Maria Laura Avignolo
03/08/2021 17:00
Clarín.com
World
Updated 03/08/2021 17:00
A
cluster bomb
exploded in the middle of the British morning on Monday on the British Royal Family, their palaces and their reputation.
Meghan Markle and Harry, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's interview from their sunny California exile was far worse than everyone expected.
He is going to force the palace and the House of Windsor to give
uncomfortable and difficult explanations
, especially about "the skin color" of Archie, the last great-grandson of Queen Elizabeth, second Royal mongrel.
So far Buckingham Palace is silent.
You will not be able to go without answering for many more hours.
But the Labor MPs have already denounced that
the racism
suffered by the exiled duchess
is
"inadmissible"
.
History repeated itself, as Prince Harry imagined.
It was previously suffered by Diana, the Princess of Wales.
Now it was the turn of the new victims of the royal system: Meghan and Harry, the Duke of Sussex.
Look also
In Photos: Prince Harry of England and his wife Meghan Markle with Oprah Winfrey
Meghan on the verge of suicide, without professional help when she asked the courtiers, unprotected and with a member of the royal family, who did not identify, asking in different conversations with Harry,
"how brown"
could the unborn baby be, not he was going to have neither noble title nor security protection.
Racism exposed
and the complaint in the mouth of the wife of the sixth in line of succession to the throne of the United Kingdom.
On Commonwealth day, the former British colonies, with Queen Elizabeth honoring their diversity as head of state, Meghan's impeachment is uncomfortable,
brutal
, for a monarchy that wants to preserve itself.
But ignoring and humiliating his first half-breed duchess and his son, who will not be a prince
because of the color of his skin.
The new clips
Such was the impact with comments about the skin color of Archie, the young son of the Sussexes, and his status as having a “black” mother and grandmother, that Oprah Winfrey, the journalist who interviewed them, said after the show that those who had made the comments about Archie “were
neither Queen Elizabeth nor Prince Philip
.” Prince Harry insisted to her, in a new clip later, that her grandparents
weren't involved.
In another clip that hadn't been aired, Prince Harry said the queen heard
"very bad advice"
and was suddenly "too busy" to meet him at Sandringham last year when he was leaving the Royal Family. .
He called the British press "inherently
corrupt or racist or partisan
" and that racism was "largely" behind his decision to leave the country.
In the new clip, Oprah tells the prince if he left the country because of racism.
CBS news correspondent Ian Lee stands covers the news in front of Buckingham Palace.
Photo: dpa
“It is largely part of that.
I remember a fundraising meal for Sentebale and one person said to me: “Please don't do this with the media.
They are going to destroy your life.
This person was friends with many editors, ”said Harry.
Oprah asked what he meant by that.
Harry replied: "You have to understand that Britain is very racist."
Oprah stopped him and retorted: "Britain is not racist, the British press is racist. Is that what you mean?"
"No," Harry replied,
"Britain is racist."
Royal racism
The interview lasted 3 hours and 20 minutes without editing.
The image that emerged in those hours of television, which was seen in 60 countries, was that of a vulnerable couple, who felt trapped in their roles and who considered themselves unprotected by the institution, which they separated from the Royal Family.
The queen was Oprah, who conducted masterfully with empathy, respecting the silences, asking all the questions.
The Royal Family, Prince Charles and William,
lost their reputations along the way
.
One piece of good news: the Sussexes are expecting a baby girl, who will arrive in the middle of California summer and will be American.
Reprecussion in the British media.
Photo: EFE
The moment Meghan implicitly accused the royal family of racism
was the great
fragmentation
bomb
, in the middle of Black Live Matters, on Buckingham Palace, the courtiers and the Royals.
"There were conversations," Meghan said, "about how dark Archie's skin would be when he was born."
Rather dramatically, he did not say which member of the Royal Family had said it.
"I think it would be very damaging for them," he said.
But the damage was done.
Later, Harry was asked about it.
"At the time it was awkward," he said.
"I was a little surprised."
But he also refused to say which member of the family it was.
For the royal family, their reluctance could be even more damaging, as it will only
fuel speculation
about who he was and what exactly they said.
The couple emphasized that they felt unprotected by the institution.
As Meghan put it: "What I regret is to believe you when you said I would be protected."
In Harry's words,
his family's
attitude
is as seen in The Crown
: “This is how it is, this is how it should be and you can't change it.
We've all been through that. "
Like princess diana
The interview somehow reproduced
the ordeal of Diana
, the Princess of Wales, after her separation from Prince Charles, when she was fighting her divorce.
