strain on the duchess that she wants to commit suicide after a very few months.
So conclusively, not so supportive and friendly after all this family, and no name dropping, but it’s someone high up in the royal family. We all know the British royal family is special (not in a good way). The racism part of it is really sad and deplorable. However, if it’s not the Queen or Prince Philip, it’s a big family, can’t you avoid this person (rhetorical question). The Sussexes so easily put on the mantle of being victims here.
There’s a lot going on in this interview. It plays with our emotions and our wilingness to provide empathy. No real logic, no real argumentation. Just smiles, soft voices, tears, surprised Oprah-expressions, smiles again, etc. What is the purpose of this interview, I kept thinking yesterday, other than attracting attention to themselves, or as a part of a business deal with Oprah, or stirring up sentiments just like princess Diana did all those years ago?
The way I see it: They expected more than what they got, and faster, they didn’t get what they wanted the way they wanted it, some distorted gossip in the tabloids, and the duchess ultimately wanted to go home – and now she’s home – back in sunny California.
it’s a tough job being a royal – especially in Britain – and not every one is cut out to be one. At nearly 40, one would think that this would come as no surprise, and this is why I believe them to be naive.
Fortunately, the Sussexes are in love, they have a nice mansion i Santa Barbara with chickens, and hopefully they can continue to support each other emotionally. There’s now no doubt that they are completely out of “the firm”. They won’t have security now by any rate unless they pay for it themselves, and they’ll have to live off earnings provided by the media (which prince Harry hates), his mother’s inheritance, and her savings. I wish them luck in their future.
surprise.
There may be some down-sizing going on in the firm, which I’m sure most Brits welcome because costs from running a royal household (or many households) put a strain on the national finances. Prince Harry’s no. 6 in line of succession, and this alone should entitle him to security and income? As I wrote before, it’s hard to be no. 2. It’s the same in my country. The only grandchild of the Danish Queen on the pay-roll is the heir.
Sorry about the long post.
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Key to me in understanding this interview are two things:
is knowing that generally as a white person, we are not going to notice the discourses of racism until we have them pointed out us. Parallel case — I always said there was no discrimination against women in academia until I realized all the subtle things that were being done to me and others. Whether perpetrator or target, you don’t notice till you’re in it. Harry said this explicitly in the interview. There’s a loooong history of women, and particular non-white women, being told they are unreasonable. I’m glad Meghan is pointing it out. For this reason, as every woman in any workplace knows, you can’t really show when you’re angry, because it immediately makes it impossible for you to meet your goals.
who’s the racist? I’m guessing it’s Charles, Camilla or Andrew, and the same person who referred to Megan as “Harry’s showgirl” (whose identity we also don’t know).
I think she was naive but I’m not sure how you wouldn’t be naive in that situation. The only people who know what was going on in that situation are the people who experience it from childhood, and they’re not exactly in a position to report objectively.
I don’t believe they said that being #6 should entitle Harry to security. Perhaps you saw a different interview. They said that the discussion about security were going on during Meghan’s pregnancy, i.e., while they were both still full time senior royals. They said that they needed security for their child, who was the object of huge press scrutiny precisely because of who his parents are. As Harry has been, his whole life. The Windsors rely on this attention in order to maintain their position, and then they sacrifice anyone who isn’t convenient. I feel particularly sorry for Harry because he can’t do what he was trained to do, and he can’t train to do anything else. It is not unreasonable to want a responsible adult life with autonomy — this is what we teach all our children to seek — and it is unreasonable to punish someone for seeking it.
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I told myself I wasn’t going to get involved in any discussions about the Sussexes and yet here I am…
I’m mainly here to agree with Mermaid – I think she’s made some very astute observations. The only way in which I differ is that I don’t think Megan Markle (MM from here) is naive; I think she knew exactly what she was doing in the interview. The interview was about manipulation and revenge. Mermaid got it in 1 – she thought being a royal was going to be all about going to the Met Gala and once she realised it was largely shaking old people’s hands in community centres and spending summers in draughty castles she wanted out. Protocol meant she would have to stand behind Catherine at official occasions and she didn’t understand or like that. It had nothing to do with who the Queen likes most ( allegedly her favourite in law is Sophie who is a long way down the pecking order) and everything to do with protocol. Apparently the family and the courtiers bent over backwards to accommodate MM and her demands for the Sussexes to be given equal status to the Cambridge’s- at the 2019 Commonwealth Day Service at Westminster Abbey the whole running order had to be changed because MM insisted on being in the processional party. If you watch the video of that occasion relations between the Sussexes and all other family members are very cool and it was shortly after that the Sussexes did their midnight flit to Canada.
In throwing in the racism claim but refusing to name the person directly she throws suspicion on everyone. Oprah confirmed later it wasn’t the Queen or Prince Philip ( I’m sure that was orchestrated by MM) which leads us to think it was Charles or William. She also states that Catherine made her cry ( cue the well timed tear welling up in the eye) . Given that the interview was semi scripted wouldn’t it have been fairer to have dealt with the rumour that MM and the Duchess of Cambridge had fallen out at the wedding rehearsal by saying “ things get tense around a wedding, Catherine had just given birth and maybe we were both not at our best”. “She made me cry!” sounds petty and childish coming from from a 39 year old but over the last two days I’ve seen death threats aimed at William, Catherine and their three children by people who believe that William and Catherine are responsible for MM’s unhappiness.
The bottom line is that whilst racism is very real ( Harry himself has been accused of racist behaviour for which he has never apologised) we don’t know whether the specific accusation MM has made is true. Some of the statements made in the program were categorically untrue and easily fact checked but this is a case of ‘he said, she said’ .
