This is the last part of Vanity Fair’s cover story on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, or at least the last part I’ll dedicate to this kind of exhaustive coverage. VF hit a lot of hater-specific sweet spots, with lengthy conversations about whether or not Meghan is a bully (eyeroll), whether Harry is too dumb to understand how books work, whether they fulfilled their Spotify contract and whether they’ll get a divorce. So, what’s missing from the hateful narrative? A conversation about their titles, of course. At this point, I do not give a sh-t, but a lot of people seem to care, and I guess this is for them. There’s also a backhanded attempt to compliment Meghan for being so hard-working and for moving through projects so quickly, unlike… the Princess of Wales. The last highlights from this VF piece:
Their titles: “I think ultimately it’s cachet and sets them apart as different and special,” the source familiar with the couple says. “In the US, success, money, fame, all of that stuff exists out here. But a blood title, it’s few and far between.”
The racism inherent within the British monarchy: A Black studies scholar who is also an African American woman noted the way racism is discussed in Harry & Meghan: as the one-off actions of Princess Michael of Kent wearing a blackamoor brooch to a brunch where Meghan was present, or the distant colonialism that still furnishes the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster and the jewels in the family’s tiaras, or Harry saying that the royal family merely had “unconscious bias.” “It’s a very common discursive move,” the scholar says. “Locating racism in individual bad actors or locating it in the past…. Queen Elizabeth becomes a kindly grandmother. She’s in the back of a car [or] her carriage, under a blanket. There’s that story, which is really kind of sweet that Meghan tells in the documentary, but [it] can’t connect that with the larger ideology of England—and thereby Queen Elizabeth—being like, ‘We are the natural rulers of the world.’ And that includes the segregation of people of color.” The cultural critic says this framing makes it so Meghan and Harry “can tell the story of being victims of the system, but it’s all about them being disenfranchised from whiteness and white privilege.”
Harry isn’t an anti-monarchist: The source familiar with the couple says it’s important to note that Harry isn’t an anti-monarchist. “He just didn’t like the way things were run within the institution,” he says. “His issues are about people and behaviors, not tradition.” The source, who is also a person of color, defends Meghan’s right to want a piece of the empire for herself. “If I was in the same position and I was treated the way I was by the institution, it wouldn’t stop me from still feeling that that title is mine and deserved,” they say. “If anything, it would feel like you’re giving in to the pressure to exclude you in the first place. So actually it would probably make me want it even more. Damn well I’m going to slap it on my kids’ names too.”
Meghan’s work ethic: The source familiar with the couple says, “I think there’s one thing that no one could take away from Meghan is how hard she works, how much effort goes into everything that she does. Ultimately that’s all she needs. And I think that’s why American Riviera Orchard probably will be a massive success. Even if in two years’ time it doesn’t exist anymore and she’s on to the next, it will have that moment. There’ll be no way that you can say that it wasn’t successful.”
Meghan keeps it moving: The source familiar with the couple says Meghan’s metabolism for campaigns that she can move on from—Archetypes, the ephemeral 40×40 mentorship program, the forthcoming lifestyle line and show, the wisp of a possible book about a divorce that might never happen—are part of why she’s better suited to celebrity outside the palace. “The royals don’t work like that,” the source says. “How many years has Kate been talking about early childhood development, like 11 now, 12? We still haven’t really seen anything.”
Meghan is held to an impossible standard: If Harry’s burden is the soft oppression of no expectations, Meghan’s might be the opposite: the betrayal of not living up to an unachievable ideal. “I think the whole world was waiting for her to be that person, and then she never jumped,” the source who worked in media says. “Diana walked amongst land mines. Meghan couldn’t even say the word slut.”
“If I was in the same position and I was treated the way I was by the institution, it wouldn’t stop me from still feeling that that title is mine and deserved…If anything, it would feel like you’re giving in to the pressure to exclude you in the first place.” It’s not about “deserved.” It’s not about “earned.” Meghan didn’t do anything to deserve or earn a title, because absolutely none of them did anything to earn or deserve a title. She was given/gifted a title because she married a prince. That’s it. The title didn’t come with a written contract, and the only contingency for the title was “staying married” (and even in the case of divorce, she would probably still have the title). Think of it more like… Meghan is still using her married name, which in this case is her title. You wouldn’t say a married woman is wrong for using her married name, or that she had to do something to “deserve” her married name.
As for Meghan’s work ethic…yeah, she is more suited to the American way of working and completing projects and being able to move on when something doesn’t work out. I think it’s funny that the sole mention of Kate in this fakakta VF piece was a comparison between Meghan’s projects and Kate’s Early Years busywork.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Avalon Red. Cover courtesy of VF.
