There’s a lot of poisonous invective and personal vitriol being directed at Meghan Markle, Prince Harry and the forthcoming Royal Wedding as well as at the Royal Family generally at the moment, especially in relation to poverty, homelessness and other societal ills but the former ‘grouping’ is not related to the second.
The ‘attacks’ are getting personal, as opposed to ‘just’ being criticism of the institution of the Monarchy and its symbols – it’s personal, nasty and hateful – it smacks of jealousy – I certainly wouldn’t swap my freedom for their gilded prison! The Queen is 91 years old and there can’t be many 91 year olds who are told “Sorry if you’re tired, you can’t put your feet up tonight – you MUST go to such and such a function tonight and give (yet another) speech”.
The Queen might carry that most exalted and regal of titles, ‘Your Majesty’, but it doesn’t change the fact, the reality of her position, that she is not in command of her own diary, that she is still told what she has to do, that she has to work within a framework which is foisted upon her and that she is not free!
Real hatred is being directed at Meghan Markle, more jealousy – jealous of what, that she is going to live in a big house or big houses and enjoy the trapping of wealth and privilege? ‘Trappings’ is an apt word because with these ‘trappings’ will come the fact, is already the fact, that she is, indeed, trapped. She was a high profile, successful, I guess financially comfortable – more than comfortable – actress and, important, free, insofar as one can be free in the goldfish bowl that is Hollywood. From where I’m sitting, free, what I see is a girl who must really be in love with Prince Harry because she is giving up her freedom. She’ll look back on her life in Hollywood as one of complete freedom and privacy compared to life in the Royal Family.
I’m not, in this blog, going into the whole business model justification for the Monarchy but the fact is that the Monarchy is not the cause of homelessness and poverty etc in the UK nor would the UK’s economic/cultural ills disappear if the Monarchy did…
I’d have thought that one look at the US and Donald Trump would be enough to scare most Brits into holding onto the Royal Family and the Monarchy for dear life, the life of the UK and our sanity!
Britain is, at the moment, caught in the eye of a cultural, economic and political hurricane, ‘Hurricane Brexit’, which is threatening to destroy the very foundations upon which the nation is built – if Brexit proceeds, I fear for the future of the nation…
One of the great, enduring, comforting, symbols of Britain is our Royal Family, the Monarchy, ‘The Firm’, as King George VI called it, constantly working in the interests of the nation, Brits, The Commonwealth and thousands of good and charitable causes as well as creating wealth for Britain and the Commonwealth as Ambassadors and attracting millions of tourists, and their money, to our shores.
In these troubling times, The Monarchy, our Monarchy, is a constant on which we can focus and, from it, we can reinforce or own identities as British people (I hope British people as part of the European family of nations) and dispel any thoughts of impending national doom.
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