One of the first interviews Robert Lacey gave to promote his book, Battle of Brothers: William and Harry – The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult, was to the Daily Mail. He spoke at length about how the Palace handled “the Meghan situation” poorly from the start, and they failed to properly assess Meghan’s “incredible and dangerous level of self-belief.” Meaning, she wasn’t going to be a doormat and an empty-headed doll. He said to the DM: “There is only one self-made millionaire in the Royal Family and that is Meghan Markle. If they had sat down with her at the start and said, ‘Let’s talk about the things you are interested in’, things might have been different… they made the mistake of dealing with the spare’s wife thinking she was just a routine royal. She was never going to be a routine royal.” Which I think is a really valid point – the old farts thought they could change Meghan, and they didn’t realize they needed to be the ones to change.
Of course, as Lacey promotes his book with problematic a–holes who are part of the Anti-Sussex cottage industry, Lacey’s original message gets massaged and manipulated. Behold:
Meghan Markle was a ‘massive problem’ for the royal family and wasn’t made to feel important enough, Prince Harry’s biographer has claimed. Robert Lacey, who wrote the sensational new book Battle of Brothers, appeared on Good Morning Britain chatting about the Sussex’s with co-host Piers Morgan. Robert claimed Meghan was the “real reason” behind the apparent feud between Prince William and Prince Harry, claiming the 38-year-old did speak to his younger brother about his relationship.
The 76-year-old said: “Meghan was a massive problem for the Royal Family. It’s easy to be wise after the event. Here’s a self-made woman. A self-made millionairess, the only one in the Royal Family who’s made her own money, created her own celebrity and not inherited it.”
Robert outlined the alleged falling out between the two brothers in his book, claiming the dad-of-three was “quite right” to raise his concerns with Prince Harry, 36. He told Piers on yesterday’s show: “William was quite right to say to Harry: ‘Look, this is a challenge you’re bringing into the family, how’s it going to work?’ And with wisdom after the event, one has to say not enough preparations were made.”
Robert also claimed that the former actress wasn’t made to feel ‘important’, implying this partly fuelled their move to the US. He said: “She wasn’t made to feel important enough and they are now where they want to be.”
In the chat with Piers, 55, Robert also claimed Prince William, 38, raised fears over the pace of Prince Harry’s relationship with Meghan, with the pair meeting in June 2016, before announcing their engagement the following November. Robert pointed this out, saying: “William took the lesson of duty. As he went through this difficult time, the prospect he was going to be King was a strength for him, to the degree that when he fell in love, he politely asked his girlfriend to wait nine or 10 years to make sure she’d be good for the job. They have created a wonderful figurehead for the future. Harry took the opposite conclusion from the turmoil of his parents’ loveless marriage, that he was going to go for love. We’re looking at a clash of love and duty.”
Lacey keeps saying variations of “William draws strength from his position of Future King” and I have no idea what that means. Does it mean that William already sees himself as “king” and he feels it’s his right to boss people around constantly and throw kingly temper tantrums? And again with “William asked Kate to politely wait for 10 years.” No he didn’t. William cheated on Kate constantly and dumped her several times. It wasn’t until 2007-ish that William told her that if she waited around for years longer, he would eventually marry her. And even then, the Queen forced him to propose to Kate when he did!
As for what Lacey says here about Meghan and what he’s said in recent weeks… it honestly boils down to “Meghan could not be controlled and manipulated by the Palace, she had her own mind and ideas, and she wasn’t okay with being second fiddle to Copy-Kate.” Right? But he won’t say that in those words.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
Not made to feel important enough is code for: she was to be used as a doormat and scapegoat and she realized it.
Or if you rephrase it as ‘was constantly told she was unimportant and doing everything wrong’ that also works.
Let’s be honest, she wasn’t made to feel important enough, not to fuel her ego but to acknowledge to amazing impact she could have for the BRF. But they didn’t want that and that absolutely isn’t what he means here.
Oh I don’t know. I mean she was welcomed with words like ‘irrelevant’ ‘a c%%t’, ‘degree wife’, ‘megain’ and at her first luncheon with the family they rolled out the red carpet with some one wearing a blackamoor brooch. What more does she want?
I always have wondered how she felt that day sitting beside the perv, Andrew.
More gas-lighting.
Notice that when black people experience racism the final analysis is that they weren’t made to feel important and NOT that they were abused, humiliated and disrespected.
They are literally re-directing all that racism and finding other reasons for it whilst making Meg sound like the problem.
There is not one shred of accountability. Not even one iota.
These clowns will be extinct by the time Betty pops her clogs.
THIS^^^^^
Right here.
“She had all the feelings and they just misjudged her.” Yes. Let’s put it all on Meghan.
Robert Lacey seems desperate to tow the middle road. Heads Up: It’s not working.
Exactly, Mignonette! To excuse the racism and misogyny directed constantly at her, let’s pretend it was her ego that prevented her from fitting in. Whole lot of bs & gaslighting to give the royals and their adjacents an out.
which makes me think Lacey really doesn’t know what racism is. He thinks racism is looking at a black person and calling them Ni***r to their face. So in his mind, no one has called Meghan any names so no one there is racist.
I think Lacey knows what racism is but I think he is preaching to a choir full of British Tabloid Media lowlifes and BRF ass-kissers.
Meghan isn’t full of “self belief,” she is full of self confidence that comes from being a self-made woman. This is a good thing for someone who is expected to perform most of her duties in the public eye.
They RRs and courtiers sure are salty about her having her own money.
They’re salty she has her own mind too.
A woman of color who has her own money and her own mind has everything she needs.
“ Lacey keeps saying variations of “William draws strength from his position of Future King” and I have no idea what that means. Does it mean that William already sees himself as “king” and he feels it’s his right to boss people around constantly and throw kingly temper tantrums?”
Yes I think so and furthermore the people around him treat him like he has the right as well – so why would he behave any differently? I think what we’re seeing from William is a perfectly reasonable outcome of someone raised since birth to believe they are better than everyone
Yeah it makes it sound like William never lets anyone forget that he’s going to be king and uses that to get his way.
So this is from Cindy Adams all the way back in 2009:
“Understand, he’s not all that easy and affable as he comes off. He’s a bit of an arrogant young man who expects people to bow and scrape.”
And Middleton herself? “Not smart. Hasn’t picked up a book in her life. But very calculating. Her mother’s been planning this her whole life. And she knew how to play hard to get.”
And back then people didn’t believe it. But now we do. William is arrogant and entitled. Kate is manipulative and calculating and an airhead about actual work. William and Kate have always been this way.
Kate’s actual words have proved her stupidity time and time again. She wasn’t interviewed pre engagement so no one really knew except the ones who attended school with her at St Andrew’s. And there certain classmates revealed her tendency to copy notes from people who sat next to her.
William asshole pretending to be sarcasm comments weren’t taken seriously either but he’s almost 40 and joking about Covid when thousands had already died really shows his callousness.
adsflkasjdf;laskdjfasdfasd “NOT SMART.” Holy shit, that’s devastating. “Hasn’t picked up a book in her life.” YIKES.
Kate might not be book smart, or emotionally intelligent, but she is smart in terms of calculating her own trajectory in life, and figuring out how to secure her own bacon. People can be smart in different ways, but I also think that Kate is fundamentally self-absorbed. She doesn’t know how to assess people beyond herself, and therefore, miscalculates and winds up screwing herself over. This is what I think happened with Rosebush Hanbury. She can’t figure out how to operate or deal with other people beyond her little bubble, and it ends poorly.
“Kate might not be book smart, or emotionally intelligent, but she is smart in terms of calculating her own trajectory in life, and figuring out how to secure her own bacon. ” – I actually think that it was Carole who was the brains of the Operation Bag a Prince.
It’s been said that even as a child he liked to ‘remind’ people that he was going to be King one day and has always had that kind of ‘grand’ attitude that Kate and her family have. The stories about the real William paint him as a very boorish, stupid, vapid man who is soo full of his own entitlement. He’s just like Uncle Andrew.
I am still intrigued by the comment the other day where it seems as though the British journalists know that the Tory govt and BRF is covering for William in some way.
@Nic919 That caught my attention as well – because that kinda implies that William may be (or have been) embroiled in something illegal.
Wait, what comments were those?!?!
@ArtHistorian – I started the Norman Baker last night. Thanks for the rec, so far its REALLY good (I’m only about 30 pages in.)
@becks it was in one of the posts on Friday. I forget which one, but essentially it seems as though royal reporters in the UK are aware that the BRF and Tory govt are covering up something about William. And they are hoping that either there is no monarchy by the time William gets there or it’s a labour govt so that he can be controlled.
It sounded more serious than just covering up for an affair.
@Nic919. I believe it. I think William is Andrew 2.0.
Seeing the precedent set by Andrew who was allowed to remain in his trade position even though he was inept and corrupt, and is still being protected from consequences for being a rapist, who knows what that family is willing to cover up for William. But there is something wrong with him.
In terms of the Tories and BRF covering up for him, I always go back to when the charities were split. The rumour was that something very big went down and it had nothing to do with Meghan or Harry I.e. it wasn’t about them fighting.
@Farfromreality – we’ve heard a few things like that. I think Tom bradby was the one who said that some things had been said that could not be unsaid, and Keir Simmons said that something big had gone down that did NOT involve Harry and Meghan but there were legal reasons for not talking about it. And there have been a few other similar comments. I think if it involved the foundation, it means the Cambridges were doing something very shady with the money.
I think it’s likely that there is some degree of shady shit going on with the BRF and money laundering, particularly from unsavoury individuals from overseas. I think William, perhaps on one of his official trips overseas, extended his mandate from the BFO and did something or facilitated something for someone he wasn’t supposed to. I mentioned this elsewhere, but people need to take a closer look at how these diplomatic visits are conducted, and for what purpose. “Strengthening ties” is a code word for a lot of different things, and the British govt uses the royal family to give their otherwise shady diplomatic efforts a more or less respectable disguise.
And yet . . . isn’t William correct? He’s going to be king one day by virtue of his birth alone. So they better do what he says. What intelligence do you need to be king? None. What temperament do you need to get the position? It doesn’t matter. Do you need compassion? Nope. You just need the right birth order. And William got that. I’m sorry, but that’s how the British monarchy works. William’s not wrong; it’s the people who think there’s some type of meritocracy involved who are wrong.
I think it’s that people assumed that there was some humility and sense of responsibility to anything other than William’s self-interest and that has turned out to not be true. William and Kate both don’t seem to care about helping anyone. They barely do anything and inflate the little they do to as pr for themselves. They use their power and privilege for themselves, not others.
This is such BS. Meghan is smart enough to understand that there would always be a pecking order and Kate is the FFQ. Whatever. What Meghan DIDN’T expect was for this family to repeatedly throw her under the bus and fan the flames of racism towards her. I mean, how dare she want to be treated like a human being, amirite?!