The Royal family have always had a policy of Never complain, never explain and whilst this seems frustrating to some it is probably better than airing their dirty linen in public. However, I find it sad that MM, having burnt her entire family and having no family ( other than her mother) and no close friends to invite to the wedding, seems intent on doing the same to Harry’s family.
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I think I’ve said what I had to say about much of this to Mermaid, so I won’t repeat that stuff, except that I think with naivete you / we are talking about different things. I think Meghan was (and said she was) naive or at least underinformed about the consequences of marrying. I don’t think she was naive about this interview. I also don’t see why Meghan should have felt obligated to automatically follow all the Windsor family rules. In any family there are going to be disputes about following traditions vs new practices. Meghan was a really good look for the Windsors. It’s really too bad that they couldn’t bend a little.
Meghan has been the object of death threats since her engagement to Harry, and more so in the last year (in fact, the constant death threats are part of why they are estimated to have a 2.5M annual security expense — they didn’t create that situation or that number), so if William and Katherine are included, while that’s not something I would wish on them or anyone, a big part of me says “welcome to the club.” There may be cultural differences involved here. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that K doesn’t like M, and that William was not on board with the marriage, and again, in a normal family situation in the US that would be a powderkeg situation. If you’re the sibling, you’d do well to be careful. I didn’t love my SIL twenty years ago but I was fully supportive of the marriage and did exactly what they asked me to do before and during their wedding, and that is the normal behavior, not this crap that the Windsors apparently think is their hereditary right to pull. I would have expected the same thing of my brother: get behind me or suffer the consequences. K and William seem to think they’re exempt from the normal rules of family relationships because he’s the future king of England.
Further, I don’t think anyone can hold Meghan responsible for having an insane family. She’s been a loyal daughter to both her parents, and was supporting her father financially for many years. In the US we would call selling private correspondence to a tabloid at the least abnormal behavior and certainly the worst kind of betrayal. Her siblings are, frankly, nuts, but again, I would expect the normal conventions to apply to them even if they weren’t. I also don’t think Harry is Meghan’s victim. Not in the least. He had plenty of reasons to be angry at the press before they even met (his mother’s death; the refusal to keep to an agreement about keeping his deployment secret; the way the press destroyed his relationships with previous girlfriends). I think what they said at the end is true — she found a path for him to get out and live his own life, and he managed to take the final step of removing them from a highly toxic arena. I am, however, aware that the predominant British opinion is that she victimized him. I was in London the week that that was all happening, and i had a conversation with a cabbie about it, who said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Until he met her, he never said boo to anyone.” (Well, that’s not true, but isn’t it interesting? The evil woman comes in and gives him some backbone.)
re: racism — anyone who’s in the UK for twenty minutes sees the racism right out there on display. (I’m not saying this is unique to the UK, or even that it’s worse in the UK than it is elsewhere including the US, just that it’s obvious.) I think Meghan is probably (a) right about the racism and (b) right to point out that experience it was hard on her, especially in her own new “family” and (c) right to save some powder for the next round of this if they need it. I don’t see why she shouldn’t stand up for herself, or why she is being vilified for doing so, beyond the normal dynamics that she’s a woman and not white and those are apparently horrible things to be in the Windsor family if you want to stand up for yourself.
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I think we can agree on two things – the press have a lot to answer for and that there are cultural differences in the way we see things. Like Mermaid, this is going to my last word on the matter – my first instinct not to get involved was correct. My point was that in the interview MM deliberately ( in my view) pointed blame at The Cambridge’s and MUST have known this would stir up anger towards them. I don’t understand how anyone could say that death threats towards three small children is “welcome to the club”
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Because those same threats were directed at Meghan for years and no one reacted or did anything. So, while I don’t approve of it, as I said, it’s also hard for me to feel extra sorry for them when what goes around comes around.
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I thought this was excellent.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/harry-and-meghan-the-union-of-two-great-houses-the-windsors-and-the-celebrities-is-complete-1.4504502?fbclid=IwAR2BasGTQeRndSVbpAH9tBHFcg8Ts_u_nq-3ljzfK0b9E5BN2NprWbusWuI
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I think they got tired of serving as punching bags for the British media and Royal Family so they decided to defend themselves.
As far as the allegations of racism, Buckingham Palace’s deafening silence when the BBC Radio DJ posted the cartoon of a chimp after Archie’s birth is all the proof one needs. Plus, the conversation about titles and security seemed to be that the rules regarding honorifics and titles would be altered so that Archie would never get the chance to become an HRH Prince Archie once Charles ascends to the throne. That’s not a good look to purposely exclude the first non-lily white member of the family.
And as far as the “never complain, never explain” trope, that’s a load of horse manure. They complain and and explain plenty whether it is Kate’s use of Botox and hair extensions or Charles’ whinging about the latest season of “The Crown”.
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I’d forgotten about that cartoon — and this is an important reminder that it goes well beyond unconscious bias (which is probably exhausting to live with anyway).
I guess I don’t get why he has to have a title to have the security. I think it’s pretty obvious that if H & M are public figures and out there cheering on England and so on, that they are targets and so will their children be, whether or not they have the title. So, don’t call him Prince Archie. Just assess the actual threat and decide on that basis. Not providing security for him seems to me a bit like not paying your homeowner’s insurance — it might be okay but the end cost if you don’t is so much worse than whatever the financial cost would have been.
I didn’t know about the Botox or Charles’ complaints about the show. I guess I did read something about politicians wanting the show explicitly marked as entertainment or something.
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new revelation about Queen’s consent:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/25/revealed-police-barred-from-searching-queens-estates-for-looted-artefacts
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