The royal family is a sacrifice at the center of Britain’s national life, fuel for the creation of a national soul because we can’t think of anything better. Sometimes it works. Often — and increasingly — it doesn’t. We dress them up in coronets. We play with them like toys. It has nothing to do with admiration or love. They submit to us, not we to them.
And if they are to survive this monstrous game? They do what is required.... They allow the nation to project what it wants on them. The Sussexes did not understand this. Harry confused sacrifice with service. Meghan confused it with fame.
I always thought Harry chose a woman, however subconsciously, who would free him... “‘Fundamentally, Harry wanted out,’ a source close to the couple said. ‘Deep down, he was always struggling within that world. She’s opened the door for him on that.’”
August 16, 2020
"She talks about life and how we should live. That’s the way in America. In Britain, people look at that and go, 'Who do you think you are?'"
Said a former senior courtier, talking about Meghan Markle and quoted in "The British Monarchy Is a Game. Harry and Meghan Didn’t Want to Play" (NYT). The article is by British reporter Tanya Gold, who says:
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42 comments:
"This is Jack Bailey, wishing we could make every woman a queen, for every single day!"
THAT's how America used to do it.
I am Laslo.
The Life of a royal seems miserable and I can’t understand why anyone would do it without any real possibility of being monarch. I can’t blame Harry for getting out.
This is confusing. Harry wanted out of the royal sacrifice to gain freedom, but fell in with someone who tells him (and the rest of us) what to do? Is that the gist?
He's a Beta Boi and she has his balls in her pocketbook.
THEOLDMAN
I admire Her Majesty the Queen.
In Britain, people look at that and go, 'Who do you think you are?'"
A lot of Americans have that reaction too.
I do not intend to speak for all Americans, but "Who cares?"
It may be the way it is in America, but there are really few people who are interested in hearing celebrities hector us about the way we should live. Certainly not Megan and Harry, because what do they know? Oprah can get away with it, and some people loved hearing the Obamas give them lifestyle advice. But most of the time, it is just celebrities shouting into the wind.
WTFCs
Again, high schoolers gossiping about high school things, because that is what they think is intellectual.
These are very shallow people. Vile in their own sad way.
The Royals are like a tired old circus that the brits fail to maintain and appreciate; not that there’s anything fantastical about them, but it brings in a lot of tourist dollars, and is a great part of British history - warts an’ all.
Queen Elizabeth is the only thing propping up the Royal family. The rest have been absorbed into the socio-political dumpster fire.
My wife and I were in France in 1999 and a British royal was in the news for some shenanigans. A French couple we talked to said, “At least we were smart enough to kill our royals.”
Markle is just the the other "know it alls" in California who are now fleeing the cities to get out of the State or to come to the rural areas of their own State. Trying to flee the chaos and disaster that they have made by their own actions.
They don't see that THEY are the problem. Sooooo....the come to where we are and begin to lecture the rubes on how life 'should' be. How they did it in the place that they came from. The want to "improve" the area. They will ruin Texas. They will destroy anyplace that they are.
What they want is to just recreate the problems. Blind and arrogant.
The general consensus is GO HOME FLATLANDER! Shut up and if you can't do that....GTFO.
Most European aristocrats find something interesting or at least satisfying to do, even the rich ones.
Harry isn't a "royal" as much as he is a member of the nobility. If he wanted a quiet but posh life he could just have become a country gentleman, a glorified farmer and an officer of Territorials (the UK National Guard). That option was always open.
Lots of them don't have boring lives. Hola magazine ("Hello" in the English edition) made a huge market of public interest in what the Euro aristos (not just the Spanish ones) were up to.
Just like Edward VIII, who chose Wallis Simpson because he didn't really want the burden of royal demands. He was an immature hedonist unwilling to accept the mantle of maturity required to be king.
Laslo... Is the English applause meter broken too?
Say what you will about the sacrifices of the British royals, it pays very well.
Queen Elizabeth is the only thing propping up the Royal family. The rest have been absorbed into the socio-political dumpster fire.
Agreed and she cannot live forever. Meghan is an LA airhead. Harry looked once like he had something but it wasn't there.
The entire British political class died off with WWI.
It would have been more fun if Harry was king and led an expedition into France to take back his ancestral lands from the EU now that Brexit is done.
“We few, we unhappy few"
King Eddie got out by marrying a woman that the family found abominable. There is recent precedent.