This. Jesus-anytime she was with the family she very clearly showed deference, and understood her “part.” It’s not like she was pushing Kate out of the way to stand in front of her. This narrative is just gross.
What Lacey is not saying is how the BM and the palace colluded to smear her out of the country. And it’s what you don’t say that’s most telling.
Lacey’s blindspot is that he firmly believes in the white British establishment and class system. Not only does he deny the racism Meghan suffered in the British Media and through the palace for four years. He also denies that Meghan was hailed as a black savior who would improve race relations in Britain and the Commonwealth. His analysis is poor, subjective and one dimensional. Not quite a historian.
I skimmed the book and didn’t like it. Everyone is looking bad in it, apart from FFK William and the Queen and Prince Philip to some extent.
Actually, Wills is portrayed like the only real Royal there. Yes, he is incandescent with rage from time to time but it’s because the trauma of Diana’s death. Though his rage towards Meghan is justified because she edited Vogue the wrong way, and didn’t show Archie right after birth and decided to have birth in posh American Hospital, and didn’t reveal Archie godparents, etc. While Willy is fighting for his future Kingdom!
And only Wills is able to return the lost Harry to his Motherland, everything depends on him. So no, this book is definitely biased and is lack of real analysis. And Lacey blames Young (Queen’s secretary?) and Meghan for the results of negotiations (I don’t believe this is entirely true. Who appointed Young as major negotiator knowing they can’t stand each other?)
@Gina: Perhaps William should be reminded that his english cousins Beatrice and Eugenie were born there. As were all of Margaret’s grandchildren as well as his own cousin-in-law Edo.
But yeah this just reinforces the points I was making when extracts first started trickling in – William is said to be angry but we’re told it’s totally justified.
2cents- Please put this review on Amazon, to warn others. You already have one upvote.
I think he’s right about this. Meghan WAS a problem and a “challenge” for the royal family and they didn’t know how to handle her. The aspects about her that appeal to many of us as fans – her speeches, her hands on and direct approach to philanthropy (i.e. the cookbook vs just visiting the Hubb kitchen once), describing herself as a feminist, her social media experience, her confidence, her intelligence – those were bad things for the royals. The courtiers are too used to dealing with Kate. They didn’t know what to do with Meghan. And I think the courtiers are KP were REALLY in over their heads, because they had spent a decade doing the bare minimum and now the new duchess wants them to work.
@ Becks1, Meghan was a “challenge “ to all those fragile Windsor male egos, except Harry. Everything she said or did was better than anything those born to this family could do and they hate her for that.
Yes, exactly! She made the other royals look bad (especially Kate, as that’s her most direct comparison obviously) and they all knew it.
The problem here is not that they didn’t know how to handle her, you don’t need to handle someone who was already off to a good start. It’s that they actively worked against her to make sure that Meghan didn’t eclipse the rest of the family. That ship had already sailed though as the media was already obsessed with her. She was the new shiny object, they only had to wait for a few years for it to die down. They could have used her newfound popularity to maximise their own, but envy and jealousy got in the way of common sense. Now we have this pile of mess that the media loves to stir up every now and then.
Exactly. All they had to do was wait and love the heck out of her publicly. People are less likely to hate on W&K (because they like H&M more) if the four of them are sickeningly sweet to each other. Heck i liked all of them until Commonwealth!
@Myra – but that’s sort of my point. They didn’t think she was off to a good start. They didn’t want her to be as popular as she was or as hardworking or as active as she was. That’s why they worked against her like you said. They didn’t understand what you are saying, about how the media obsession would have died down or they could have used her popularity and appeal to maximize their own appeal.
I agree with you. In our eyes, she was doing good. In their eyes, all those good things were bad. You’re also right on their general incompetence after doing the bare minimum for a decade. They couldn’t even do the smear campaign properly. All roads led to KP. They ran right to the media to pat themselves on the back.
Let’s not forget too, that it’s not that they are “used” to dealing with Kate–they chose her by design, for a purpose, because they can count on her to do all the things that they need her to do. Not be like Diana, not divorce William, cosplay with him as the perfectly white, normal Little England middle class family, not make any unnecessary waves, advocate for William to be on his best behaviour and not quit the monarchy, not overshadow him or any other member of the royal family, and meekly accept any of the abuse and condescension undoubtedly heaped upon her for her middle-class commoner background.
With Kate, they were able to ensure that she was essentially groomed for these aspects of her role. I believe that a lot of people working within and setting the course for the monarchy are more invested in how they look than in what they actually do. So they were okay with overlooking and neglecting Kate’s lack of work or engagements. They don’t want a member of the family that does too much, they wanted an inoffensive little doormat, so Kate fit the bill perfectly. “The royals don’t do woke,” and Kate is the exact opposite of woke, so everyone wins.
Seems like he is once again pivoting to trashing Meghan because he noticed that the truthful parts he wrote about William generated either backlash or silence. Once again using her to clout chase and sell his product. These people are all the same losers. I don’t think Meghan Markle is losing any sleep over this guy.
Agree. Got to up those book sales and that means making the Sussexes, especially Meghan, the villains. Tell the masses what they want to hear…how horrible Meghan is and how gullible and emotional Harry is.
“ William draws strength from his position of Future King” I think means that he uses that status to get whatever the hell he wants from his dithering father (who now seems scared of him in his book) as well as from Kate, who seems to want to be Queen more than anything else, and probably from professional courtiers, who realize that he’s going to be an important part of their futures.
Lacey pulled no punches in portraying Kate as a social climber with a scheming mother, William as a rageaholic, and Charles as a mousy ditherer. I doubt he’s massaging his interviews now to toady to the RF. He doesn’t seem to have a dog in the fight, although IMO he seems genuinely sympathetic to Harry.
