The Royal Family #38

Status
Thread locked. We start a new thread when they have over 1000 posts, click the blue button to see all threads for this topic and find the latest open thread.
1
I can see that the stress they put themselves under could be a strain in their relationship. Their chaotic relationship with the medias and their many pr mistakes must weight on them. They also seem to not manage to reach their goals. They want the spotlights - otherwise they wouldn't go get those "awards" but I bet they would like to be invited to more prestigeous events.

So I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a bit of frustration - but either it will grow into ressentment between them either it will feed their narrative that the rf and the british press prevent them to shine. As the monarchy looks more and more archaic in liberal circles and is derided by the american press, you would expect that they would be invited everywhere. It might have been the case in 2020 without the pandemic. But since then, they've been involved in too many dramas. Also Harry doesn't realise it but it is very "non-american" to complain to not get enough money from your family. Even american nepo babies will pretend to be self-made.

But I wouldn't bet on a divorce. Meghan and Harry might look more distant but that's because their pda was over the top. People were constantly comparing them to William and Kate, saying, see, this is love! But I do think Kate and Will have a better strategy - people cannot gossip on the status of their relationship by just looking at them at events. Meghan and Harry on the opposite made it easier to speculations as any slight change of interaction can be used as a "sign".
 
Lammington said:
I have to say, I don't love when people say Meghan could have modernised the royal family due to her ethnicity. The implication that someone's ethnicity should be used as a sales pitch for a family whose power and money is reliant on a tiered class system is a bit... icky.

Surely modernisation of the royals should be based on meaningful change, not the skin colour of someone who married into the family's privilege.
Click to expand...
I think the main problem for the RF is that their natural default setting is 1950’s … so Meghan being an extremely modern working woman with her own career was a radical change before you even get to the fact she is American and her ‘commoner’ status (theyve tried in the past to market incoming wives as ‘commoners’ but when one has the courtesy title of ‘Lady’ with a family who considers themselves more royal than the royals and another who has a Family with ties, however tenuous, to the outer fringes of aristocracy then again, it’s more a 1950’s version).

I do think they missed a trick with Harry and Meghan and I think it was down to a combination of people having their nose out out of joint, not knowing how to utilise them fully and just the general Harriness of Harry. They had a brief foray into life post 1960 but got scared and have now retreated back to their safe space.
 
50sGirl said:
I should imagine, unlike Queen Elizabeth, she is not the monarch so doesn’t want to take any attention away from her husband.
Click to expand...
I remember how angry and jealous looked when Diana took away all the attention from him when they first married.
 
Lammington said:
I have to say, I don't love when people say Meghan could have modernised the royal family due to her ethnicity. The implication that someone's ethnicity should be used as a sales pitch for a family whose power and money is reliant on a tiered class system is a bit... icky.

Surely modernisation of the royals should be based on meaningful change, not the skin colour of someone who married into the family's privilege.
Click to expand...

Me too, icky is exactly how this narrative makes me feel. Sending the token POC out to become involved in the Grenfell project and the Commonwealth feels very colonial.
 
To be honest I think Meghan “hitting the ground running” is what ended up being a major part of their downfall as working royals.

When Kate married William she was eased into public duties, they lived in Wales for a few years as “part time” working royals. Now although this led to them getting some bad PR at the time as workshy etc, it gave Kate the chance to really learn the ropes, figure out where she fitted in and find what she wanted to do with her role. She played the long game and took some flack at the start but has now arguably solidified her place as a well-liked royal who understands her position etc.

Meghan and Harry took the opposite approach IMO and got stuck straight in to the projects and glitzy PR push which got her out there and in the beginning got her great PR as some sort of revolutionary duchess. What they seemed to not do was take time to figure out her future role, learn the royal ropes and how it works behind the scenes and work out where she fitted in. That was a recipe for disaster.

I think there would have been support if they had said they were going to take say a 2 year transition period after the wedding, allowing Meghan to adjust to her new home country, new culture, new way of life and learn the royal ropes and figure out a role- after all she hadn’t even lived in this country until a few months before the engagement. I do think this could have solved so many of the problems they ended up coming up against, rather than going all guns blazing at the start. IMO they got caught up in the bubble of press and popularity that came straight after the wedding and that bubble was always going to burst.
 
