Ashok Dhillon
Mar 10, 20216 min
In the 21st Century, in terms of major global institutions, perhaps nothing is less critical to the current human condition than Royal Families and the Flat-Earth Societies. Both of those institutions while being quaint relics of our collective past, are now of incredibly limited value (apologies to the die-hard believers of both), their value being similar in that they are of interest only for the curiosity-factor they generate in ‘ordinary’ individuals around the world. Apart from the lingering curiosity, the world has moved on to the realities of the modern world where the usefulness of many such past beliefs have been long discarded by most.
The British Royal Family has somehow managed to hold on to their civic importance better than most other long forgotten families that once ruled the world from China and India to the multiple Empires of Europe and Russia, and beyond. More than their any ‘real use’ to the public in the governance of the country, the British Royal Family has over the past decades provided regular episodes of real-life, high dramas concerning the lives and behaviours of their family members. So much so, that their lives are chronicled in movies, and now in actual television series that have less importance as historic events but more for the public drooling over all the taboo and salacious aspects of their, up to now, very personal and institutionally guarded, life dramas.
Prince Harry, somewhere-in-line to the British throne after his older brother and his family, upon marrying little known (up to then) American actress Meghan Markle, assured additional episodes of Royal high drama. Meghan was not only ‘a commoner’, and an American divorcee, with immediate comparisons to the fateful American socialite and divorcee, Wallis Simpson, who had single-handedly dethroned an English King (he voluntarily abdicated his throne rather than give her up), and brought on the highly improbable and off-direct-line ascendancy of the current British Monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, to the throne of England.
Any American divorcee marrying into the Royal Family after that, would obviously have a very anxiety ridden impact on the British Royal Family, since Wallis Simpson triggered a Constitutional Crisis in England, and a lasting change in the Royal Family branch’s line-to-the-throne.
In fact, Queen Elizabeth only became Queen of England directly because of an American divorcee’s entrance into the life of the Royal Family, and the then King’s infatuation, romance, and subsequent marriage to her, in spite of the universal objections of all of England’s then Royal Family, aristocracy, government, governing officials, and the public. It must be said that Wallis Simpson did not want King Edward VIII to abdicate his throne for her, but he had no choice, if he chose her, which he did over the throne, the Family, and even the country. Such was the power of his love for the twice married (the husbands were still alive), and twice divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. In those days (the 1930s) the very idea of the King of England marrying a commoner, an American, and a party loving socialite divorcee at that, was anathema to the entire nation, and a fascinating horrific drama to the ogling world.
Some of the elements of the ‘Great Romance’ that shook England, and the world, are present in the romance and marriage of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan Markle, the American actress, and their subsequent and angst and recriminations filled break from the Royal Family. Is it coincidence that two American women marrying British Royal males find it impossible to stay with the Family after the marriage? We think not, as neither the Family nor the institution have changed all that much in the 80 plus years since Wallis married King Edward VIII in 1937.
Granted, England and the world has changed somewhat in their slightly greater tolerance and acceptance of all people, and the idea of almost divine exclusivity of Royal blood has diluted significantly, to the point they are now considered almost human. Having said that, it does not mean that all vestiges of aristocratic, racial, historic power, and the unquestioned belief in their genetic superiority, divine sanction, and the entitlement of practically unlimited wealth and power through the generations, that fostered all human prejudices, were washed away by time and enlightenment brought on by the greater general knowledge of everything. Whew, no, most of the prejudices still remain quite ingrained in most of the individuals and institutions of Royalty, as was dramatically proven and highlighted by ‘The Interview’.
These lingering irrational prejudices cling on like the institution of Royalty itself, greatly helped by the slavish worship and public fascination of all that exclusivity, wealth, and power – oh and oddly enough by the very acceptance of inferiority by the public themselves – who genuflect and scrape humbly in the presence of such supposed exalted beings, despite all evidence of their weaknesses, physical and moral, displayed by the sheer commonality of their daily needs.
So, when Harry met Meghan and decided to marry her, two things would have happened:
One, it would have sent an automatic and involuntary shiver of dread and mild revulsion through all individuals and contraptions of the institution of British Royalty, including the government, and a large percentage of the English public. Some would have overcome it quickly after exercising their powers of modern humanity, democratic reasoning, and rationality, but with others it would have lingered and grown into full blown animosity to the very idea of a relatively unknown American actress marrying the most revered of all Brits, ‘a Royal’. When it would have become known that Meghan was not only an American, an actress, a divorcee (in other words a real commoner), and (horror of horrors) had shades of ‘Black’ in her lineage, that would have unleashed real revulsion in some circles, certainly in those that are still steeped in the idea of white British superiority among all races, but especially of the ‘darkies’.
Two, there would have been those who would have quickly been enraptured by the fairy-tale aspects of the romance and the pending union between the Prince, and the Commoner – a Cinderella-like story of a regular girl capturing the heart of the Prince and becoming a Princess.
Both of those versions of the reaction to Meghan played out in Britain after the marriage, a lot of it publicly, like the constant hate and derision heaped on her by the less than noble or even partially civilized parts of Britain’s famed Tabloid Press, and of course a lot of sniping and derision in secret, or semi-secret, in private conversations and gatherings, as we now know.
Of course, there were also some that welcomed her as a worthy partner to Harry and were very happy for her, particularly in Canada, where apparently, they first met, and of course in the US where she was born and was from. For those in America who knew and remembered some history, it was the second American woman to win the heart of a close-to-the-throne British Royal male, and that has had to have had some cache surely, regarding the power of the ‘American Woman’.
Meghan did not come close to representing the threat to the British throne that Wallis Simpson did when the first-in-line to the throne and eventual King fell in love and upended the British Monarchy by voluntarily abdicating the throne and stepping down as King. But that would not have been enough to deflect all the pain that was to come. All the inherent prejudices against commoners, foreigners, divorced women, and particularly racial prejudices against ‘Black people’, would have descended on Meghan with the full weight of the famously bigoted nation, and even for them, a particularly stuffy and entitled Family.
So Meghan’s confessions in the interview with Oprah ring true in substance and form (even if the repugnant Piers Morgan does not believe her), as they represent what any common outsider would have been made acutely aware of in trying to ‘fit in’ and please the un-fitable and inherently un-pleaseable, incredibly extended family, that encapsulates an entire nation (in fact a number of them, in the ‘Great Britain’).
The exercise to please the in-laws would have been futile for someone like Meghan, with all the negative ‘tick offs’ that would have been automatically catalogued in their historically prejudiced heads. Then there was the rabid British Tabloid press that has No Class, particularly as they did their utmost to trash the dark foreigner from America – impossible.
Are things ever going to change? Not till the notions of ‘Royalty’ have disappeared into the mists of time for generations. In other words, certainly not in Meghan’s, Harry’s, or their children’s life times. Any ‘private navel gazing’ that does take place behind closed doors over the reported ‘concern over the skin color of Meghan’s and Harry’s baby’, as the Queen indicated would do, proves nothing will change. It only proves, the status quo will be rigidly maintained, and in the end, and in history, Meghan and Harry’s Tempest in the Royal Teapot will be the lesser of the other earlier Great Romance and the Greater Tempest of 1937, which barely changed anything.