The same intrigues, pettiness, jealousy of prominence, popularity and visibility between her, Prince Charles and his courtiers.
The Americans sympathized with the Sussexes, as they had previously done with Diana, the frustrated British queen, after the interview.
"What kind of protection did they want?" Winfrey asked them.
"I think the narrative about making Kate cry was the beginning of a royal murder of a character, and they knew it wasn't true," Meghan responded.
The answer implied that there was a hierarchy in the palace, which had to be respected and did not include the Sussexes in the front line.
They were figures of the third category of protocol, who were more popular than they should be, before the main protagonists.
Broken relationships with Carlos and William
Unlike the Queen and Prince Philip, the relationship with the rest of the Royal Family is broken.
Harry admitted that his father, Prince Charles, did not answer his calls, that he had two conversations with him and three with his grandmother, the queen, before leaving Britain.
Since then he does not listen to him or call him.
"My father and brother are caught in the system," said Harry, "and it's the relationship I have to repair.
I love my brother.
We went through hell together, "he acknowledged.
A complex family.
Photo: AFP
Their family relationships got so bad that they cut off all financial aid from the Royal Family.
Initially, it was Prince Charles who was going to take care of their expenses the first year of the adventure, before they decided whether or not they continued working for the Royal Family.
They lived off the inheritance of Princess Diana,
some 30 million pounds sterling
, which allowed them to start the "basic" life in California.
A house with an $ 11 million mortgage, a chicken coop in the garden for Archie with chickens recovered from a hatchery, long bike rides on the beach as a family, and the recovery of freedom that Harry had only known in the Army.
Plus the $
100 million contracts with Netflix and Spotify,
plus a race that began on Sunday, when Americans listened to them in amazement and embraced their narrative and their sufferings.
It was not a fairy tale.
“There was like an obsession about everything in my world, finding things about my parents.
I did everything possible to protect him, ”Meghan said in a new clip.
She said her father has denied selling interviews to tabloids.
"I look at Archie and I genuinely can't imagine doing anything intentionally to him that could cause pain to my son. I can't imagine that that's why it's hard for me to reconcile," said the Duchess in the new clip that Oprah showed this Monday.
The revelations broke the royal script.
Meghan and Harry were secretly married three days before their official wedding in Windsor Chapel, in their "backyard", just the two of them and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The other wedding was the House of Windsor ceremony "to the world."
Another Royal Diversity Marketing Exercise.
Contrary to the insistent official British tabloid narrative, it was, in fact, Kate, the Princess of Cambridge, who brought Meghan to tears shortly before her wedding (Meghan, she said, "forgave her").
"Kate is a good person," said the Duchess of the other, William's wife and future queen.
Meghan, silenced and alone
Accusations of courtier control came one after another: life as a royal was akin to life locked up.
He was not allowed to meet friends for lunch and only left Frogmore Cottage twice in four months.
She was "silenced" by "the institution" and the victim of a "character assassination" by the press.
Once, she said, a family member approached her and suggested that she "stay hidden" for a while "because you're everywhere right now."
Meghan responded: “I have left home twice in four months.
I am everywhere, but nowhere. "
The press calls the new royal scandal "the exile of Meghan or Megxile."
Photo: AP
Most shocking of all, however, was how damaged Meghan was in the interview.
He described how suicidal he felt at times.
"I did not want to be more alive."
"I was lonely," she said.
And the institution did nothing to protect her.
In desperation, he spoke to the palace's human resources department.
But they told her that they couldn't help because she was not a member of the staff.
Members of the Royal Family
do not go to the psychoanalyst or psychiatrist
, with the exception of Harry and earlier Diana.
In the 20th century, those with mental problems were
hidden in orphanages
, like the Queen Mother's cousins, and disappeared from the life of the palace.
No protection or help
The image that emerged in the interview was that of a couple deeply unhappy in their role: under attack in the media, but without the protection they felt they needed.
Behind the scenes, there was the question of Archie's title and whether he would receive security.
This is a complex area - there are established rules that Archie would not be a prince at birth, but would be a prince when Charles becomes king.
But it seemed Meghan believed that decisions about her title and whether to get security were inextricably linked.
It also seemed to suggest that they were considering changing that rule.
"They said they wanted to change the convention for Archie," Meghan said.
"The idea that our son is not safe, and also the idea that the first colored member of this family does not have the same title as other grandchildren ..." Meghan suggested excitedly.
Suicidal Meghan
One of the most powerful images evoked in the interview was of them attending a social engagement at the Royal Albert Hall, after Meghan, who was pregnant at the time, told Harry that she didn't want to stay alive, that she was going to commit suicide.
Harry had suggested that she not go, but she insisted that she could not stay alone in the Windsor house.
“Every time those lights went out in that royal box, I was just crying.
Harry would hold my hand and say, "Okay, intermission is coming."
.
.
And you had to be "on" again.
You have no idea what happens to someone behind closed doors.
Even the people who smile, with the biggest smiles, and shine the lights brightest, "said Meghan.
Relations with family seem as bad as ever.
While Meghan spoke fondly of the Queen, when Harry spoke of his relationship with his father, he said he was "really disappointed."
One of his priorities, he said, will be to try to "heal that relationship."
The time of the interview with Oprah.
Photo: dpa
Her relationship with William was "spaced out" and she added: "Time heals all things, hopefully."
The media received strong criticism, as expected.
Meghan accused them of inciting racism.
But for Harry, it was more than that: He said his royal family was afraid the tabloids would turn on them.
There were "invisible closed-door contracts" between the institution and the tabloids, according to him.
"To keep it simple, this is a case where if you, as a family member, are willing to have wine, dinner and give full access to these reporters, then you will get better press," the prince explained.
Harry knows that his mother suffered from those agreements.
A racist country?
Race was a constant topic of the interview.
What Harry called "the racial element" meant that what they were going through "not only affected my wife, it affected many other people as well."
"That was the trigger for me to really get involved in those conversations with the senior palace staff and with my family." "To say, 'This is not going to end well.
There was also another theme: they had never abandoned the royal family.
The Sussexes, during the interview.
Photo: AP
The queen was never "caught off guard" when they made their announcement about her departure from the country in January 202. As Harry put it, "I would never take my grandmother by surprise, I respect her too much."
When asked where that story came from, Harry said he could "venture a guess" that it might have come "from within the institution."
Instead, there was a sense of shock at the way events had unfolded.
He never thought security would be taken away by deciding to retire from royal duties.
"I was born in this position," he said.
“I inherited the risk.
So it was a shock to me, "admitted the prince.
Shocked Britain
The repercussions of the Meghan and Harry interview in Britain are huge and uncomfortable for the royals.
Labor party leader Keir Starmer expressed "concern about racism and mental health issues" that Meghan raised in the interview.
“The issues that Meghan has raised of racism and mental health are very serious issues.
It is a reminder that many people experience racism in the 21st century in Britain.
We have to take it very, very seriously.
Nobody but nobody can suffer prejudice, because of the color of their skin or because of mental health issues.
This is bigger than the royal family.
For many years, we were dismissive and too willing to put these issues aside, ”said the Labor leader.
People "turned on" to television, on Sunday.
Photo: AFP
Royal correspondents believe that Buckingham Palace must act "urgently" after this interview.
The damage to your reputation is enormous.
He will not be able to adopt the attitude of saying nothing, as is his style, because the case has serious implications in the 21st century and for the future of the reign of Prince Charles.
The usual thing is that they do not speak but inform the real correspondents.
But some of them believe that Harry and Meghan "must identify the member of the royal family" who mentioned "Archie's skin color and the absence of titles."
Jenny Bond is one of the most famous royal correspondents and the author of several biographies of the royals.
She believes that
Prince Charles
should have been the man in this conflict.
“When you are a father and your children have big problems and they are fighting, you are the one who makes the peace, you put yourself above.
But he did not do this.
And he must understand it ”, he assured, after noting that the prince raised his children when Diana died.
For her it is probably "the moment to jump a generation in the royal succession" and
that Prince William sits
on the throne, after Queen Elizabeth.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not see the Sussex interview, which will only air this Monday in Britain.
But he planned to answer Harry and Meghan's accusations at a press conference.
The Downing St spokesman said "
there is no place
in society for racism."
James McVey, Mental Health Ambassador to Britain, believes the Royal Family must understand the nuances of mental health.
"I hope that the Royal Family leads by example and it is not what is happening at the moment," he said.
For Harry and Meghan, there is a new narrative in their future.
A new bond with his new country and his North American society.
A distance with Great Britain, where Harry tries to visit his nonagenarian grandparents again but
Meghan will not return
.
For Buckingham Palace, there are challenging questions about how they will respond to the hurtful and painful accusations the couple have made, in two hours of dramatic television.
Not even the most daring screenwriter of Netflix would have imagined it.
Paris, correspondent
ap