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H&M: Harry & Meghan. Haters & Misogyny.
28 Plays3 years ago
We recap Netflix's "Harry & Meghan" documentary, highlight the red & yellow flags of Harry & Meghan's Courtship, the misogyny of the media & the Royal Family, Meghan's cultural faux pas, and Harry's attempt at a redemption arc.
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Transcript
Introduction to Harry & Meghan Documentary
00:00:06
Speaker
What's up, queens?
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to the Female Dating Strategy Podcast, the meanest female-only podcast on the internet.
00:00:11
Speaker
I'm Ro.
00:00:12
Speaker
And I'm Savannah.
00:00:13
Speaker
Today we're going to talk about the absolute firestorm around Harry and Meghan.
00:00:21
Speaker
In response to their Netflix documentary that dropped the past two weeks on December 8th and the 15th, we'll talk about both their love story and the narrative that they're trying to spin, and then the response from the wider media and how incredibly, insanely misogynist and or racist it is.
00:00:41
Speaker
Yeah.
Harry & Meghan's Early Relationship
00:00:43
Speaker
So it was released in two parts.
00:00:45
Speaker
So we had three episodes, one week, the final three in the next, the following week.
00:00:50
Speaker
And the first three episodes really focused on the beginning of their relationship.
00:00:55
Speaker
So, so how they met.
00:00:57
Speaker
They were actually quite interesting episodes to watch from an FDS perspective, because there were positives and negatives that we'll get into just now about how their courtship went.
00:01:07
Speaker
So,
00:01:07
Speaker
It started when, like, Harry was, he came across, I think it was a video of, like, Meghan on a friend's Instagram.
00:01:16
Speaker
He was basically scrolling her Instagram and he was like, oh, wow, who's that lady?
00:01:20
Speaker
And then, I guess, a friend linked them up.
00:01:23
Speaker
So that was how he first came across Meghan, which is quite sweet, I think.
00:01:26
Speaker
Like, and this is why it's important to have friends in good places as well.
00:01:30
Speaker
Low-key joking.
00:01:30
Speaker
But...
00:01:32
Speaker
Uh, yeah.
00:01:32
Speaker
So Harry was late to their first date, which again, there were so many like yellow flags about what was to come with dealing with Harry and the Foyle family.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:42
Speaker
I like that she kind of called it out.
00:01:44
Speaker
Like, yeah, I wasn't going to be with a guy who felt like I was supposed to wait on him, you know, et cetera.
00:01:50
Speaker
And then when she met Harry, she said that he was really apologetic and not really clear why he was late, but maybe just traffic and
00:01:57
Speaker
It was in the UK, so London traffic, especially around the time they met in central London, can genuinely be really, really bad, like really awful.
00:02:06
Speaker
And obviously, Harry's not the type of person who can just get the tube or get a bus.
00:02:10
Speaker
He has to be driven places because security, so...
00:02:14
Speaker
I get that.
00:02:15
Speaker
And what I really liked about their date was that they kept it short.
00:02:18
Speaker
They didn't have a super long first date, which I think can be a trap that women fall into when they go, especially those dates that take you to different places.
00:02:27
Speaker
So you have a meal, then you go for a walk, then you go to a bar, like
00:02:30
Speaker
It can, as we've always said at FDS, that's not the best use of your time.
00:02:35
Speaker
And it can be used as a way to accelerate intimacy on the part of the man as well.
00:02:40
Speaker
So they kept this like an hour.
00:02:41
Speaker
And then I think they arranged to see each other again the next day for dinner.
00:02:45
Speaker
And again, they didn't, I don't think the date was that long.
00:02:47
Speaker
They didn't like go back to each other's houses or anything like that.
00:02:50
Speaker
Oh, I was going to say like shout out to her girl gang though, as a complete side note for actually having her back and facilitating the meeting between Meghan and Harry,
Media Pressure on Harry's Relationships
00:03:01
Speaker
right?
00:03:01
Speaker
Because I feel like this is a great thing about if you cultivate a great group of friends, then it can actually help your dating life as well considerably.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:03:12
Speaker
But what was apparent was that they were almost coming at it from opposite ends almost because obviously we get Meghan saying, especially after her divorce, she was travelling around Europe, she wanted to be single.
00:03:22
Speaker
But then we have Harry who, for a number of years prior to meeting Meghan, he was...
00:03:27
Speaker
He didn't really have anything to do.
00:03:29
Speaker
It became apparent that he wasn't the spare anymore in the eyes of the British royal family, because by that point, William and Kate, who are now the Prince and Princess of Wales, they'd had George, you know, would have come after William.
00:03:41
Speaker
So he was also being pushed further and further down the line of succession anyway.
00:03:46
Speaker
And it was during this time that he stepped up his charity work.
00:03:49
Speaker
But outside of that, they didn't really have a role for him.
00:03:52
Speaker
Because the thing is, when in the royal family, it's really about the heir, you know, which is William, and then the other remaining siblings or brothers, they end up being quite listless.
00:04:03
Speaker
The same happened to Princess Margaret as well.
00:04:05
Speaker
When Queen Elizabeth started having children and she was being pushed further and further down the line of succession, you then begin to see her becoming a bit...
00:04:13
Speaker
of, you know, so-called like a wild child, like not really having a role anymore in the royal family.
00:04:19
Speaker
So this was happening to Harry.
00:04:20
Speaker
And I think at this point as well, because he even says like, I was, he'd had relationships with women in the past, most notably Chelsea Davey, who he had a six year, I think they dated for about six years, from about 2004 to 2010.
00:04:32
Speaker
And she left him because of the press intrusion.
00:04:36
Speaker
And so I think that Harry was aware of the fact that his position could mean that he ended
Meghan's Parallels to Princess Diana
00:04:42
Speaker
up single because
00:04:43
Speaker
The press will basically just harass the woman.
00:04:47
Speaker
He was scaring off every woman in the vicinity.
00:04:50
Speaker
And that's literally what he said is that, is this going to happen every single time I try and date?
00:04:54
Speaker
Because obviously he hasn't got the, I guess, protection of being the heir where, as we'll get to in a minute, where the royal family, if something goes left in terms of, you know, the relationship between Harry and his wife in the media, the royal family will quickly step in.
00:05:11
Speaker
They're not going to do that because he's not that important in their eyes.
00:05:15
Speaker
And so he was keen to settle down.
00:05:16
Speaker
And also Harry as well.
00:05:18
Speaker
He clearly and very publicly spoke about, you know, the void that his mother's death, Princess Diana, had on him.
00:05:26
Speaker
And I think that was one of the qualities he was looking for when he was looking for a wife, was basically his mum as well.
00:05:34
Speaker
Yeah, I thought it was very telling when they both discussed the fact that Harry had a list of qualities that he wanted in a wife.
00:05:40
Speaker
And then when the interviewer asked what was on the list, Harry was like, look at Meghan.
00:05:45
Speaker
Meghan is the list, right?
00:05:47
Speaker
There was an intentionality in the way that he was dating.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I can imagine a lot of that list consisted of qualities that he saw in his mum.
00:05:55
Speaker
And that's even what he said.
00:05:56
Speaker
He draws parallels between Princess Diana and Meghan Markle all the time.
00:06:01
Speaker
One of the things that attracted him to Meghan was her charity work, which she was doing, to her credit, long before she was in the royal family.
Public Scrutiny of Meghan
00:06:10
Speaker
And she doesn't get enough credit for the fact that even before she was royal, she seemed to actually give a shit about other people.
00:06:18
Speaker
All of the other women who have married into the royal family, they only started doing charity work because that's what royals do.
00:06:24
Speaker
They weren't doing that before they became part of the family, you know, but she had always been doing it and she was doing a good job of it as well.
00:06:31
Speaker
So, and he even said that was one of the things that drew them together was their mutual interest in charity work, particularly in Africa as well, which is where they went for their third date.
00:06:41
Speaker
Right.
00:06:41
Speaker
So that was the other point that I was going to discuss is that, again, kind of a yellow flag with some of the early behavior from Harry as far as like rushing the relationship.
00:06:52
Speaker
Right.
00:06:52
Speaker
Because we've talked about this where I don't know if I would call it like completely love bombing because I don't think he was love bombing her with the intent of like with a lot of love bombers.
00:07:02
Speaker
It's like they're trying to manipulate that person for a narcissistic supply.
00:07:06
Speaker
I think he was doing it because he was afraid she would leave.
00:07:09
Speaker
Right.
00:07:09
Speaker
when she figured out the deal with being part of the royal family.
00:07:12
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:07:14
Speaker
So in that case, that's why we sometimes say that them trying to rush a lot of these like deeply intimate dates, like going to Botswana and like sitting around in a tent very early on in the relationship, especially since they were long distance, can be kind of a yellow to red flag because of the fact that it's usually means that there's something else that they're trying to get you hooked on
00:07:34
Speaker
for their own benefit.
00:07:35
Speaker
Right.
00:07:36
Speaker
So I don't think he's narcissistic and abusive.
00:07:39
Speaker
Like a lot of the guys who love bomb are, I think that he's in a very specific circumstance.
00:07:43
Speaker
That's kind of unfortunate for him, but it still doesn't mean that it's still like, uh, following the rule that when a man tries to like rush the relationship and do like these like other locations and stuff that there's usually something that comes along with it that he's trying to compensate for.
00:07:57
Speaker
I mean, so yeah, so for their third date, Harry asks Meghan, do you want to come to Botswana for... And then she flies out to go and see him.
00:08:05
Speaker
And they spend some time in Botswana together.
00:08:08
Speaker
And I think it was there that they decided that they were going to start a relationship, a long distance one at that.
00:08:14
Speaker
And part of the issue with that is, obviously at the time, Meghan was, I think, either in, was it in Canada or L.A.?
00:08:21
Speaker
And Harry was in the UK, so she was far away from the British press.
00:08:26
Speaker
They managed to keep their relationship under wraps for about a year.
00:08:30
Speaker
And so she never really had the chance to really see what she was getting into until she was deep into the relationship.
00:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, she was in Canada.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah, she was in Canada where she had her own house, she still had her freedom.
00:08:44
Speaker
She did get some press attention, but it wasn't anything like the attention that she got once it became known that she was dating Harry.
00:08:52
Speaker
And then Meghan describes it as, you know, when the news eventually broke, that her world became very, very small and insular.
00:08:58
Speaker
So obviously the press were camping out on her doorstep, she had to have all the blinds closed, and Harry couldn't really do anything about it.
00:09:07
Speaker
And
00:09:08
Speaker
I think with Harry is that because this is the life that he's always known, he wouldn't know what it's like for somebody coming in from the outside, especially somebody who's had quite a lot of freedom from birth.
00:09:20
Speaker
Just how that would feel to then all of a sudden have your freedom restricted because the press is being highly intrusive.
00:09:27
Speaker
And so Harry couldn't really help her at that point, bearing in mind they were still long distance,
00:09:33
Speaker
And the relationship between Americans and the paparazzi is quite different from the royal family and the British paparazzi.
00:09:40
Speaker
So they did make a point that like Megan was just being friendly with the paparazzi because that's generally what a lot of celebrities do here in the States.
00:09:49
Speaker
And the British press interpreted that of like, she's attention seeking, you know, she's narcissistic and wants to be in the spotlight, which is kind of totally different than I think people stateside would perceive that.
00:10:00
Speaker
Cause you know, with like TMZ, they just run up and put cameras in her face.
00:10:03
Speaker
You know, if you're just coming from the airport or something.
00:10:05
Speaker
And so generally, people are expected, American celebrities are expected to be like cordial and nice to the paparazzi.
00:10:12
Speaker
Otherwise, they'll treat them like they're rude and stuck up versus in the British press.
00:10:17
Speaker
I guess Harry made the comment that they're expected to more or less like ignore the paparazzi.
Impact of Media on Meghan's Image
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah, you just have to ignore them.
00:10:24
Speaker
You can't engage with them at any point.
00:10:26
Speaker
There were so many times where there was faux pas between American culture and then British culture that the Brits seemed to have read in the worst interpretation possible.
00:10:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:38
Speaker
And, you know, you see the stock images.
00:10:40
Speaker
There's a lot of images or archive footage of Diana being hounded by the press, of Kate being hounded by the press as well.
00:10:48
Speaker
And again, you know, yeah, their reaction is very, very different to Meghan's initial reaction when she was like, hey guys, how you doing?
00:10:54
Speaker
Until Harry was like, ignore them, like, don't talk to them.
00:10:57
Speaker
And then Meghan was a bit like,
00:10:59
Speaker
well, okay, I'm just being polite.
00:11:00
Speaker
But, you know, like Rose said, you know, that then, you know, came to be interpreted as, you know, oh, she loves the attention, you know, she's entertaining them and stuff like that.
00:11:10
Speaker
So if we then skip to their engagement, because they got engaged, I think probably around a year or so after dating, they kept under wraps for several weeks, as that's quite normal in the royal family, where they announced the engagement several weeks after.
00:11:27
Speaker
And this is where, you know, Meghan begun to be introduced to the PR of the royal family.
00:11:36
Speaker
So their post-engagement interview that was given between Meghan and Harry, they basically said that was all staged.
00:11:42
Speaker
So they had a script they had to keep to, and it was basically staged.
00:11:47
Speaker
And then we begin to see the, obviously the interest in Meghan from the press, the British press begins to ramp up.
00:11:55
Speaker
And then we begin to see how, I suppose, the narrative around Meghan's relationship with her family,
00:12:03
Speaker
basically begun to play out.
00:12:04
Speaker
So in the documentary that one of her nieces called Ashley, she says, I mean, so Ashley is the daughter of Meghan's half sister, Samantha Markle.
00:12:15
Speaker
And it was around this time that Samantha Markle was doing the rounds on news channels in papers, basically disparaging her sister saying she's abandoned them.
00:12:24
Speaker
are basically saying quite a lot of really bad lies about Meghan.
00:12:29
Speaker
And in the documentary, Ashley was like, well, you know, Samantha's basically a liar.
00:12:33
Speaker
And she was so abusive that Ashley had to live with her grandmother.
00:12:37
Speaker
And even before that, two or three years ago, actually maybe four years ago, there was an interview done with her other daughter, Noelle, Samantha's other daughter, who said the exact same thing prior to this documentary that I was not raised by my mother, Samantha Markle.
00:12:51
Speaker
She was horribly abusive to us.
00:12:53
Speaker
And even Samantha Markle's own mother came out and said that she was a liar and abusive.
00:12:58
Speaker
So the fact that the British press kept using her as a source of information and also Fox News for that matter, like Tucker Carlson just did.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, they gave her so much airtime.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:10
Speaker
So much airtime.
00:13:11
Speaker
And Tucker Carlson did an interview with her yesterday after this documentary came out.
00:13:16
Speaker
After its public knowledge that this woman's children did not even live with her because she was so abusive and that the entire family says she's a bald-faced liar, he still put her on television just to tell lies about Meghan and then act like it was ridiculous that Meghan felt that the royal family and the media had done things that were racist.
00:13:33
Speaker
So Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
00:13:35
Speaker
And so all of the Rupert Murdoch-owned press is completely and totally committed to platforming anything that is going to be nasty and abusive towards
Royal Family Dynamics & Media Manipulation
00:13:45
Speaker
Meghan.
00:13:45
Speaker
We'll get onto the Royal Family's relationship with the press in a bit, but like Harry and he basically talks about it quite extensively in the documentary and basically says that there is almost like, because the general feeling by the British press is that towards the Royal Family is that, you know, we pay for you and you pose for us, basically saying that because you're publicly funded, you are basically public property and we should be able to photograph you and talk about you however we like.
00:14:15
Speaker
So some members of the royal family, what they do to, I guess, avoid the negative press and to keep the press at bay is that they're private offices that contain the press office for each individual member of the royal family.
00:14:29
Speaker
So, for example, William and Kate will have a press officer, like Harry and Meghan will have a press officer, King Charles and Camilla will have a press officer.
00:14:36
Speaker
And they will all work independently.
00:14:38
Speaker
And so, you know, what happens is, you know, let's say the press officer for William and Kate will say, okay, so you're going to print this bad story about us, but I will give you this story about Harry and Meghan that you can print instead if you take out the bad story about us.
00:14:55
Speaker
And they basically have this quite toxic bargaining relationship with the press where they'll basically like throw each other under the bus just to make themselves look better.
00:15:05
Speaker
And if we look at the timeline of when the press really, really, really started to go for Meghan...
00:15:12
Speaker
It was around the time that there were rumours that William had cheated on Kate with one of her best friends.
00:15:19
Speaker
And it was around the time that Prince Andrew's dealings with Epstein were starting to get more media coverage because more and more victims were coming out.
00:15:27
Speaker
And so this is what Harry was saying was that, you know, this sort of, you know, bargaining exists.
