In their two-hour interview with Oprah on Sunday night, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry dropped devastating details of real life under palace rule.
The stories were shocking in their mundane cruelty and revealed once again the British Monarchy’s entrenched classism, racism and disregard for personal welfare. In an attempt to set the record straight, Markle spoke not just about the lack of control she had over her own life, but the lack of support she received in the face of abhorrent and racist attacks on her from the public and media.
The details, as told by Harry and Meghan, were damning.
“The Firm,” as the circle that runs the royal family is called, controlled many aspects of Meghan’s life, decided to strip the security detail from their family, and, when Meghan sought help for suicidal ideation, refused to let her check into a treatment facility. Both Meghan and Harry admitted that a prominent member of the family expressed concerns about how dark their future children would be.
The entire thing should be enough to sour the American public (and those across the Commonwealth) on the myth of the Royal Family but it’s almost a given that our obsession with the royals, in all their forms, will continue.
It isn’t because people don’t believe Meghan’s claims, or that what Harry alleges seems to be far fetched. If history has taught us anything, it is that entrenched cultural myths are almost impossible to destroy.
In fact, we’ve even been here before, with Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. Many of us watched in real time as Diana, Harry and Prince William’s mother, opened up about the oppressive palace atmosphere. And yet, despite knowing how terribly she was treated and how escaping “The Firm” basically cost her her life, we watched in huge numbers as both Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle married into the same system that destroyed her. There was breathless coverage, from a public all too eager to embrace the myth of a royal happily after.
In her interview, Markle admitted that she thought the “institution would protect her” and was distraught when she found out it wouldn’t. As the interview aired, clips of Diana echoing the same sentiments that Meghan did seemed to take on an eerie prescience.
Watching this interview reminded me of Princess Diana’s in 1995. #OprahMeghanHarry pic.twitter.com/5WU4Rwnz0Y
— 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢 🎆 (@thatscaleblol) March 8, 2021
We’ve been here before, many times.
And yet, what we understand on an intellectual level always wars with what captures our attention. The British Monarchy is the last vestige of a brutal Colonial empire founded on the exploitation and murder of millions. As much as Harry and Meghan wish to refer to the Queen as simply their “grandmother,” she’s the ultimate figurehead of a family with an astonishing legacy of white supremacy.
There is no reforming the monarchy, no bringing it into modernity. Royal rule, even symbolic, can’t exist in a truly egalitarian society. Yet, many of us, myself included, will continue to be avid royal watchers, equal parts fascinated and repulsed by the pomp and circumstance, all steeped in a violent history. Even knowing what we hasn’t been enough to fully dim the gild of royalty, so entrenched and powerful is that cultural myth.
What Meghan went through is unconscionable, and her openness should make it harder for anyone to labor under the false assumption that the royal family is a mostly benign and pleasant diversion. The royal family has huge cultural capital, and its draw comes from a bygone era of British power that extended and exploited across the world.
Until we’re able to reckon honestly with that legacy of British colonialism, magical symbolism will always outweigh the reality.
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