The telegraph
What Meghan misunderstood about the monarchy
Of the many shocking statements made by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in their large-scale attack on the monarchy during their two-hour interview with Oprah Winfrey, the most peculiar was certainly Meghan’s claim to know nothing about the British monarchy when she met Torment. She was so indifferent that she didn’t even bother to read a volume of history or biography. She said she didn’t even do an Internet search to learn the basics. Her knowledge of the Royal Family, she said, was based only on what Harry “was sharing with me”. Surprisingly, as formed by the prestigious Northwestern University, she said that her sense of real life was based on “fairy tales”. What she described as naivety seemed more like a stubborn refusal to accept that life in the Firm – the name used for the first time by Harry’s great-grandfather, King George VI – would involve long days of unveiling plaques and planting trees, as well as projects of exciting passion made possible by its unique position. If she had read a little history, she would have recognized that the actual trips abroad, like the one she and Harry made to Australia, are really “exhausting”. She would know that she was not the only member of the Royal Family to carry out such tasks during pregnancy. In 1948, for example, Queen Elizabeth II, then still a princess, made her first official visit with her husband to Paris. It was an exhausting four days, and Philip and Elizabeth generated enormous goodwill. Unbeknownst to the French or British authorities, she was four months pregnant with Prince Charles and suffered from nausea behind closed doors. Meghan complained bitterly about her treatment by the press, which ricocheted between adulation and severe criticism. Perhaps if she had sat down for tea with her husband’s stepmother, the Duchess of Cornwall, she might have learned about years of being attacked by the media. Camilla, like everyone else in the Royal Family, survived the assaults by staying quiet, moving on and doing her job. But Meghan was already exploding in sharing her point of view, even months before the wedding, with none other than Oprah Winfrey. Coming from Hollywood, where the actresses join in fashion with their publicists, Meghan expressed surprise that Palace’s press officers felt obliged to overhear their first telephone conversation with Oprah. She then went behind her back anyway, met her future interlocutor, invited her to the wedding and found a privileged place for her. That was the disadvantage of being “silenced”. Meghan’s complaint that she received no positive guidance about her role, just “certain things you can’t do” sounded especially empty. She lamented that “there was no class on how to speak” or “cross your legs”. It was almost impossible to believe that a trained actress would complain about having to learn the British national anthem and the “30 hymns” that she should have known. Didn’t it really occur to her, until she was five minutes from her first meeting with the Queen, that she should know how to bow?