Makes you wonder what the propaganda value of Shakespeare’s plays were worth over time to British royalty. The French only had Molière, who portrayed the French royals in a far more ridiculous light, making chopping off their heads almost seem like an act of public service.
"The royal family is a sacrifice at the center of Britain’s national life"
Well put.
"fuel for the creation of a national soul because we can’t think of anything better"
But it's pretty good, as long as the family upholds certain virtues and the stability of the polity.
Not that Me-Me Meghan would understand.
tim maguire said...
The Life of a royal seems miserable and I can’t understand why anyone would do it without any real possibility of being monarch. I can’t blame Harry for getting out.
Maybe not. But I sure as Hell can blame him and Megan for expecting the same level of privilege and attention they had as royals.
Perhaps America needs a royal family, to serve as the locus if deranged hatred. I think it’s clear the country would be better off if all the TDS and fake news were directed at hating some royal putz instead of Trump.
Men used to open doors for women; with a Harry it's the other way around.
"I have done a jigsaw puzzle of the queen’s face. I bought it at the gift shop at Sandringham, the queen’s country home. What is that but an act of control by the subject of the object?"
Gosh, It's like Tanya Gold can't tell the difference between a free choice on her part & nonexistent coercion by the Queen. (Unless she forgot to include that the Queen snuck up behind her & put a gun to her head.)
Now we are stuck with the former Royals and Meghan Is free at last from the constraints of royalty to tell us about all the toxicity and racism out there—while decrying any invasion of her privacy. Harry may be free but he is lost.
They should stop the genetic royalty and choose a monarch by lottery. Maybe some homeless guy could be king , and wouldn't that give everyone a real chance and thus tie them together more than the old system?
Sebastian said...
"The royal family is a sacrifice at the center of Britain’s national life"
Well put.
"fuel for the creation of a national soul because we can’t think of anything better"
But it's pretty good, as long as the family upholds certain virtues and the stability of the polity.
Not that Me-Me Meghan would understand.
------------=============
recast these sentiments in various scenarios - pre-ECM, ECM >> EU; and Brexit
with Brexit - Brit have chance at reviving Ceremonial and Constitutional Monarchy
I feel far more concern about Joyce Carol Oates' foot than I do about the British Royal Family.....It been said that democracy is an inefficient form of government except when compared to other forms of government. The British Royals are besotted fools except when compared to other royal families. I give them the edge over the Bourbons, Hapsburgs, and Romanovs. Just for one thing, they're still around.... George III, who lost the American colonies and who was intermittently mad and constantly bigoted and stupid, was actually liked by his subjects. He was faithful to his wife and took an interest in farming. That was apparently enough to put him over....British writers, starting with Shakespeare and continuing with the BBC, are more apt to celebrate than eviscerate British monarchs. The BBC doesn't usually celebrate wealth and privilege, but they make an exception for the royal family. The recent series, The Crown, was worth watching and put about as good a face as possible on the life of Elizabeth II.
Harry traded the royal court for the celebrity party circuit. Both are pretentious but he's been well trained socially and knows how to function in either environment. Prince Charles will make sure that his son has the finances to maintain the life style. Harry will never be a commoner.
IMO Harry seemed lost before he met Meghan. With her he found someone with whom he could repeat his mother's unhappy saga and play the hero by leaving the royal life to make Meghan (and subconsciously his mother) happy. Of course it's a fool's errand.
Meghan seems extremely flighty for not understanding the royal role she desired and instead playing the victim. Harry was a genuine prince and now he's stuck playing the role of a prince in the boondocks away from his aristocratic pals. Anyway, if it doesn't work out Harry's been assured he is always welcome back.
Why anyone would care about what either of them has to say is beyond me, especially here in the US.
There is nothing unserious about the Queen, and I admire her deeply for her staunch love of her people and the empire, even if it is in wane. Prince Phillip I admire for his devotion to his wife and country. The rest of the clan are a pale bunch of mummers by comparison. Megan was a gold-digging vamp who saw the royal family as a new platform for influencing and merchandising. She probably thinks she is an innovator, and creative. I think they are where they ought to be, now. The Hollywood "B" list will be as high as they get, and then not for long.
a great part of British history - warts an’ all.
Ironically, the phrase "warts and all" has more to do with an anti-monarchist than it does the royals. It's attributed to Oliver Cromwell. (The story may be apocryphal, but it's still the most common one associated with the phrase.)