While it is hard to say how much the comments in the interview are different from the book, Lacey has generally commented about Meghan being too much of a competent person with opinions to ever fit in to that family. The Sun and DM are of course adding their own racist and sexist spin, but he’s basically saying that you need to be empty and brainless to fit into that family and be accepted. Anyone other than a royalist sycophant would see that as the sign of a massively dysfunctional institution. Toss in his comments about William’s constant rages, Charles being weak and Kate being petty and vain, it’s not a very complimentary book about that group, especially the ones who didn’t leave.
I agree with you. That’s why I don’t get the takes that Lacey is yet another royalist sycophant with the knives out for Meghan. He has said on multiple occasions that she is self-made, a quick learn, an energetic go-getter. Hardly what a stuffy old racist establishment toady would say.
@Mumbles, unless or until Lacey, or indeed any writer is willing to call out the racism aimed at Meghan by both the BRF and the BM, they are indeed just another royalist sycophant. I’m sorry but at the heart of all of this is the media and their reporting on Meghan at the behest of the BRF, that’s the main reason H/M left and until that is properly highlighted, the story isn’t credible.
Yes- this exactly BnLurkN. They’re trying to erase their actions. Lacey is at best only semi-competent and at worst, a panderer like the rest. I’m tempted to email he and his publishers some educational materials on media, race, privilege, etc as a response. Does anyone have suggestions they might want included?
I don’t expect any historian who focuses on royals to be able to discuss the racism and sexism inherent in the institution, which has caused a variety of genocides around the world and over time. They all have a level of sycophancy that assumes the system is one worth keeping. What would really be great would be a Marxist analysis of what the Windsors have done over the years. But that book will never be covered in mainstream UK.
Lacey didn’t engage in the activity you are alleging. He doesn’t need to apologize for it any more than historians who cover other terrible events have to apologize for the bad deeds their subjects engage in. Do historians who cover Trump have to apologize on his behalf to all the people he’s hurt?
@Mumbles, no one is saying he has to apologize, but he has no credibility unless he’s willing to bring it up. Bring up the media’s role in H/M leaving, bring up the families rejection of Meghan and let the chips falls where they may. He didn’t do that, so no credibility in my eyes.
Yeah. So basically he is doing what the courtiers were doing. He KNOWS what he wrote about William and has received major blowback from the powers that be. So now, he is using Meghan as a scapegoat to keep in the good graces of Cain and Kannot.
With the anti Cambridges message in his book, he’s probably pissed of the royalist that would normally buy his book. And he’s definitely pissing off Sussex fans, so many of them won’t buy his book. So I don’t his dream of having world wide book sales like Finding Freedom will be achieved.
The Palace thought that they could mould a 36 year old woman, who worked her whole life and had a mind of her own, into a lesser version of Kate. What’s not being spoken about is the snobbery and racism that pervades in the palace which also affected this relationship. There would have been some staff who didn’t want to take orders from a black American woman. Also William thought he could boss around Meghan like he did Kate and Harry.
It’s so hard to find a lesser version of Kate considering she scores a solid zero across the board. Zero charm, charisma, personality, no intelligence, no work ethic or passions. She doesn’t even have any style. She’s not even a nice person and no one in those circles like her. Harry would have had to marry a vegetable for Kate to be superior.
I’m imagining a carrot topped with a wedding veil walking down the aisle toward Harry and I’m snickering. But at least a carrot wouldn’t have threatened the royal family. In fact, Kate and a carrot might have gotten on rather well! Great conversations between those two!
Meghan committed the same crime that Diana committed–she was wildly underestimated by the courtiers, and she was too good at her job. Meghan showed Kate up, showed that she was better at Duchessing than Kate was, and William couldn’ have that.
Black woman shows up the mediocre white man/woman, and there’s hell to pay. It’s an old story in corporate America (and I’ll bet in corporate UK as well). They have to undermine the star player in whatever way possible, and are grasping at every straw they can to do so. Unlike many in corporate world, who are stick in their jobs, Meghan and Harry were able to leave. You would think that these idiots would just ignore them and concentrate on the remaining royals, but no. Ironically, these people are building up Meghan and Harry, giving them more prominence than they might otherwise have had. The more we start seeing of the Sussexes, the more people who don’t follow royals will question: why did they leave again?
All they are doing over there is creating the very situation they would like to avoid: the comparison of the 2 brothers and their work. Now, there’s nothing to prevent the Sussexes from stepping all over the Cambridges timelines. Everything the Cambridges do will inevitably be compared to the Sussexes.
I regularly notice new Sussex defenders on Twitter. I’ll think I’ve followed them all only to turn around and discover a whole new crop. People are tired of the constant attacks and negative spin every time they do something good. I think the Teenager Therapy podcast did it for a lot of people. Watching a bunch of adults post vitriolic comments on social media accounts run by teenagers was a huge turnoff, not to mention the content of the episode was great.
I wouldn’t want to be second fiddle to someone who does nothing. Meghan was supposed to be less than her. And she was supposed to take the abuse for being less. How can you be less than someone who doesn’t do anything? Who can’t do anything? Kate has no projects, she sees her charities like once a year, MAYBE. How do you do less than that? Any work Meghan did was seen as more cause Kate doesn’t do anything. In the 2 years Meghan was a royal, she had 3 projects to Kate’s 9 years as royal with 0 projects. That’s not a Meghan problem. That’s a Kate problem.
I wonder how this will affect the Cambridge boys’ future partners. Will they get restriction on who they can marry? Cause after Diana and Meghan it’s obvious that strong willed women don’t fit in the institution and I don’t the BRF want to go through this 3 generations in a row.
Diana didn’t start out the Diana we are used to seeing in profiles today. She was apparently shy and a bit awkward in the beginning and later she blossomed with confidence and training. Unlike the current most senior working royal duchess, Diana grew into the role of Duchess and didn’t remain the same for always. Unless, they find a way to stunt any young bride, the future princes brings into the fold, it won’t matter how those brides starts out, the natural course will have them develop into the role. Kate is an anomaly and not the usual way of royal brides. Diana was a meteor and not the usual way of royal brides, Meghan was a grown up successful woman who had already come into her own and not the usual way of royal brides. If the BRF last into the next generation, I think those young ones are going to burn it down and I hope I’m around to see it.
Of course in Diana’s situation, a huge part of the problem was how jealous Charles was of all the attention she suddenly got.
The problem wasn’t that Meghan didn’t feel important enough it was she didn’t feel important at all. TRF couldn’t care less about the racism and criticism she was getting. Meghan felt even worse when the Palace couldn’t respond fast enough if it was reported Kate had cosmetic surgery or was rude to a servant. Not as important is completely different to not important at all.
I bet Megan could have handled that mindless tabloid junk. Even as it came through the palaces. What was unacceptable was the racist attacks and hatred for existing. Her family being given payment to attack her. Her brother in law and sister in law at the heart of the worst of it.
Who could handle that?
Let’s translate the double speak.
* The only thing William has going for him is that he’s the heir to the throne. He quite enjoys throwing his weight around because of it knowing the typical Royal sycophants will cow tow to him.
* But William was “right” in realizing early on that Meghan being American and a strong self made woman with her own opinions and ways of doing things would be a problem. He knew that she would only not fit in, she wouldn’t cow tow to him and her strong work ethic was bound to make him and Kate look bad. He tried to stop Harry and only succeeded in pissing him off.
* William’s ego was too huge for him to realize she could be a great asset and therefore he refused to compromise and tried to break her or force her to run away and leave Harry. Because he wanted Harry to remain his loyal workhorse and scapegoat.
* William grossly miscalculated everything, lost a great asset in Meghan, lost his scapegoat Harry and is currently in a perpetual state of “incandescent rage”.
Truly, the BRF are filled with some fragile egos. The line of succession is not a popularity contest that the most popular person is crowned monarch and that’s it. William is always going to be King and as long as Kate remains married to him, she’ll be Queen. The top job is always going to be theirs no matter what. Plus the Sussex popularity will eventually fade a bit anyways when the Cambridge kids grow up and are teenagers. All the BRF had to do was wait another 5-8 years or until George and Charlotte official enter their teens and the spotlight (in some ways) would be back to the Cambridges. And at that point they’ll be Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge (if not Prince and Princess of Wales) so the people might focus back onto them.
For an institution that prides itself on surviving and being around for so long, they sure as hell didn’t think about the longterm
“ Plus the Sussex popularity will eventually fade a bit anyways when the Cambridge kids grow up and are teenagers.”
You can’t dismiss Archie. We don’t know what kind of person he will grow up to be but one thing for sure is that he will stand in stark contrast to the Cambridge kids. Even that terrifies The Firm.
Oh I agree. But since there’s an age gap of 6 years between Archie and George and a gap of 4 years between Archie and Charlotte, the press will focus more on Charlotte and George since they’ll be in their late teens/early adulthood when Archie’s enters teenhood hence the press will focus on them more and hopefully leave Archie alone.
You forget that the Windsors aren’t known for their smarts. I think it was the Shipman article that mention that advisors were trying to reassure William that Meghan and Harry’s popularity would eventually fade. I thought that was an interesting tidbit to include because it clearly showed that William was very threatened and anxious about him being eclipsed by the new game in town.
I think the cookbook to support Grenfell blew them away and they were jealous. Meghan was meeting with the women even before she was married and helped come up with a great idea that made the women more self sufficient and independent, something most conservative types claim they support. But what it also did was show how meaningless Billy’s words of support were because he went to visit and then ignored them.
It’s no coincidence that on the Friday before the cookbook launch, which was unknown to the public, Becky English at the DM suddenly had an exclusive about Kate and Broken Britain with no specifics or details at all and with a frankly condescending theme. Grenfell was minutes away from KP but outside of a visit, no concrete help was provided to people simply trying to survive.
Diana had little working background and the courtiers and Charles were very poor mentors but she eventually figured the job out for herself only too well. Now the palace decides they need to support the married in more and mentor Kate for a decade but the results are not impressive. So starts the myth that the job of a married in is incredibly hard and take years to prepare. Here comes Meghan with a working background, astute and thoughtful and she nails it out of the gate. Of course they resented the mixed race American who showed up the English Rose Kate. Meghan did everything better than Kate and looked better doing it.
And William was not quite right to warn Harry to slow down. That was just William, as always, undermining Harry.
Diana although the daughter of an Earl with a Coutts Bank account at 19 had TWO jobs. She was a part time Nursery Assistant and also worked as a Nanny Part time. Even after marriage she stayed in contact with the women she had worked for and remained on good terms with them up until her death.
Diana worked and drove around in a beat up old car. Diana was a real Aristo who did not need to social climb or assert her position.
Kate had ZERO excuse for her idleness. Diana with very little education found a job and career she loved and truly made it count. Google the archives and you will see pictures of Diana with nursery school children hanging off her back and arms. She clearly loved that job and the children loved her.