00:15:31
Speaker
And actually after the documentary aired, several of the royal correspondents came out and said that a lot of the briefings that we received about Harry and Meghan that were negative came from Kensington Palace.
00:15:42
Speaker
Now Kensington Palace is the office of Will and Kate.
00:15:46
Speaker
Unsurprising.
00:15:46
Speaker
I mean, I think the second half of the documentary all but points the finger at William without completely saying anything too explicit.
00:15:54
Speaker
Because I feel like because those are her in-laws, Meghan's in-laws, and then Harry's blood family, that they're reluctant to completely eviscerate and throw them under the bus in the same manner in which they treat them with a lot more care than Will and Kate, or at least William, treats Meghan and Harry as far as what they're willing to do in the press situation.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:16:13
Speaker
So anyway, so back to the timeline.
00:16:16
Speaker
So as Harry and Meghan, they get engaged, the engagement planning is going, and the palace see what Samantha Markle is doing, that she's going around basically bad-mouthing, you know, Meghan.
00:16:28
Speaker
And also her father.
00:16:29
Speaker
And her father as well.
00:16:30
Speaker
So her father was caught selling information and pictures to the press.
00:16:35
Speaker
So this is part of the reason why he wasn't there to walk her down the aisle and King Charles stepped in instead.
00:16:40
Speaker
But what was really quite shady of the Royal PR firm was that
00:16:45
Speaker
Their private secretary at the time, which they shared with Will and Kate because the households were conjoined at the time, that Jason, who we'll get to in a bit because he's done further scrotery as well, he basically advised Megan to not invite any of her family to explain why Samantha Markle wouldn't be invited.
00:17:03
Speaker
And they basically said, it will look bad if you invite Ashley and Noel, who are your nieces.
00:17:08
Speaker
So the best thing to do would be just to not invite anybody from your side of the family to the wedding.
00:17:12
Speaker
And obviously Megan was devastated, but, you know, she followed the advice.
00:17:16
Speaker
And it was around that time as well that the palace allowed the press to believe that Meghan had just cut off her family when that wasn't the case.
00:17:24
Speaker
They basically told her to do something.
00:17:26
Speaker
She did it and then didn't say anything when she got reviled for it in the press, which was really, really bad.
00:17:32
Speaker
Yeah, horrible.
00:17:33
Speaker
That's really, really shady.
00:17:34
Speaker
Like they didn't put out a statement to say, no, this is the situation or to say like, we stand by them.
00:17:40
Speaker
And the reason why she got all that stick was because she took their advice.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:43
Speaker
And I felt especially bad watching the documentary for Samantha Markle's daughters because I felt so bad for Ashley.
00:17:50
Speaker
Because imagine like your mother is just publicly embarrassing you on an international stage, right?
00:17:55
Speaker
Like the mother that abused you at that, right?
00:17:58
Speaker
So poorly that other family members had to step in and take you out of that situation.
00:18:02
Speaker
It's like she's still continuing that type of public, like unhinged behavior.
00:18:06
Speaker
Like it's just...
00:18:07
Speaker
It's embarrassing.
00:18:08
Speaker
You could tell that like she was really triggered by the whole situation and to be then to be cut off by the one family member that she had grown close to because of her mother's behavior, as well as like just horrible politics of the royal family.
00:18:20
Speaker
I could feel like her emotional devastation in that moment.
00:18:23
Speaker
And it just felt it felt bad to watch.
00:18:25
Speaker
I mean, so yeah, that was like really, really shitty.
00:18:28
Speaker
So then they get married, bells and whistles.
00:18:31
Speaker
And
Meghan's Advocacy vs. Royal Protocols
00:18:32
Speaker
a lot of the, I guess, some of the anger towards Meghan in the UK comes from the fact from like, you know, well, if she doesn't like the UK, then why does she have that big wedding?
00:18:40
Speaker
And it's like, she couldn't have exactly had a private wedding.
00:18:43
Speaker
Like, because Harry was saying that,
00:18:45
Speaker
I'm Diana's boy.
00:18:46
Speaker
Like everybody wants to see me get married.
00:18:48
Speaker
Even if they'd wanted a private wedding, there's no way Prince Harry could have had an intimate private wedding.
00:18:54
Speaker
It had to be a big spectacle that, you know, the world was looking at.
00:18:58
Speaker
Do you know what I mean?
