The press across the pond are enormously peeved! That’s their natural state, a suspended pearl-clutch, a permanent ass-clench. This month’s clench is about the Duchess of Sussex posting a sweet & funny 2021 maternity suite video. Meghan was overdue with Lili, so she and Harry tried to dance to induce labor. The British media has not unclenched for one moment since Meghan posted the video, even as the video went massively viral and earned Meghan hundreds of thousands of new Instagram followers. Other media outlets in America and Australia are even making fun of the British press’s pearl-clutching. But that hasn’t stopped King Charles’s aides from continuing to brief Becky English at the Mail about how the video PROVES that the “hard Sussexit” was always the only option. Just the fact that they’re all still trying to justify their terrible decisions is so funny to me. From English’s latest exclusive (I’ll spare you some of her BS):
The Windsors found the accusations of racism offensive! In all the Royal Family’s troubled relations with Harry and Meghan, it was a single word that sent a collective shiver down the spine of Buckingham Palace – and left senior courtiers in little doubt that whatever route the couple eventually took, things would not end happily. Funnily enough, it was not the suggestion of racism, which was levelled at the Royal Family in the famous 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview. Offensive as that was, senior royals always firmly placed their trust in the public who they hoped – and believed – would see this attempt at slandering them for the cheap shot it was.
The Sussexes dared to want a collaboration: Announcing their decision to step back from their position as senior working royals in order to ‘carve out a progressive new role within this institution’ as financially independent individuals, the couple concluded: ‘We will continue to collaborate with Her Majesty The Queen, The Prince of Wales, The Duke of Cambridge and all relevant parties’. And there it was – the word ‘collaborate’. ‘No-one “collaborates” with the Queen. This is not one of those “Kate Moss Top Shop tie-ups”,’ one well-placed source raged to me at the time.
QEII was worried about a twerking video, the vision!! ‘This is exactly why Queen Elizabeth knew this whole half-in, half-out version of royalty they were lobbying for was never, ever going to work,’ my source says. ‘Harry and Meghan were a law unto themselves from the start, pushing and pushing the envelope to their own professional and financial advantage.’
QEII’s instincts: I think it’s fair to say even the canniest courtier would not have had a duchess suggestively hiking up her dress and jiggling her baby bump on their royal bingo card. But it does offer a sage reminder of how well-served we were by the late Queen’s well-honed instincts (the whole Prince Andrew debacle, I would say, being a rare exception to her customary good judgement). ‘Her Late Majesty was nobody’s fool and knew that the chances were, it would all end in disaster,’ another source remarks.
Charles was wise to be a terrible father as well: Events last week also reinforce why King Charles has, sadly, had no option but to stick to his current course and cut his youngest son loose. Indeed, as far as Buckingham Palace is concerned, the whole ‘Harry issue’ has been firmly parked to one side for the foreseeable future with no rapprochement in sight. For one thing the working royals are actually incredibly busy: the day Meghan launched her viral video, Prince William was serving up sausage baps to the military in Suffolk while Queen Camilla was first highlighting the British flower industry at the Garden Museum in London and then at a back-to-back charity engagement in the City.
The Windsors have been angry at Harry for years: Recent talk from Harry about ‘reconciling’ is also seen by many in royal circles as just another attempt to gain public sympathy and deflect from his many PR woes. Particularly, insiders say, as it so clearly comes without any real recognition of why people are so angry at his behaviour, and wary of ever speaking to him again…. Even if there was a fraction of truth in some of the accusations that Harry has thrown at them, the sheer relentlessness of his public campaign, not to mention the outright spite involved, has left scars too deep ever to heal. And the couple’s current behaviour – once again making public that which really should remain between your nearest and dearest – is only making matters worse. Collaboration, it is fair to say, is the last thing on our Royal Family’s mind.
Becky English really sat down and wrote this palace-commissioned piece, earnestly describing how her palace sources are furiously raging over… Meghan posting a dancing-in-2021 video on her own social media. It’s really bonkers. The revisionist history over the “hard Sussexit” and “no half-in” continues to be extraordinary. You’d think that if the hard-Sussexit solution was the wisest choice, it would be plainly obvious to everyone. They wouldn’t need to still be justifying it and revising their position five and a half years later. “Meghan posted a dancing video five years after she left the UK, THIS is why we never wanted her in the first place!” As always, they’ve twisted themselves in so many knots, they don’t even understand how crazy they look.
Also: I laughed at “for one thing the working royals are actually incredibly busy,” then she listed all of the boring events done by the left-behinds since Meghan posted the dance video, events which the Mail and other outlets have barely covered because they were too busy devoting wall-to-wall coverage to Meghan!
Last thing, and I can’t even believe that we’re still talking about it, but these people still haven’t moved on, so here goes: the Sussexes WANTED to work with the palace and wanted to still give the palace some control and oversight over their lives, their schedules, etc. That was part of Harry and Meghan’s “half-in” proposal. It’s because of the palace’s decision to completely kick out the Sussexes that H&M are doing all of these things without palace oversight. Because they can, because the palace said “no” to having any say in how they conducted themselves.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Meghan’s IG.