To be fair, William and Kate had the luxury of time with age on their side as well. If Harry and Meghan had taken as long to ease theme selves in, they would still be easing now.

I think they were just people who were used to being busy and thought that would just transfer across. The press are always on a hair trigger, and I’m sure they would have found something to gripe about with a back seat transition period … especially as with the age considerations a pregnancy was always going to be on the cards sooner rather than later.
 
Great_Kate said:
I agree in so far, as that having a mixed race family member is as modernising as using your tiara as a bike helmet. It’s a pretty look but that’s about it. Nothing came out if it and nothing would have come out if it if they stayed. It was great distracting the masses from the fact that nothing was changing for the better in real life though.

Disagree about their bigger projects. I do think that H&M had quite the momentum and there was lots of uncomfortable comparison going on for Kate (and Wills but sadly the men always get overshadowed and the vultures rather rip on the women). H’s easy going attitude looked great when visiting abroad. His Sentebale and Invictus involvement appeared to be passionate and sincere (something W&K are lacking in their efforts- or rather it looks like that) and had been going on for years. Endurance is also an important part to sell something as import for you.
M and her long term involvement with Grenfell was really great. I loved it. Less big causes but more in depth involvement is the way forward. The Smart Works action was nice as well. Maybe not all pieces, but the idea was good. Incorporating friends to their benefit not so much.
People are rightly critical about Kate needing almost ten years to get where she is. She was around thirty when she started not a teen. And she and Wiliam aren’t called out to be lazy for nothing.
Meghan most definitely rode on this. I think their PR stepped massively on the Walses toes when they sold this image of the glamorous, well educated, experienced and super motivated go getter. It shone a light to where it hurt for Kate. And it hurt Meghan in the end as well. No one could have delivered what they promised. This narrative set her up to fail from day one.
IF H&M could have been content to play the fourth and eventually the fifth/sixth fiddle, they could have been the aaset most saw in them. The fact it didn’t work out and blew up like this, is -in my POV, mostly up to H. He didn’t prepare his wife for what was coming, so she didn’t had a chance to step away. He didn’t help her when things went south. He very probably sold her a future that was never going to happen and when he realises this he got petulant. I do think he believed himself that his/their role would be much more prominent. I do think M had quite the rude awakening. And she is not without blame. But I do think the majority of responsibility lies on H. If he were my husband he would have been in quite some trouble for blindsiding me like this.
Click to expand...

I’m not looking to bash Meghan, just disagreeing with the modernisation narrative. I absolutely think Harry is the root cause of most of what’s happened to the Sussexes. Meghan has my sympathies.

Yes, there was lots of momentum and positivity around them at the time but that was all superficial. They were riding on a high of positive pr and media spin which can and did turn on a knife-edge. I don’t see anything that either of them did or would do to modernise the monarchy in any real sense. I liked some of their projects too but they were hardly pioneering. Regardless of Meghan’s prior endeavours didn’t they just do what many other royals have before them? Get married, woman gives up independence and becomes Princess [insert hubby’s name], become “working” royals and get involved in charitable endeavours.
---
neroli said:
Shame she couldn't have been happy to be a Royal wife. She'd been a moderately successful but forgettable actress before she latched onto Harry and saw her Big Chance.
Click to expand...

As opposed to him latching on to her? What successes has he had that haven’t come from nepotism?
 
Last edited:
Boring Monday said:
I think the main problem for the RF is that their natural default setting is 1950’s … so Meghan being an extremely modern working woman with her own career was a radical change before you even get to the fact she is American and her ‘commoner’ status (theyve tried in the past to market incoming wives as ‘commoners’ but when one has the courtesy title of ‘Lady’ with a family who considers themselves more royal than the royals and another who has a Family with ties, however tenuous, to the outer fringes of aristocracy then again, it’s more a 1950’s version).

I do think they missed a trick with Harry and Meghan and I think it was down to a combination of people having their nose out out of joint, not knowing how to utilise them fully and just the general Harriness of Harry. They had a brief foray into life post 1960 but got scared and have now retreated back to their safe space.
Click to expand...
Historically, a commoner is someone without a title of nobility or someone that's not royal. It's not to do with the wealth or connections of the person.
So Catherine was a commoner until marriage. Diana was born a commoner; she didn't become a lady until her early teens. Even the Queen Mother didn't become a lady until she was 3.

