Harry’s story is even more remarkable than Meghan’s; in his fairy tale, the prince is the one who is “woke.” Cartoon ©Reilly Branson 2021. reillybranson.com, Instagram: @rad_reilly. By permission.  

They laughed when I told them I was writing about Oprah’s interview with Meghan Markle and ex-Prince Harry. “You’re taking that BS seriously?” They were Gen Z. My boomer friends had a different laugh, thinking I would be ridiculing the ex-royals, like reviewing a really bad movie.

History is a really bad movie. Yet historians don’t laugh.

My feelings are divided. Enormous unearned wealth and privilege coming out of a eugenics-based, white supremacist institution … but also a talented biracial woman who marries a prince, but rejects the submissive role imposed on her and turns the tables on racist media and the royal family. And when she walks away, she takes her royal husband with her, both of them speaking out against institutional racism and supporting Black Lives Matter. And contributing to Color of Change, among other organizations. A strange story, and I kinda like it.

If we need to laugh, maybe we should have a laugh at the media, where even respected critics lost their sense of proportion over the interview. One of journalism’s sharpest critics of softball political interviews, NYU Journalism Prof. Jay Rosen, tweeted: “That was the best interview I ever watched. … Let it launch a thousand clips.”

But my favorite for substance was Margaret Sullivan’s praise. The Washington Post media critic and former NY Times public editor said the interview was “perfection”: Oprah proved she was “the best celebrity interviewer ever.”

It was certainly a skillful interview, a good teaching example for students and for professional journalists. Sullivan described Oprah’s “relentless follow-up questions, compassionate demeanor and focused skill in eliciting bombshell after bombshell … circling back to emotional or newsmaking comments like a heat-seeking missile. …  a master-class in using follow-up questions to clarify, to get the specifics, to nail down the news.”

All true, and it was certainly compelling TV. But let’s not just focus on Oprah’s technique. Marvelous theater, but it was still celebrity interviewing. That means, Oprah let Meghan and Harry frame the interview. In my idea of good in-depth interviewing, you question the subjects’ framing, you don’t just help them elaborate it.

In my idea of good in-depth interviewing, you question the subjects’ framing, you don’t just help them elaborate it.

Oprah had one scoop, one “bombshell” after another (you can read the transcript here). The “Firm,” as the royals call the institution, would defend other royals from the tabloids (fill in here: alleged child rapist Prince Andrew), but they wouldn’t defend Meghan; they took her passport, drivers license, keys to better control her; she was, like Diana, too popular on her tours, so they tried to shut her in, even keeping her from visiting friends;  when she was in a suicidal depression, they refused her plea for help, and even told her she couldn’t get help for herself because it would make the family look bad; and they told Harry they were concerned that the baby would be too dark. (Yes, Elizabeth, it does matter how things look.)

Meghan and Harry also had formidable technique
This was powerful TV, but in all the praise for Oprah’s technique, we can lose sight of the brilliance of Meghan and Harry. They succeeded in breaking through the racist and misogynist narratives which the tabloids and the Firm had imposed on their story.

After this interview, Meghan was no longer the social-climbing, gold-digger straight out of “gang-scarred” Compton (“Bloods territory”) who stole Harry away from his family, his duty, his country. Now she was the survivor of the misogynoir of the tabloids and the royal family, who was refused help from “the Firm” when she was suicidal, who was forced into seclusion because she was “overexposed.” The courageous heroine of the story who rebelled to reclaim her voice, rescue her husband and save herself.

The couple not only got their story out, they won the war of narratives, and the stain on British royalty will be as hard to wipe clean as the enduring stain from the death of Diana. The interview timing was also fortuitous, coming soon after the fourth season of “The Crown,” which dramatized Diana’s tragic story. Charles, the Queen, the senior royals all depicted there as the unfeeling, misogynistic patriarchals who drove Diana out, and who would be blamed by millions for her death. The Netflix blockbuster supplied framing to today’s story: The Firm had helped destroy Diana, and now they were trying to destroy Meghan. Meghan was Diana 2.0, the comparison driven home by Prince Harry’s oft-repeated fears of “history repeating itself.”