With all due respect, what Diana did was just odd jobs. She did not work for a living, and she DEFINITELY did not have an independent career of her own. She would have found the notion itself insulting if it were ever insinuated, if not at the very least laughable, because aristocratic women, particularly those who come from an old money background, do not “work a trade”, meaning they do not work for a living. They do not have careers. They do not have to earn money to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. She worked part time as a kindergarten assistant and as a nanny, both for a pittance, PRECISELY because she didn’t need the money.
Taking those jobs was her way of flaunting her status as an aristocrat, a way of showing off how rich and wealthy her family was. By showing how she could afford to take jobs that would otherwise not cover a fraction of her rent in the apartment she lived at, because she has a trust fund and rich parents who will take care of her lifestyle and expenses.
Those jobs were basically the equivalent of Kate working at Jigsaw, or Kitty Spencer working as a model, or Cressida Bonas trying to make it as an actress, or any of those endless numbers of aristocratic women who start fashion labels, are employed as “gunsmiths” (???), create the umpteenth yoga/lifestyle app/website/blog/instagram, start a wine label, etc. This is how the British aristocracy functions, how they demonstrate how wealthy and privileged they are–by pouring money into business ventures that really don’t turn a profit, because they can afford to. By essentially showing off how they can “afford” to take jobs that pay a pittance, because they have money and don’t need to work a day in their life.
And that job that Diana took nannying for the American lawyer and her husband was one where she also had absolutely no compunction asserting herself and her rank if she were to ever feel disrespected. Tina Brown’s book talks about one incident where her employer, who had no idea that she was Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of Earl Spencer, took her to task for doing something incorrectly or for not listening to a specific instruction that her employer had given her. Diana didn’t say anything at the time, but she pointedly made sure to leave out her check book out on the couch where her employer could see it, just to make sure that she knew Diana wasn’t just any ordinary person, but was in fact Lady Diana Spencer. It was her way of asserting her rank and position over her boss, who she felt had stepped out of line in rebuking her.
But in no way was Diana ever going to do any of those jobs permanently. Again, aristocratic women do not work a trade. They do not need to. The expectation is that they will marry well, or at least a man with enough of a trust fund, that he will be able to provide for her and her family. The whole set up is not only incredibly archaic, but it is designed to promote and reward laziness, because laziness is an indication that the person in question has enough money to not have to work every day, between 8-5, for a paycheck. Taking breezy part time jobs, cooking and photography classes, etc., are all outward demonstrations of one’s class in Britain, and they should be contextualized as such.
I guess they are okay with the “self-belief” that says “I am anointed by God to rule over you and you should bow down to me”?
It’s interesting how the Daily Mail has morphed Lacey into “Prince Harry’s biographer” despite the book being about both brothers.
It’s also telling how the real issue is rooted in the fact they Meghan did the work. She apparently had a lot of meetings and non-publicized (meaning the press wasn’t invited, but charity staff talked about her frequent visits and participation in their activities once her connection was publicized) visits with the Hubb Community Kitchen, Luminary Bakery, Smart Works, Mayhew Animal Rescue, etc before successful projects were announced. It also seems to me that that “extra work” would have surpassed the future-futures engagement counts and would have made them look lazy.
So, the press spins it as “she was mad she wasn’t the center of attention”, as if she hasn’t spent her entire career working on ensemble shows and isn’t accustomed to playing “second fiddle” to the leads. It just doesn’t add up that suddenly, in her late 30s and a year after she left that show, she’d demand to be centered more than what she already was?
It just doesn’t hold water. I still believe those courtiers could not handle a woman of color who a)wasn’t impressed by them and b) had ideas/thoughts on their recommendations. She had also cultivated her own connections (which would definitely cut out the palace middle man, especially if that person had been tasked with stalling whatever projects she and Harry had in the pipeline).
It’s making so much sense now how she and the Hubb Community ladies were able to drop a completed cookbook fundraiser less than six months after she and Harry were wed.
“Robert claimed Meghan was the “real reason” behind the apparent feud between Prince William and Prince Harry, claiming the 38-year-old did speak to his younger brother about his relationship.”
Ok, now Lacey is speaking out of both sides of his mouth depending on who his audience is. Sometimes he says the feud goes way back and that was the purpose of the book, But when he is speaking with Piers he is claiming the real reason is Meghan.
He can eff right off. May the ratings of his book plummet faster than Wile E Coyote falling off a cliff.
I think the truth is that William’s treatment towards Meghan was the last straw for Harry. This was a long time coming before Meghan came into the picture.
Remember he’s talking to Piers Morgan here so he has to explain it on that dumb-dumb’s level. Previously he’d said the resentment pre-dates Meghan, but her arrival was the catalyst for the full-blown feud.
It sounds like the UK media is about 20 years behind the US. What’s shocking to me is that there seems to be no real counterpoint to the abuse against Meghan whereas that wouldn’t happen here in the US.
I read Tan France’s book and he talked about how normalized racism was in his childhood and repeatedly talked about how racist the UK still is and I think about that whenever I read people shrugging it off as just being the DM or the tabloids and not the view of people in general. It feels like people can tell them their reality of being abused and they would still just make excuses.
Imagine if the likes of Fox News and the Daily Caller were the only “news” outlets in the US. Yikes.
Meghan didn’t want to dim her light, dial back her ambitions so W and K wouldn’t feel overshadowed. Good on her for that.
They didn’t even give her a chance to do that. Maybe if they brought these concerns to her she might have found a role in the background that was challenging and fulfilling. William’s flop of a documentary would have been good enough to sell to Netflix if they had Meghan running things.
