His story? I’d say, “Duped fool.” Megan leads him around like an ox with a ring in his nose.
It took me a while to catch on to Megan. She came on as the sweet, innocent, outsider who was being persecuted by the big, bad, Royal Family. Poor, “woe is me”, Megan! She has magnificently managed to turn Harry against his entire family while painting herself in the best light possible. If he ever wakes up, she will strip him bare in what will inevitably be a divorce.
I don’t think it would make much difference as people love to discuss all this Royal family business, but going from “Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex” to “Mr. Harry Mountbatten-Windsor” is in some sense, a branding demotion.
It points up/hammers home the fact that he’s NOT a Royal if he quits using his titles.
Although… he can’t NOT be Prince Harry, can he? I mean, he could be stripped of his ducal title and all that, but the Prince title is inextricably tied to being Charles’ son.
Here’s the thing though- the whole Royal family setup only leaves two options- be the dutiful wife who looks pretty, acts subservient, and is totally outshadowed by her Royal husband, or you can be some sort of villain, a-la Diana or Meghan, who tries to forge their own path, and gets vilified for it.
I mean, I don’t really see how she’s acting as particularly manipulative. She’s just not fitting the mold that the British Royal family and press have tried to cram her into, and as a result, they don’t like her.
Meanwhile, Harry sees how his dad reacted when his mom did the same thing, and how that turned out, and decided to both not be the ass his father was, and to let his wife be her own person.
I don’t think that there’s a whole lot of manipulation going on there- except the pressure from the family for both of them to toe the line and present the “approved” personas to the press and the world.
Please don’t compare Megan to Diana who tirelessly worked serving the needs of others during her marriage with Charles. Megan works tirelessly for herself, period.
True. That is one he can’t quit if he wanted to. Oh, he could stop using it, but as son and grandson of reigning monarchs he would still be that.
It’s the other way around. His dukedom is irrevocable, but he’s a prince at the pleasure of his father.
User name checks out!
True that, it would require an Act of Parliament to revoke the Dukedom, which doesn’t seem a GREAT use of Parliament’s time.
Well I stand corrected WRT titles.
Oh please do. Blaspheme the holy name of Saint Diana at pleasure.
They were not being held to be moral equivalents as individuals. They were exemplified as becoming targets of deprecation by the insiders for not “knowing their place”. Maybe unfairly so for Di and fairly for Meg? Maybe. But they’re a fair comparison on this matter.
Sigh. What a mess this all is. I don’t personally think anyone is good or evil in this sorry family saga. The media, certainly, they are horrors.
But I do wish Harry would shut up now. We’ve heard his point, he’s had a lot of sympathy, he’s out of the merry-go-round, Charles (and William) are trying to get used to their new roles with the death of the Queen. My sense if that’s there’s a lot of support for the King in his new role amongst the British people, and, as such, Harry complaining about William not liking his beard and not wanting to hang out with him at school isn’t winning him many new fans.
I cut Harry a lot of slack because being a Public Figure is what he was born into and raised to be. He really doesn’t know anything else.
Now, being a Public Figure in the UK Royal Family has certain very strict rules, and he has clearly deviated from those rules, hence the approbation. Those chastising him here maybe unwittingly fall into the trap of internalizing and repeating the UK Royal Family rule set, as if that is the only proper path and anything else just isn’t allowed (clutches pearls). Why should one give a flying banana-ramma what UK Royal Family rules should be followed if one isn’t a member of the UK Royal Family? Not my circus, not my monkeys.
So, starting from the premise that Harry was born and raised to be a Public Figure, what is he to do? Talk, write, show up, and most of all try to control his narrative. It certainly sounds like this last part was not something that was available to him in his previous life, so maybe he hasn’t quite perfected it yet (anything takes practice).
As for Meghan, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, it’s easy to see her as a gold digger. I’m quite certain that they actually do love each other, but when they first met he being Prince Harry (ffs!) overcame any doubts she may have had about him as a person. Once she jumped on that wagon and got sucked into UK Royal Family life, and the dis-function of the British tabloid relationship, it’s clear she got blasted in the face with a massive dose of “What the actual f*ck!” She probably thought, “I’m a Hollywood star, I can handle this!” To which I say, “Oh, you sweet summer child.”
In conclusion, neither good guys nor spoiled brats. I expect they will remain in the pantheon of “famous for being famous” for the remainder of their lives. Hey, it’s a living.
Was that before or after she started cheating on him?
It was while HE was cheating on HER and, in general, treating her like dog shit.
So, Meghan should be more like her? Let the royal family, her husband and the tabloids treat her like dogshit until the stress leaves their marriage in tatters?
Harry is taking his parent’s lives as a warning of what not to do. That doesn’t mean they’ll do it right, but damn, people need to back the fuck off a little bit.
Good! Use your aggressive feelings! Let the hate flow through you!
Yes, such “others” as Barry Mannakee, James Hewitt, James Gilbey, and Oliver Hoare.
Face it. Diana was raised from birth to do one job, and she failed massively. If she didn’t want to be in the Firm, if she wanted to marry for love instead of duty, she could have just not married Charles. No one would have cared, and there were plenty more to choose from.
Must we be melodramatic? LOL
I simply believe she is the key component in Harry’s “story”. Rather than “hate” her, I actually have to admire how she is Harry’s psychological superior in pretty much every way. As the old saying goes, she plays him like a fiddle.
Exactly.
Think about it this way. If you married into a family, and they tried to tell you how you should act, dress, behave, etc… how would you take that? I know I wouldn’t take that well at all if my in-laws presumed to tell me anything of the sort.
Let’s take it a step further- imagine you’re a successful American actress, and you marry into the Royal family. How well are you going to take to your husband’s dried up old relic of a grandmother and his weird-ass father expecting all this stuff of you, and having the entire apparatus of the Royal family backing her up?
I’m not saying she shouldn’t have done more research/been more aware/asked more questions, but I think there’s a huge component of “I’m my own (American) woman, and I’ll be damned if I do what QE2, Charles, or William demand me to do. I should be treated as an equal, not an accessory.”
Harry has a choice in that case; does he back the woman he loves, or does he side with his family? And it’s pretty clear the family’s in the wrong in this case; Meghan hasn’t done anything except be American, black, an actress, and independent.
I honestly don’t think it would have gone down much differently had Harry married a corporate executive of a large enough company. A woman in that situation would also bristle at the idea that she’s supposed to be subservient to her husband and her husband’s family.
For the record, his maternal grandparents are also deceased.
Thanks. I wasn’t aware of that which is why I didn’t mention them.