Meghan and Harry were pitch perfect. It wasn’t “The Crown,” but theirs too was poignant drama and well-crafted story-telling. They were so authentic that you know they had some wizard PR consultants.

They were so authentic that you know they had some wizard PR consultants.

But “authenticity” is a value for young Brits, not so much for the others. After the interview, Harry’s popularity in the UK polled at a net negative for the first time, and Meghan’s sank deeper than ever. But younger Brits like them just fine, and in the U.S. Meghan’s favorability jumped from 45% to 67%.*

The deeper offense to British patriarchal mores
These are culture war divisions, older Brits disapproving of the harm to the royal family and younger identifying with the survivor of racist and sexist abuse. But it’s more than that. “For UK audiences, everything about this interview is off-putting,” wrote the New Statesman’s Eleanor Peake. “The sofas; the soft lighting; the LA-buzzwords, the melodrama of it all.” And even just having royals talk like ordinary people about their feelings was different and disturbing. “Most of the UK probably hasn’t listened to a member of the royal family speak for more than a few minutes at a time.”

The offense to British patriarchal mores goes deeper than airing the laundry of dirty royals. Airing personal grievances is whining; the confessional style, the over-sharing, the assertion of individuality, “just be authentic,” self-empowerment and self-fulfillment over duty, all that’s the wrong picture.

Accusing the royals of racism was dangerously inflammatory. But perhaps this was also an unsettling offense to patriarchy — Harry’s self-effacement, the white prince following the leadership of his bi-racial wife. Harry credits her with enlightening him about racism and privilege; he says she “saved” him from the “trap” of a miserable life of self-denial and subordination to tradition and “the Firm.”

Harry’s story is even more remarkable than Meghan’s; in his fairy tale, the prince is the one who is “woke.” He has evolved — but the monarchy is not supposed to evolve. That would go against protocol.

These are all cultural signals addressed to youth and the global media culture they inhabit.  The Guardian’s Owen Jones calls it “an ink-blot test, with younger and older Britons casting their eyes over the same episode and seeing something completely different. … Britain’s generations occupy completely different political and moral universes.”

Checking off all the boxes of identity politics
My Gen Z friend, themself a journalist, is an outlier. They laughed at the thought I was taking Meghan and Harry seriously; but 17.1 million people watched the interview in its first CBS broadcast, and 11.1 watched it on ITV in the UK. It was to many a lot more than a media sensation, resonating beyond royal gossip or British politics and the fate of the monarchy. The couple’s popularity among young people rose in the polls after the interview, with people hearing their voices talking over the toxic British media. “She represents every single point of discourse of identity politics,” said Gal-dem’s Moya Lothian-McClean in a fascinating Novara Media podcast. “People have taken her to heart because she’s been wronged by this institution and … we think in absolutes so she has to be 100% good thing because they’re the 100% bad thing.

“She was Diana part 2 … she had a voice and she became the way to channel both the frustrations that Diana had, but also the frustrations the way I think pop feminism wants to talk about women. … She’s this really wronged woman, she’s a woman of color. … She represents modernity versus the decrepitness of the royal family and the whole institution, but she also represents the marketization and commodification of that sort of like powerful woman, girl-boss feminist thing, where the power now lies, in getting your deals with Netflix and Apple and your interview with Oprah.”

Megxit became politicized. Piers Morgan, who had been trolling his “former friend” Markle for some time, was forced off Good Morning Britain after he called her a liar, denying she had really been suicidal and the target of media racism. (And I hope you noticed Piers in the upper right corner of our opening cartoon.) Actor Laurence Fox (the sensitive and repressed James Hathaway on “Inspector Lewis”) claims he was “canceled” and exiled from acting after he too denied the racism in the abuse of Markle; now with super-rich backing, he’s forming a political party to attack “wokeness” and unseat Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Ian Murray, CEO of the Society of Editors, was forced out by outraged journalists after he denied there was any racism in the media. His humiliating take-down interview by BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire is to my mind a better example of interview journalism than Oprah’s theater.

The target audience for Meghan and Harry was not mainly the UK, but the US and the commonwealth countries, where Meghan and Harry were already more popular. They left one royal family for the more modern kind of royalty, media celebrity in California, bringing them a $100 million Netflix deal and $25 million from Spotify. Now somewhat insulated from the toxicity of the British press, they are also well-positioned to counter any further retaliation from the royal family. They have shown they have made connections that give them privileged access to the US and global media, not just through Oprah.

Questions Oprah left unasked
Oprah helped them tell their story globally, but when the interviewer lets the subjects frame the narrative, there are questions that go unasked. I don’t care about which senior royal worried about how dark Archie would be, or what William or Charles said to Harry. But I wonder that Oprah didn’t press the one big relationship question: Why are you pretending that the Queen had no deciding role in your misery? Are you saying she isn’t running things?

No one raised this better than Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu in her viral takedown of Piers Morgan: “What kind of grandmother would be so close to her grandson Harry, but not use her power and influence as a queen to protect them from the racist media coverage? What kind of grandmother would protect her own son, Prince Andrew, from the potential crime of raping a minor, but would do jackall to protect Harry and Meghan?”**

But a more fundamental question, rarely asked in the mainstream media, is the question of privilege. The couple are trading on the identity and branding they still have after the royal title is gone. The royal pedigree is the difference between the identity of a supporting TV actress with her plus one, and their new identity of super-rich producers of a Netflix series; they are global media celebrities, with all that can bring. Oprah lets Meghan and Harry challenge the other royals, but they are allowed to leave the Queen out, and leave unchallenged the monarchy itself, which gave them their cachet. Like rebellious peasants through the millennia, they don’t blame the monarch, they blame the advisors.

They are being strategic. Maybe Oprah was also, but there are those questions … and one more.

The other “R” word
Harry says the monarchy has to come to terms with its past — but can that happen without reparations? “Reparations” — the other “R” word. Let’s have an accounting of how much of the enormous personal wealth of the Queen derives from the slave trade, colonial depredations, the exploitation of peasant farmers, taxes on the poor. Her wealth, which is exempt from inheritance tax, is estimated to run in the hundreds of millions … but how do we know it isn’t billions, since she offshores wealth in tax havens? Prince Harry, before Charles cut him off, had an allowance from the income of Charles’ £1 billion Duchy of Cornwall estate, which was secretly given exemption from laws that would allow Charles’ tenants to buy their homes outright.***

How much hidden political power does the monarchy have?  Through “Queen’s consent,” Elizabeth can hold up laws until they are changed to her satisfaction.

How much hidden political power does the monarchy have?  Through “Queen’s consent,” Elizabeth can hold up laws until they are changed to her satisfaction.

She was able to “prorogue” parliament, dissolving it at Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s request. It seems to be long forgotten that an Australian Labour Party Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, was “fired” by the unelected royal governor, appointed by the queen.

Of course, Queen’s consent is really a mere ceremonial formality. These powers would never be invoked to change legislation!

Except they were, quite often. A mere formality?Like the U.S. Congress certifying the electoral college votes of each state. Trump liked that formality and thought his Congressional lackeys could use it to overturn the presidential election. Mere formalities can become tyrannical power when exercised by tyrants.

Why not abolish it?
Every crisis in the royal family raises the question, why not abolish the monarchy? Edward VIII abdicated in order to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson, self-exiling and waiting to see if Hitler would invade and place him back on the throne. Then Diana and Charles divorced. Then Diana died, a worse crisis than her divorce. Then Harry and Meghan made their escape.

Does none of that matter? The 94-year old Queen is the most popular grandma in the realm, and anyway she’s so old it would be bad form to upset her. But her heir, Prince Charles, is widely despised, his popularity about as low as Meghan’s. So republicans can hope.

In a podcast entitled “Abolish the monarchy,” Novara Media founder James Butler ended the discussion of Meghan, Harry, the monarchy and the constitution by quoting the regicide John Cooke. Butler says Cooke, a heroic figure in the 17th century English revolution, “found a way to prosecute a king.” He was Oliver Cromwell’s Solicitor General; he wrote the law which abolished the monarchy, and then the law which abolished the House of Lords. When royal power was restored after 20 bloody years, he was judged guilty of regicide in a rigged trial. To remind the peasants that the monarchy was a medieval institution, the royals had him hanged, drawn and quartered.

Butler quotes the letter Cooke wrote his wife the night before his public torture and murder: “We fought for the public good and would have enfranchised the people and secured the welfare of the whole groaning creation, if the nation had not delighted more in servitude than freedom.”
—Paul Elitzik

Acknowledgements and notes:

Thanks again to award-winning cartoonist Reilly Branson for contributing to Considered Sources. May he become too busy with more lucrative illustration commissions to find the time for my articles. He can be reached at https://www.reillybranson.com/ 

I read 50+ articles for this piece, but I recommend these two discussions as especially worth your time. The first is the best analysis of Meghan and Harry’s semi-abdication I’ve come across: Novara Media’s podcast, “Abolish the Monarchy,” with Ash Sarkar, James Butler and Moya Lothian-McClean.

 

Historian Brooke Newman provides important and fascinating context for Harry and Meghan’s semi-abdication  (“Throne of Blood” in Slate). You can read her remarks as a case for reparations, almost unmentioned elsewhere, except elliptically by Harry and Meghan. Unpacking the couple’s call for Britain to acknowledge its “uncomfortable past,” the Virginia Commonwealth U. professor describes the royal family’s centuries of profiting from slavery.

 

Newman writes:

“Officially acknowledging that the royal family both fostered and profited from the enslavement of millions, and affirming a commitment to reparatory justice as the Caribbean Community has urged the governments of Britain and Europe to do, is the very least the present-day British monarchy owes to the descendants of enslaved people.”

 

Notes:
*After the interview, Prince Harry’s popularity in the UK polled at a net negative for the first time — 45% positive, 48% negative. Meghan’s net favorability was -27, down from -14 before the interview, 31% positive and 58% negative. But young people like Harry and Meghan fine, by 59% and 55%, respectively. YouGov polling about the monarchy after the interview shows its continued popularity — 63% wanted it to continue, 25% elected head of state instead. Only among young people (18-24) did more want an elected head of state (42% to 37%).

 

**The YouTube version edited out the reference to Prince Andrew’s alleged crime of raping a minor. He was a long-time friend of deceased child-rapist, trafficker and financier Jeffrey Epstein and spent time on his private island and in his houses. Details on the family’s protection of Andrew here. The Queen was responsible for stripping Harry of titles and security, but Andrew retains titles and security (costing British taxpayers over £300,000/year). The Queen refused to make any public statement defending the couple from the racist press attacks, but “protocol” didn’t prevent the palace from public denial that Andrew had “any form of sexual contact or relationship” with his accuser, Virginia Giuffre. The royal family has launched an investigation into the allegation the Meghan bullied staff, but no investigation into the charge that Andrew repeatedly raped underage Virginia Giuffre, let alone require he cooperate with the FBI investigation.

 

***The wealth and status of the aristocracy has been based in landownership, and, historically, the exploitation of tenant farmers. The true wealth of the royal family is known only to them — the accounts are private, secretive and murky, thanks to enthusiastic cooperation of both Conservative and Labour Party ministers.

 

Some of the details are intriguing.The Duchy of Lancaster, a private estate owned by the Queen, had assets valued at £519 million in 2017. The Queen didn’t pay income tax until 1993 and didn’t publish annual accounts until 2001. She doesn’t pay inheritance tax, capital gains tax or corporation tax.

 

“The briefest foray into royal finances reveals only that nothing is straightforward, and much is obscured,” according to the Guardian. They found that the monarch has used the arcane process of “Queen’s consent” to force parliament to change legislation before they become law. One instance unearthed by the Guardian was a bill preventing investors from hiding ownership in shell companies; revealing the Queen’s wealth would be an “embarrassment” to the monarchy. Ministers are supposed to allow the Queen and Prince Charles the right to approve bills that affect them personally, and they have used this right to prevent passage of laws until their desired changes are made. The Guardian discovered 1,000 laws the Queen reviewed in this way since her coronation. The leaked “Paradise Papers” show the Queen, like other super-rich, hid investments in offshore funds, some in the Cayman Islands.