Prince Harry and his wife Meghan turned their backs on the British Royal Palace in 2020 and said goodbye to all royal duties and titles.
They explain how this happened in a six-part Netflix documentary series combining lots of emotion, mobile phone videos, paparazzi photos, black-and-white pictures, flashbacks and emotional music.
Now everything is out. And the series has one measurable consequence: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s popularity in England has sunk even more than it already had.
No wonder, since the British media who are the main focus of the series have already attacked the couple in the run-up to the Netflix series.
Headlines that sicken
In the beginning, there was a love story. When the couple was ready to face the public, they knew that their lives would now change. The two — as they describe it — did not calculate it would be so extreme.
Harry, who lost his mother Diana at the age of 12 because she had a fatal accident while fleeing from paparazzi, saw how history threatened to repeat itself. The US-American Meghan was only just getting to know the British tabloid press.
And this doesn’t come off well in the series. Again and again we see pictures of a pack of photographers pointing insanely large telephoto lenses at the couple.
And riding like a rollercoaster, the headlines make you feel very very sick: Meghan, the beautiful dream princess; Meghan, the Black gangster bride from the ghetto; Meghan and Harry, the superstars of the royals; Meghan, the diva who spreads chaos at Buckingham Palace.
Elevated to heaven or trampled in the dust — the press steers opinion as it pleases.
After the couple’s royal engagement, one tabloid put Meghan large on the front page, next to a small picture of the Queen made Elizabeth II look old in the truest sense of the word.
A short time later, indignant headlines highlighted how inappropriate it was to see Meghan put her hands on her baby bump. What is forgotten is that Catherine, wife of Crown Prince William, was celebrated for the very gesture years earlier.
Something like that doesn’t go unnoticed by anyone.
Two sides of the same coin
And so Meghan and Harry have taken the reins themselves and tell their side of the story.
Yet there are always two sides to a conflict.
One side has freed itself of everything and speaks its grief from the soul.
Clear, effective in the media and certainly pleasant from a financial point of view.
The other side — in this case the royal family — sticks to their conventions and refrains from loud retaliation. That’s a rule at Buckingham Palace.
The hubbub about the series is once again being taken over by the press.
Whether all the Sussex’ accusations and side-swipes are justified remains to be seen.
Buckingham Palace breaks silence on Meghan Harry interview
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If it could, the other side would probably fire back just as vehemently — they, too, would perhaps not pass things on quite as they were.
It is clear that many Brits who are closely connected to the royal palace deeply detest Harry and Meghan’s Netflix appearance — for them the couple’s exit from the “Firm” already came close to a betrayal.
For me, as a non-Brit and neutral observer, this series stands for something different.
On the one hand, it tells the story of a couple who faced the problem of being in the public eye so much that they had to take a radical step now want to explain themselves — and to wish for a halfway normal life.
On the other hand, it is the tragedy of a large family the media considers to be their property, and that plays along with all the consequences.
This article was originally written in German.
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-harry-meghan-let-s-not-get-carried-away/a-64107927?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf