To hear British royal commentators talk, you’d think that the Duchess of Sussex had spent the past two years giving weekly interviews about how much she hates the Windsors. She’s done one sit-down interview about what happened on Salt Island and that was it for two solid years. Now that Meghan’s Archetypes podcast will be rolling out on a weekly basis, those same commentators are convinced that the royals will be under siege by a barrage of “attacks” and “bombs” by Meghan on the podcast. She literally told one story about how Archie’s nursery caught fire and there was a very specific context for the story as she was speaking to Serena Williams. In reaction to that one story, the British media has been screaming wall-to-wall since last Tuesday. It’s insane. Beyond the hatefulness, the racism and the misogyny, there’s also the insidious narrative that Meghan is always talking, that she’s exhausted these topics, that she was supposed to suffer in silence for all eternity. I bring this up because Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast had a piece called “Meghan Markle’s Podcast Is Now Her Most Powerful Weapon Against the Royals.” Some highlights:

A “reopened war”: After a summer of relative peace, Meghan Markle formally re-opened her war with the British royal family this week—and indicated that a fresh bombardment will take place, each and every Wednesday, for the next 11 weeks… There is no indication that the wider public has lost its appetite for Meghan’s truth bombs yet; the podcast shot to No. 1 on Spotify’s global charts, including the U.K., knocking the regular incumbent of that spot, Joe Rogan, off his perch.

Archetypes is not actually about the Windsors? Meghan also dropped in that this week’s installment was just the first of 12 episodes to be released on a weekly basis, which means that every Wednesday, for the next 11 weeks, multiple reporters around the world will be tuning in to Spotify to hear what new outrage Meghan is going to be accusing the British royal family of perpetrating upon her.

Cautious palace: The palace has been extremely cautious in its response to Meghan’s allegations. So far there has been no pushback by officials except an apparent briefing to the Telegraph: The paper claimed a source had told them that an announcement about the fire or canceling events would have overshadowed the Sussex’s official work.

Meghan’s “battle”: Make no mistake, this was undoubtedly a return to the front line of her battle with the royal establishment, with no attempt being made to hide the contempt in which she holds the British upper classes.

Duncan Larcombe speaks: “This was the opening salvo in Meghan’s 12-week war. It has the potential to be even more damaging than the Oprah interview because it is Meghan, in her own words, on her own show, doing exactly what she wants, and the fact is she took the first opportunity to plunge the knife in. This will have come as a great relief to the executives on the other side of the glass at Spotify, who paid millions of dollars for her. It’s a huge hit, of course, but the fact that she was interviewing Serena Williams is almost completely irrelevant to the listening figures. Meghan has star power and this was all about Meghan being Meghan.”

Timing it specifically around the anniversary of Diana’s death? The timing of the release of the show is also fascinating: Having waited almost two years since the initial deal with Spotify was inked, Meghan chose to release her debut episode one week before the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana‘s death. [The next] episode—featuring Mariah Carey—will go live on the anniversary date itself and it’s not hard to imagine Meghan devoting significant airtime to her husband’s late mother…This would make sense; it is the stated purpose of Archetypes after all is to shine a light on “the labels that try to hold women back.”

Grenades: The very clear message out of Montecito is that Meghan and Harry not only have absolutely no intention of fading quietly into the background, but that they very much want to stay in the nose cone of public consciousness. And if this means chucking regular headline-grabbing grenades at the royals to keep their names in the spotlight, so be it.

[From The Daily Beast]

This reminds me of how all of the British people were convinced that the Sussexes were going to arrive at the Jubbly with a full Netflix crew, prepared to hijack the proceedings and barge into the Queen’s sitting room. The Sussexes simply exist and thrive and Salt Island wails “why are you obsessed with us?” Anyway, as I said, this piece is full of insidious bullsh-t to make it sound like Meghan is wielding a vendetta against the Windsors and she’s using Archetypes as a platform to take them down. When really, Meghan is just… talking to interesting women and having conversations about sexism, classism, racism, dehumanization, etc. It’s weird that those conversations have triggered the royal establishment to the point where they’re all convinced that Meghan is talking about them, huh?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar.