If the monarchy is really as bad as Harry and Meghan say, why don’t they give up their royal titles?
People who are driven to a mental state whereby they no longer want to live should surely turn to therapy, not Oprah
So the Duke and Duchess of Sussex did choose the nuclear option, after all. As a way of saying goodbye to Britain – which Prince Harry still called “my home” – and sensationally saying hello to America, they took the deliberate decision to damage the institution of the monarchy as much as they possibly could on the way out. Cold, cruel, cultishly entrapping, institutionally racist, the monarchy came out worse from the Oprah Winfrey interview even than it did from the Netflix drama The Crown (which Winfrey admitted to watching as her homework). Indeed for much of the interview, the Sussexes looked as if they were auditioning for the roles of the hero and heroine of The Crown Season 5.
Yet if the monarchy really is a sinister racist institution, Harry and Meghan ought to resign their HRH titles and the Duchy of Sussex forthwith. Questions of whether they should have these titles removed should be beside the point. If they truly believe the monarchy to be quite so unpleasant and dangerous, and threatening to mental health, why would they not take the honourable way out of it as soon as possible?
Meghan misled Ms Winfrey when she suggested that it was racism that prevented her son Archie from becoming a prince. The Royals have been slimming down their numbers for years, and even the grandchildren of the monarch no longer have the automatic title of prince or princess, as the children of Princess Anne and Prince Edward demonstrate, let alone the great-grandchildren. Yet such an unchallenged accusation – made in that part of the programme when Prince Harry was mysteriously not present, as were so many of the worst allegations – is deeply damaging for British soft-power abroad, especially in the United States. Americans cannot be expected to know the minutiae of royal protocol, but they have been left believing that prejudice has prevented Archie from both becoming a royal and receiving royal security, which is untrue.
In fact the Court, Palace, “Firm”, or whatever else it is called, has been at the very forefront of the battle for good race relations in this country ever since the 1950s, when the Queen called for tea parties to be given to welcome New Commonwealth immigrants. As well as the USA, Commonwealth countries will be shocked by the couple’s allegations, which need to be supported by Prince Harry naming the supposed racist in the Royal Family, thus allowing him or her to explain, deny, or contextualise the remark about Archie’s skin colour. (Whoever the racist was, they were certainly not voicing mainstream Palace opinion.)
