The interview

 

Subject: The interview.

We are collectively followers of the herd and although determined not to be drawn into the Oprah Winfrey circus of feigned emotion I found myself, having come downstairs looking for baking soda (the poor man's antidote for stomach acid) switching on the TV whilst the soda took action. Up popped Oprah and her guests Harry and Megan with the interview already under way. We have been inundated with promos for this program, after all it was a salacious "tell all" about the Royal Family and who doesn't like a bit of gossip, especially about 'them'.

One never tires at looking at Megan. Her beauty has captured acres of print, her poise and that thing Diana had, that wounded look of a fawn caught in the public headlights invigorates some sort of male protectiveness. She uses her beauty, as all beautiful women do to captivate and twirl us around by their enchanting looks. In the interview her heavily made up eyes seemed at times on the verge of tears as she demurely held the hand of her Prince.

I felt the Prince came out of this interview with his head held high as he tried to explain his dilemma. Trying to find acceptance for his new bride, who clearly he is besotted with, into a difficult family full of overblown self important egos and slavish protocol.

How many men and women have faced this problem when their partner is not accepted by family, or the partners family, for a whole host of reasons. The cross current of comments and comparisons are a savage backdrop to any marriage and can destroy the best. .

In the Royal family the bloodline used to be paramount and many brides were found from aristocratic families to support a political end without much love or affection. Take the case of Charles and Diana. She was brought in to perpetuate the bloodline since Charles true love, Camilla was married and  illegitimised her from producing children for the realm and of course in Megan's case there was the added issue of colour.

I'm sure his American bride, used to emancipation and speaking her mind found the royal pecking order very difficult to handle, especially since she rightly held strong views about so many issues. The equally strong but on the surface at lest, placid Kate, Duchess of Cambridge,  who's knowledge of the pits and troughs of ancestral hierarchy, made her a better fit in ‘The Firm’ than Megan and was continually used to reminded us (and the Royals) who fitted the role of princess best. The newspapers provoked controversy with never ending photo shoot comparisons and it must have been hard for an outlier, from God's own country, America, to stomach this pip squeak country, its snobbery of our upper classes and their toady assistants.  

I wrote when Harry and Meghan first become an item that history was repeating itself.

Mrs Simpson who courted and married King Edward the VIII, and who's influence forced the King to abdicate for the woman he loved was also a strong willed American who's views and social standing, (she was also a divorcee), were an anathema to the sense of personal duty and responsibility so exemplified in the Queen.

The Soap Opera which ensued on our screens last night was a script made, not in Heaven but in the bowels of Windsor Castle, in its arcane procedure and convention, not in a Mills and Boons novel, broadcast across the world for untold millions of dollars,  and a multiple platform for who knows what commodity.

I was never a fan of Megan ever since the interview with her sister who warned of her character before the wedding. The relationship with the father speaks volumes, of a rift developing when he refused to censure publicly the comments Samantha (her half sister) had made about her The break with her dad therefore is about his loyalty to his other child which Megan sees as being disloyal to her. Plucked from the pages of Mills and Boon this sort of sibling rivalry has gone on since creation itself but in a woman as gifted as she is, with wealth and fame (which just might feature in a Mills and Boon scenario), I'm both in awe and on my guard when a woman uses her good looks to manipulate the storyline in this way.