"Under United Kingdom law, users of courtesy titles of nobility have been held to be commoners, eligible for election to the House of Commons"
 
Isa_Drennan said:
I’m not looking to bash Meghan, just disagreeing with the modernisation narrative. I absolutely think Harry is the root cause of most of what’s happened to the Sussexes. Meghan has my sympathies.

Yes, there was lots of momentum and positivity around them at the time but that was all superficial. They were riding on a high of positive pr and media spin which can and did turn on a knife-edge. I don’t see anything that either of them did or would do to modernise the monarchy in any real sense. I liked some of their projects too but they were hardly pioneering. Regardless of Meghan’s prior endeavours didn’t they just do what many other royals have before them? Get married, woman gives up independence and becomes Princess [insert hubby’s name], become “working” royals and get involved in charitable endeavours.
---


As opposed to him latching on to her? What successes has he had that haven’t come from nepotism?
Click to expand...

He is where he is thanks to an accident of birth. She's meant to be an intelligent woman. She'll have done her homework on the Royals. She rather likes being in the limelight judging by her acting history.No one forced her to marry him.
 
neroli said:
He is where he is thanks to an accident of birth. She's meant to be an intelligent woman. She'll have done her homework on the Royals. She rather likes being in the limelight judging by her acting history.No one forced her to marry him.
Click to expand...
But she and Harry have both said that she knew "almost nothing about my relatives" and she definitely didn't google them !
 
50sGirl said:
How exactly did she “hit the ground running”?

Yes, they were the words Meghan used in their engagement interview but actions speak louder than words.
Click to expand...

Well a quick google search of Royal engagements in 2018 Megan did 96 engagements while she was pregnant and had only offical became Royal after the wedding in May. Kate did 87 in the entire year in comparison.

So yeah actions do speak louder than words.....
---
Great_Kate said:
She was definitely more visible or at least it felt like it. Which is all it needs really. The effort she put into her projects was obvious (or the PR did a good job, who knows with those people). She gave good speeches and had a good way of interacting. The choice of patronages looked way more fitting then what K got.
I like K but she is not a natural. She has worked hard on it and it shows. M is definitely very very good though. In the end M wasn’t really suited for the role because it clashes with some of her ideas. Which is fine.
Click to expand...

While i agree with alot of the above, I do think Kate can put in a bit more effort on things - still to this day she is not the best at public speaking, which is something she has all the resources and plenty of time to work on. Her projects i'll give her a pass on because they could be down to the palace and what they want them to do etc.
 
I think it’s fairly obvious Kate has had public speaking tuition. She projects her voice much better and has obviously had elocution lessons as well … but getting up to speak like that must be nerve wracking … and even more so if you are talking to people who know far more about the subject than you could ever hope to. I‘d be locked in a cupboard with a box of Dairy Milk.
 
neroli said:
He is where he is thanks to an accident of birth. She's meant to be an intelligent woman. She'll have done her homework on the Royals. She rather likes being in the limelight judging by her acting history.No one forced her to marry him.
Click to expand...

Lots of intelligent people were fooled into believing that he was a fun loving but good guy. If he managed to persuade a large proportion of the nation could he not have persuaded one woman? Has he not lied about himself and his life in order to latch on to her?
 
Last edited:
Isa_Drennan said:
Lots of intelligent people were fooled into believing that he was a fun loving but good guy. If he managed to persuade a large proportion of the nation could he not have persuaded one woman? Has he not lied about himself and his life in order to latch on to her?
Click to expand...

I never, ever liked Harry and couldn't believe the spin of him being wonderfully attractive , witty and an eligible bachelor. :sick:
Always found him deeply unattractive, full of his own importance, self entitled and boorish.

All traits which are coming to the fore now. Having said that I dislike Megan, despise her for the sh1t storm she created over the racism issue on the Oprah show (note I don't call it an interview) more a fawning exercise full of lies and delusion.

They deserve each other, at least by marrying each other they didn't spoil the lives of two other people.
 
Status
Thread locked. We start a new thread when they have over 1000 posts, click the blue button to see all threads for this topic and find the latest open thread.
Back
Top