Last week, British royalist and writer Petronella Wyatt hit the crack pipe and threw down one of the most asinine and overwrought Telegraph pieces I’ve ever read. The point of it was simple – Petronella’s good friend Queen Camilla was mad that Prince Harry did not want Camilla in the room when he met with his father. Instead of reporting that sad tea straight from Camilla, Wyatt spun a cracked-out web of delusion, hatred and poor journalism. Well, guess what that crackhead is up to now? A column about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s titles and whether or not the Sussex titles should be removed. It’s been four years and these people cannot move on. Interestingly enough, Wyatt argues that the Sussex titles should not be removed.
Allowing Harry to come back and perform royal duties would be a bit like giving a terrorist a free run of the Houses of Parliament. He’s dynamite but not of the right kind. Besides, he and William would be the Brothers Grim. Nonetheless, those calling for Harry and Meghan to be stripped of their titles are missing the point and risk a head-on collision with Cape Counterproductive.
Deprived of the Dukedom of Sussex, the couple would become more elevated still, as they would revert to being Prince Harry and Princess Harry, titles that can never be removed, as they are part of the Prince’s inalienable birthright, and a prince always trumps a duke, due in part to the scarcity of such handles.
Their website, which now boasts the name sussex.com, a commercialisation that some say crosses the line, at least in spirit, of their agreement with the Palace, might then read princeandprincessharry.com, which, though a mouthful, would be even worse (as would windsor.com), implying that they are the world’s preeminent royalty, and that Meghan is a bona fide American princess. “Sussex” has the advantage of making them sound like a cricket club.
Still I admire and even sneakingly applaud Harry’s devotion to his wife and her ambitious machinations. There is something almost noble and brave about it, albeit foolhardy.
The allurement that women like Meghan, or indeed any woman, hold out to men is precisely the allurement that rocks hold out to sailors. They are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, even royal ones, they offer the only grand adventure he will ever encounter. Take them away and his existence would be as flat and dull as that of a caterpillar. Even to the unusual man, the adventurous man, the imaginative and romantic man, which Harry is not, they offer the adventure of adventures, like something in H Rider Haggard, and Meghan is certainly “she who must be obeyed”.
I cut off the last six paragraphs or so, where it was clear that Wyatt hit the pipe halfway through writing the column. She went on to suggest that Meghan was some kind of magical temptress manipulating Harry. We’ve heard it all before, and it seems to be a quite common view among educated white Britons working in the British media: that a Black woman has magical voodoo powers and she can control hapless white men with a snap of her fingers. Even more specifically, they believe Harry is stupid and Meghan is exploiting him and everything around them. None of that is true. Anyway, Harry and Meghan wouldn’t have used their Sussex titles for their website unless they were certain that Charles wouldn’t remove them. Cry harder, crackheads.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.