LONDON – In case you’re wondering, Meghan still hates the establishment of Buckingham Palace and resents them for depriving her of her voice, agency and autonomy when she and Harry were still part of the official royal family.
How else to interpret Meghan’s extraordinary statement this weekend, in which she accused dark forces in the palace of “dictating” that she change her name on her son Archie’s birth certificate?
In the original certificate, registered on May 17, 2019, the Duchess gave her name as “Rachel Meghan, Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Sussex”.
However, 19 days later, on June 5, the royal couple changed their names.
The duchess’ name was “corrected” to merely read “Her Royal Highness, Duchess of Sussex”, which has given rise to some speculation as to why.
A spokeswoman for the Duchess said: “The name change in public documents in 2019 was dictated by the Palace, as confirmed by documents from senior Palace officials. This was not requested by Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, nor by the Duke of Sussex.
“Seeing this UK tabloid and its carnival of so-called ‘experts’ has deceptively chosen to turn this into a calculated ‘snob’ family and to suggest that she would strangely wish she had no name on her son’s birth certificate or any other legal document. ridiculous if it wasn’t offensive.
“There’s a lot going on in the world – let’s focus on that, instead of creating clickbait.”
The verb “dictate”, just in case you’re wondering, is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “issuing as an order “or” imposing, pronouncing or specifying with authority “and Meghan’s use of the word in his furious statement certainly captures the sense that Meghan’s own wishes were considered completely irrelevant by the palace writers who imposed the change.
It is interesting to note that the Sun on Sunday, who released the story over the weekend, says they contacted Meghan’s press team about the story, but did not receive an answer.
It is a fair comment from Meghan’s team that the newspaper’s speculation that the name change may have been a blow to Kate Middleton was free – and stupid. In fact, this same point was noted by Tim Teeman in The Royal Beast’s actual weekly newsletter on Sunday, in which he wrote: “The Sun postulates this as an affront to William and Kate, because Kate has her name on her children’s birth certificates. The possibility is not raised that the decision was taken for personal reasons and not related to the rejection. “
However, Sussex’s “zero engagement” policy with British tabloids like the Sun it seems certain that the Sussex side of the story will not be made public when these newspapers write about them.
Meghan always complained that she felt silenced by the palace. In an interview with The 19th website, for example, she said: “I know what it’s like to have a voice and also what it feels like to be speechless”.
In one of her few joint appearances with William and Kate, she was the last to speak, and when the microphone was not handed to her, she said coldly, “Do I not have a voice?
But it seems, at least from Sun on Sunday account of the events that asked him to comment on the very strange name change in Archie’s two certificates, which after all is a matter of public record, and he chose not to do so.
It hardly counts as being silenced, and it means that this is hardly an outrageous press abuse story that Meghan’s statement seems to suggest it is. It looks more like a cautionary tale about the advise against responding in a timely manner to genuine questions from the press. And given that Meghan and Harry have a $ 100 million deal with Netflix and a lucrative podcast deal with Spotify, complaining about the agency’s denial by the palace several years ago seems a bit like fighting in yesterday’s war.
As they note, there is “a lot going on in the world” now.
On Sunday, Buckingham Palace sources suggested that a “bureaucratic mistake and nothing more” was to blame for the alteration of Archie’s certificate.
One has to ask whether Meghan, by using this story to poke the crust of her troubled relationship with the palace and the press, is really making things better.
For although it is not clear why the birth certificate was changed, Meghan’s statement makes it very clear that her resentment towards the palace is not yet in question.