Of The Crown, Prince Harry and Meghan

If The Crown is any indication of what really goes on in the royal family, then I can opine on what is happening with Prince Harry and Meghan based on relationships portrayed on the show in it’s first three seasons. So far, the show has portrayed those not in the direct line of succession as pitiful individuals without a clear role in the royal family and totally constrained by the burden of their title. These individuals then engage in attention seeking behaviour which only embarrasses the monarchy.

I will start with Prince Philip. He is portrayed as a person who married the first in line to the British throne totally unaware of what to expect and what role he would play (like really, he was of royal pedigree himself, come on writers). He is supposedly jealous of his own son (face palm) who is ranked higher than him (yeah, whatever). His way of acting out is to join (actually, he is said to have been the founder) of the Thursday Club (an elite gentlemen’s club for hooking up with call girls). Yawn yawn. I cringed as I watched that. Really, writers? We can draw some parallels to Meghan here as the person who married into the royal family. In an interview after her and Harry’s Africa tour last year, she said that she had been warned that the British tabloids would not be so kind to her, but that she had probably been naïve and brushed it off. I am tempted to think that Meghan really did not know what role she would play as Prince Harry’s wife, but allowed the media to define that role for her by constantly talking about her shared love for philanthropy with Harry and his late mother. I must say I found this rather astounding as Meghan was an actress first with the philanthropy being a side focus.

Then there is Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister and another lost soul (clearly the monarchy damages anyone that comes in contact with it). Her relationship and failed engagement with Peter Townsend is supposed to have caused a rift between the two sisters (gosh, the number of times Margaret is shown to roll her eyes or bite her tongue when the Queen uses the authority of the Crown in conversations with her). Are we to assume the two sisters were going to let any man drive a wedge between them? I would have liked a different take on that. Princess Margaret is like Prince Harry in the sense that Harry is an only sibling to the person in line for the throne. Harry’s rather notorious behaviour in his 20s was well documented (his PR team have certainly done a lot of work cleaning up his image, because for the moment he is ‘philanthropist extraordinaire’ living up to his famous mother Princess Diana’s memory). Now the media is playing up to a supposed rivalry between Prince William and Prince Harry in a way that mimicks Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret supposed sibling rivalry as portrayed in The Crown. That surely makes for some interesting soap opera-like drama.

Prince Charles, oh dear, where do I even start? Was he really pitifully shy as a kid? Never once did the writers show him playing or laughing and generally enjoying childhood the way children are supposed to do. He is portrayed as if the weight of the crown was already on his head from the time he was a little boy. He is shown as someone trying and failing miserably to escape what was expected of him (really now, this rich boy miserable life thing is a tad annoying). Prince William, we can assume from this latest circus, feels the weight of the crown already on his head, and is portrayed as someone who is bullying his younger brother (the press like this sibling rivalry thing it makes the story easy to digest). Prince Harry is also keen to establish his own independence. Whether or not his allegations are true, but he sure has managed to portray his and Meghan’s relationship as being at the mercy of the media, and as of late 2019, filed a lawsuit against a British newspaper for publishing a private letter. Obviously if it’s a lawsuit worth filing they are well within their rights to file it but this issue of portraying this royal business as a burden without acknowledging the immense privilege they have enjoyed …it is a little bit annoying to say the least.

It will be a while before The Crown gets to portray this latest drama (if successive seasons are approved). I am sure the writers are busy taking notes and adding their own embellishments lol. As for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, well, they were always portrayed as a progressive couple who would modernise the monarchy. We wait and see how this plays out as the royal drama unfolds.