I think meghan did try to be low-key though. Royal ladies get most attention for their fashion & hair and her neutrals & navy blue dominated wardrobe was pretty boring which is why the goodbye tour wardrobe was so fire.
Aside from the baby shower& going to tennis the only time you saw her was at work. She didn’t do the hospital photocall or one for the christening. Didn’t appear on cover of vogue & obviously wasnt having royal reporters around for tea so the attention on her wasn’t exactly her doing.
Her wanting to work, launch projects & doing speeches etc was a problem but only because the Firm didn’t force duty loving William & Kate to step up to the plate earlier. I’ve always felt there would have been less insecurity about her of William had already had his earth shot prize & Kate her hold still project under their belts prior to Meghan joining.
The attention after the wedding would probably have faded naturally after the usual curiosity if the Firm had used its leverage to stop likes of ITV& certain tabloids interviewing the Markles once she married in& if they didn’t launch the smear campaign. In bid to damage her they made her the centre of most royal stories eg Sun reporter asking Trump what he thought of Meghan’s past comments about him on the eve of the state visit. Ironically the Firm’s own actions (or inaction) made her the focus of attention.
Totally agree with your take.
William draws power from his future position because it’s all set in stone. He was born into power and security. And he will protect that path with every temper tantrum he can throw. He can’t do anything else. He could never survive if told to stand on his own feet.
So, when you’re utterly helpless and have a safety net, yeah. You protect it at any cost.
I think this biggest problem these fools have with Meghan is that she doesn’t need the title or the money to feel important or secure her place in society. Not like Kate. Who was Kate before marriage? She did nothing of importance, planned nothing, did nothing. Her entire existence is dependent upon her marriage and husband, and that’s acceptable for royals because this way, she poses no threat. She’s not beloved, like Diana, not charismatic like Fergie, so she can’t rock the boat.
Meghan needs nothing from the royal family. She doesn’t need Harry or his title to be (not feel) important. That equals a threat to them. Independence is anathema to them. Meghan has that in spades and it terrifies them.
Exactly this.
I stopped reading at “William took the lesson of duty.” Bullshit. He was pressured to marry and Kate was the only one standing, having chased him for ten years. Stop with the nonsense. Kate was never William’s first choice. And guess what? She’s still not good for the job! She can’t deliver two sentences without a prompter and has adopted a phony accent. Please. Meghan didn’t marry Harry to feel important. Jesus, what’s WITH these people?
I can buy that he might have asked her to be on standby while he pursued others. I don’t buy that bit about duty. If he was so dutiful why was he partying instead of at the Commonwealth service in 2016 and why were they named the laziest royals in Europe in 2016?
I doubt he even asked! He went off to to Africa to pursue Jecca Craig and he also wanted Isabella Calthorpe and Meghann Gundermann from Texas, none of whom were interested. He couldn’t figure that one out. Kate is stuck with the arrogant prick but that’s what she wanted, and her mother wanted too. Congrats. *ugh*
This is such a clever and careful wording too. “William took the lesson of duty,” but not much description of what precisely that lesson and what his idea of duty actually is. What we know is that William cares a great deal for his own appearance as a public figure. He knows that he has a lot of popularity because he is an appealing option next to Charles, who took a massive hit in credibility as a result of his divorce to Diana. We know that the monarchy cares deeply about stability and endurance, and most of all, about an heir that is not a public and international embarrassment on account of his private life and character failings. We know that William benefits from the Diana factor, because he is seen as her vindication. She might be gone, but her son is going to be King, so take that Charles and Camilla.
So what lessons on “duty” did William learn exactly? He learned that his father was not a dutiful heir. His father failed. William cannot be like his father. He has to fix what his father has broken. So he marries a supposedly middle-class commoner, who he met at uni, after dating her on and off for 10 years, all of which are more or less perceived by the public as the exact opposite of what Charles did with Diana. He has three children, and he cares deeply about protecting them, providing a stable upbringing for them, and taking care of their mental health + well-being–hence his portfolio of causes as a royal. He releases photographs of himself and his family that depict them all as a cozy, tight-knit bunch, cosplays at length about how they’re just an ordinary middle-class family like any other. He has to do right, everything that his father did wrong, thereby restoring peoples’ faith in the monarchy as a reliable, upstanding institution that deserves the public support for its existence.
Put in that context, it’s easy to see why people like Robert Lacey, who has contacts within the palace, who knows the people who set the sort of overarching agenda for the royal family, think that William is dutiful. It’s because he does not see William’s duty as being towards his subjects–representing them, working on behalf of them, advocating for them. He, and others like him, think William’s duty is to restore an air of respectability to the monarchy. He can’t pick a flight risk like Diana for a wife, so he made the “dutiful” decision and chose Kate, a woman who will never pose any problems or cause ruptures in his domestic life, by demanding a divorce if she is unhappy in her marriage. Any other woman who dated William saw, correctly, what marriage to him and existence as his wife would be–imprisonment, essentially, for a life time, locked beside a man who doesn’t respect you, who you can’t demand respect from, but who you also can’t leave without incredible difficulty because everyone is invested in William being the opposite of his father, to the point where they will cover for his shit and throw other people under the bus to make him look better. Because heaven forfend the idea that Diana’s son is just as much of a cad as Charles ever was.
This is why Robert Lacey is bringing up the concept of “duty” and Kate Middleton in the same sentence. The two ideas are intrinsically linked. By marrying Kate, William was adhering to his understanding of what duty means–marrying the one woman in Britain who won’t divorce him.
“Duchess Meghan Wasn’t Treated As An Important Person in the Royal Family” There. Fixed it for those awful royal rota reporters.
“Duchess Meghan wasn’t treated like a person in the royal family” fixed it for you. 😉
Why don’t they just come out and say she was “uppity?”
Exactly what I was thinking. Confident, capable hard worker who doesn’t know her place is uppity if she is not white.
This quote triggers me:
“William was quite right to say to Harry: ‘Look, this is a challenge you’re bringing into the family, how’s it going to work?’ And with wisdom after the event, one has to say not enough preparations were made.”
If true it says a lot about William’s view of Harry, his “minor” brother. Defining Meghan as a challenge was a signal to Harry that William would never accept Meghan into the family as Harry had openly welcomed Kate.
Actually heir William saw spare Harry as a challenge from an early age. William realised that he was losing grip on Harry, his eternal scapegoat and third wheel who was not supposed to have an independent life of his own.
Harry rightfully protected his wife and son against the unfair suffocating royal treatment that he had suffered himself from an early age as a spare.
Now William has successfully forced the Sussexes out of the palace. His real challenge is to man up and prove to the world that he is a natural leader who deserves to be king. We haven’t seen that yet!
I wonder what challenges William worked out of Kate? Twenty years later, she still looks nervous around him and seeks out his approval while he mostly ignores her.
Kate would never have been chosen by him if she rocked the boat. So she wasn’t a challenge at all. She gave him what he wanted when he wanted it and that was a road map for their future. He doesn’t respect her, but after being turned away by other women who have self esteem, he ultimately realized that Kate will suit his purposes and he can still garden on the side because she was conditioned to accept that as well.
Making sure she never feels stable and knows she’s always on a thin line.
@Kalana . You are right . Kate is still nervous around William and it is so palpable. And she walks on eggshells when he’s around. I so pity her. She’s got no balls.
I wonder why these authors don’t question the control freak aspect of William’s ‘warnings’ about Meghan. Not only did he have a word (and I don’t buy the press version of what was said for a moment) he went around to other relatives to intervene. It seems a bit OTT. Aside from Harry being mid 30s, you’d think that would be more Charles’ place as parent.
I don’t think the Firm is totally against short courtships even post Diana& Charles as long as it’s someone within their circles it seems. Haven’t heard any concern for Beatrice despite her getting engaged within shorter timeline then Harry. And William apparently set up his best friend Thomas with George’s teacher, Lucy not so long after his divorce from Lady Melissa Percy. Thomas& Lucy got engaged within a year, got married in July & announced a pregnancy a month later with no briefings of consternation from William.
Because William is racist, he does not want a woman of color to join their pure white family, he does not want a nephew that his grandmother’s is black. That’s why William never spoke about Archie in public. That’s why William said after Archie was born,that he was already uncle. William is disgusting and sick. I hope that one day his true colours will be revealed to the world
Agree. There was no other reason in the world for William to care who Harry married.
step 1 describe all the ways the rf mishandled Meghan.
step 2 blame Meghan for all the ways the rf mishanledl her.
I also love Meghan in a beanie.
@LIZZIE
“step 1 describe all the ways the rf mishandled Meghan.
step 2 blame Meghan for all the ways the rf mishanledl her”
Bingo! The guy realized that DM trolls will only clicks or buy the book if its preceoved as anti Meghan hence why he went back to attacking her
You can tell that he really does think that Meghan bears the first and biggest responsibility for how everything happened, because she had the audacity to come into this position with self-confidence, and therefore wasn’t prepared to debase herself adequately enough to stroke their egos. His comments on her self-confidence are criticism about that in a nutshell. In a showdown between the monarchy and Meghan, Meghan should have grovelled adequately enough to stroke their egos, and the monarchy should have offered her a few crumbs as a token gesture of inclusivity.
“wasn’t made to feel important enough” is going to be recycled by the tabloid hacks in exactly the way we all know it will be. It’ll be used to paint Meghan’s own confidence in herself as a misplaced arrogance. Because the British tabloids really do think that black women don’t deserve to feel confident about themselves. That’s only reserved for the Eton-Oxbridge-Tory Party Old Boys Club pipeline, funneling mediocre shits into leadership positions they don’t deserve and haven’t earned on merit. THEY get every right to feel confident about themselves. But a black woman who is upset that she isn’t even treated with basic decency, isn’t treated like a human being, who expresses that feeling openly, she’s arrogant and “uppity” and too full of herself.
Because how dare she, a biracial American woman, expect basic human decency from any of them when she, according to these people, clearly doesn’t deserve it based on the fact that she is a biracial American woman? If she wanted respect, she should have had the good fortune to be born as a white British upper-class man. The fact that she didn’t was clearly her own fault and responsibility. /sarcasm.
Have any of these people ever considered, out on that rainy washed up little island of theirs, that maybe, just maybe, the fact that they hate themselves, are uncomfortable with feeling confident in themselves, and veer towards extreme self-deprecation and sarcasm about their own selves, are their problem, and no one else’s? Like, you’d think this sort of behaviour and rhetoric would prompt the better angels of this country to maybe turn their gaze inward, examine why they feel so unsure and lacking in confidence, but why be introspective when you can just tear other people down for free?
Lacey was more unsympathetic to William on ABC’s Good Morning America then he changes his tune with Piers.
I am so intrigued by what Nic19, ArtHistorian, and Beck are discussing up thread. Someone said “there are no secrets that time does not reveal.” Hope William is revealed for the kind of horrible person that he truly is. Soon in time.