The vast tracts of land owned by the Royals need to be auctioned off, and the Royal Family should be allowed to leave the country with only the clothes on their backs. And that, only because hanging or shooting or beheading them all would take like, an hour or two, and that would be spending waaaay too much time on them.
What Britain needs is a Queen orKing willing to exercise their sovereign powers. They have a lot of them including appointing the govt, declaring war, collecting taxes, ownership of military and pretty much absolute power.
"But that would cause a constitutional crisis!" some will say. Yeah? Show me the british constitution. There is none. There is a pretension of one but it's not written and is basically what the courts say it is on any given day.
For those who say I should not opine on another country's system of govt, gfy. They opine on ours every day.
John Henry
Harry at least got out of LA. Santa Barbara has excellent polo. LA not so much.
mikee said...
The vast tracts of land owned by the Royals need to be auctioned off, and the Royal Family should be allowed to leave the country with only the clothes on their backs.
Nevil Shute wrote a book about just this in 1955 or so "in the wet"
Britain had gotten so disgusting that he decamped for Australia.
He figured the queen would do the same eventually.
Istr, but it has been a long time since I read the book, that he saw Charles, then about 10,as being completely incapable of ever being king.
John Henry
Meghan
Meghan wanted all of the glory & riches that came with being a member of the British Royal Family but then discovered how much hard work it was to earn her keep with public appearances as well as how smothering the press coverage of the Royals really is. From a distance, it appears to me that she has the arrogance that many British stereotypically think, rightly or wrongly, that Americans have. If Meghan had kept her private feelings in check like Kate Middleton has, the British press would still be having the “love affair” with her as they had before her marriage to Harry. With Harry being so far down the list in the line of succession, after a while they could have had a quiet life that Prince Andrew & his family had enjoyed until he decided to count Jeffrey Epstein amongst his closest friends. I have no pity for Meghan & Harry now having to earn a living the old fashioned way instead of trading on their Royal titles like they had schemed to do until the Queen stepped in to teach them some humility.
"tim in vermont said...
Makes you wonder what the propaganda value of Shakespeare’s plays were worth over time to British royalty."
I'm working my way through Shakespeare early to late plays. So, the Henry VI trilogy is about civil war brought on by relentless factionalism and ambition which a King was unable to control and which led to thousands upon thousands of deaths. Henry VIth had more admirable sentiments than anyone else around him but they led him to feel he couldn't act for or against anyone and so he abandoned his subjects to the rage of ambition and faction and then to civil war. It was all strangely interesting. Then I read Romeo and Juliet and in this play the fatal turn to disaster happens because a messenger carrying a vital letter travels for a short while with two people who are coming from a plague area and all are quarantined, so that the letter is not delivered. I can remember thinking that that was a very unlikely plot element which damaged the story. Now it made the play very interesting - how many stories of right now are turning on the fact that someone is quarantined or wounded on a city street with the result that some essential thing goes undone without anyone realizing it till too late. I can imagine after-school pickups and affairs and payments and electrical failures and fires and dam failures, any or all, springing from the fact that some essential person didn't wear a mask and was arrested and detained for awhile. Or was knocked senseless by Antifa or caught in a gun battle on a city's mean streets. Then I read the Taming of the Shrew and reveled in a feminazi finding out what bullying feels like when it isn't you doing it.
As for Harry and Meghan I think they were part globalist trash and part connected to two different localities, Windsor Castle and LA. Each thought they could do without where they came from and both thought they could alter where they were going to suit themselves. But they can't. This storyline isn't in Shakespeare, at least not so far. It WAS in magazines I used to read going through the grocery line or getting my hair done but touching magazines without buying them is out now. So I'm missing huge chunks of the trashy lives of others which I am probably better off without. I don't say I miss it all - not exactly miss. But continually doing and reading serious stuff that's good for you is very unhealthy, I've always thought. Soon you're eating cheese curds and then, on to kombuchka and bales of kale, then sociology studies, then Antifa, and it goes on from there. Dante covered this sort of descent in the Inferno.
My late husband was a Brit and believed the monarchy had a useful function for the Empire but, when the Empire was lost, the royal family became de trop. I tend to agree.
Eh, people in the US also "go who do you think you are," too.
Ulysses S Grant' father, Jesse Grant, was not the most supportive father in the history of the world. When Grant was promoted to General, his father wrote, "Your're a general now. That's a good job. Don't lose it."
It's the same thing when you are made a Prince.
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