Is this the week where the royal dam broke? Is it irrevocably changed, or is this just a “bad week” and all will be forgotten as soon as the Princess of Wales, fully rested from her emergency BBL, comes out for public events? I don’t know, but it definitely feels like more people are paying attention to the royal clownshow and it’s because no one, from the royals to their staffers, can do their job properly. Whose fault is that? You guessed it, Harry and Meghan! At least according to the Daily Mail’s Maureen Callahan, who wrote a particularly panicked piece about how everything in Windsorville is falling apart and Harry & Meghan don’t even have the decency to come running back to save the Windsors. Some highlights from: “A soul-crushing picture of the Royals in peril: Disgraced Andrew given star billing as Kate and Charles recover… Wills goes missing… and Harry and Meghan sulk in Montecito. Maureen Callahan asks: How DOES the monarchy come back from this?”
A royal catastrophe: The slimmed-down monarchy that King Charles so longed for is now, quite quickly, in crisis. The absence of Prince William at Tuesday’s memorial service for his godfather, King Constantine of Greece — announced just 46 minutes prior to William’s scheduled arrival — sheds a blinding light on this unfolding catastrophe… It has been left to William to carry the mantle, but his sudden withdrawal from Constantine’s service, for unknown ‘personal reasons’, is a further crack. What’s more, it is understood that William’s absence had nothing to do with the sudden death of Tom Kingston, the 45-year-old husband of Lady Gabriella Windsor (Charles’s second cousin), announced just hours later. Without William’s expected attendance, a hole has been blown wide open in the House of Windsor.
Kate is more important than the king: Kate’s absence, however, is more keenly felt. She is indisputably the most charismatic and glamorous member of The Firm. William, for all his dignified and cheerful dutifulness, simply seems dulled without her. It is Kate who gives William true glamour. It is Kate, more than her husband or any other royal, who signifies youth and futurism. And with William on modified duty, the monarchy not only feels rusty and dusty — it feels imperiled.
Why can’t Harry & Meghan come back?? In the wake of those recent reports that the prodigal Prince Harry was seeking a way back into the royal fold, and that there was a faction in the palace open to reconciliation, it renders Charles soft. Too soft, perhaps, and too hopeful. If only Harry and Meghan weren’t the ingrates they are. If only they weren’t so resentful and distrustful. If only they had stayed put, serving the Crown and doing everything to ensure the future of the monarchy. They would have had the full faith of the British people, who would have embraced them as never before. For Harry and Meghan, their time would have been now. They would have been front and center, the understudies called up to the lead roles, taking the place of the Waleses as they navigate Kate’s recovery, Charles’s illness, and the raising of their three children. Meghan, at long last, would have had her Norma Desmond moment, moving ever closer toward the camera under a permanent white-hot spotlight. The stage would have been all hers. Alas.
LMAO: Do Harry and Meghan even realize what they’ve lost? What cost this is to their own children? To the British people? In an alternate universe, Tuesday’s service would have seen the Duke and Duchess of Sussex leading the way, standard bearers for an intact monarchy, slim but powerful, padded with key players of vim and vigor, style and star power. Instead, we were made to suffer a shameless Prince Andrew in full cock-of-the-walk, chest thrust forward, smiling broadly, emitting an aura of utter confidence as the royal alpha male. What an insult to Prince William. What an insult to Princess Anne, trailing behind her besmirched brother. Her sheer workload and devotion to monarchy deserves better.
Where does this leave the royals? The future of a monarchy dimmed by the loss of Queen Elizabeth and further diminished by the withdrawal, for the moment, of Kate? Could the dissipation of the once robust royal family, its multigenerational strength displayed yearly on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, become an existential threat?
We all knew this would happen, as soon as the “locals” started talking about the mysteries around Kate’s disappearance, not to mention the larger conversations about William looking drunk, strung out and unprepared. Of course it’s all Harry and Meghan’s fault! Why couldn’t they stick around and take abuse for years, just to be a convenient scapegoat for William and Kate for the rest of their lives?? Why didn’t Harry and Meghan WANT that? Yeah, and here’s something else – nothing has been right with that family since the Sussexit. I’m not saying Meghan’s ancestors put a curse on the left-behinds, but I’m not NOT saying it either. The way everything has unfolded over the past four years has been really something. I keep thinking back to the deal William and Charles made around the Sussexit too – that Charles would sign off on pushing the Sussexes out with the understanding that William and Kate would finally “step up.” Oh well – I’ve never been happier that the Sussexes got out while the getting was good.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.