00:18:59
Speaker
It wasn't an option for them.
00:19:00
Speaker
And it's like, to be honest, like, why would you want a wedding where you've got thousands of people just staring at you?
00:19:06
Speaker
Like, and it's being broadcast around the world.
00:19:09
Speaker
Like,
00:19:10
Speaker
I think that most brides can be quite nervous and self-conscious on the day.
00:19:14
Speaker
So just imagine that, you know, you know that your wedding is going to be broadcast to like millions of people who, and let's face it, who are ultimately waiting for you to trip up so they can gossip, basically.
00:19:25
Speaker
So anyway, they get married and then they enter a sort of honeymoon period with the British press where, you know, Meghan is seen as radical, as different.
00:19:34
Speaker
She's biracial.
00:19:35
Speaker
She's outspoken.
00:19:37
Speaker
She talks about a time when the Fab Four, as they were called, so, you know, Harry and Meghan, William and Kate, they went to this forum and, you know, Meghan was talking about the Me Too movement.
00:19:47
Speaker
And Meghan genuinely didn't know that the royal family don't speak about things like the Me Too movement.
00:19:52
Speaker
Exactly.
00:19:54
Speaker
Probably because a lot of them are predators, but also in the UK, the royal family just don't comment on politics at all.
00:20:01
Speaker
That's partly to do with convention, because even if they make a comment about anything, it can be seen as being politically partisan.
00:20:08
Speaker
So I was reading about Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1936, I think.
00:20:14
Speaker
When he was king, he went on a tour of the Welsh mines, and he was so...
00:20:19
Speaker
you know, taken aback by the poverty and, you know, what he saw, he was like, he just said to himself, something has to be done about this.
00:20:26
Speaker
And his ministers interpreted that as he was going to get politically involved.
00:20:30
Speaker
And they got really nervous because it was like, the monarch can't be seen to have any opinion on anything, like really.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:37
Speaker
That's another, I think, American cultural nuance that was just a misunderstanding between the two cultures, meaning in America versus in the British monarchy.
00:20:49
Speaker
And that like the entire charity and foundation is basically a farce for them to have like good PR and not to actually affect any type of meaningful change versus like Megan thinking it was actually for its stated purpose.
00:21:03
Speaker
Right.
00:21:04
Speaker
So like, you know what I mean?
00:21:05
Speaker
Like you could see how someone who didn't grow up in the UK would totally make that mistake and think like, oh, okay, this is the platform where I can choose an advocacy issue that's like near and dear to me.
00:21:15
Speaker
And I could talk about it publicly.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:17
Speaker
Prior to her even meeting Carrie, she was talking about like racism.
00:21:21
Speaker
Like she did a campaign about that.
00:21:23
Speaker
She was talking about the Me Too movement, women's empowerment.
00:21:26
Speaker
And she spoke about Brexit as well.
00:21:27
Speaker
Like on her blog, she said that Brexit was a bad idea.
00:21:31
Speaker
So that's what I'm saying.
00:21:32
Speaker
Like, that's another time where the British press eviscerated her for something that I think Americans would, any American who was in that situation would have probably made that mistake if they were in any way politically minded, because our political leaders do make comments.
00:21:46
Speaker
Apart from maybe it will be like a similar thing where a member of the Supreme Court comments on like a policy that was passed because they're supposed to be at least outwardly impartial.
00:21:56
Speaker
Do you know what I mean?
00:21:57
Speaker
It wasn't that the press eviscerated her for it because after she said that she was seen as different, that she's outspoken, she's a feminist, she's this, she's that.
00:22:05
Speaker
But it was probably within the royal family, you know, they were like, you can't say that.
00:22:09
Speaker
And it's not even like you have to give an opinion.
00:22:11
Speaker
So Edward VIII saying something must be done, that's not really an opinion, but he literally just said something and that was an issue.
00:22:18
Speaker
And they can't do that, at least not in public.
00:22:20
Speaker
So even when, you know, Scotland was having a referendum, someone asked Queen Elizabeth II about it and all she could say was, I just hope the people of Scotland think very carefully about it.
00:22:29
Speaker
In private, she was probably hoping that Scotland wouldn't vote for independence, but she could never say that in public.
00:22:35
Speaker
So I'm looking at the Royal Foundation mission statement and it quite literally says, the Royal Foundation mobilizes leaders, businesses and people so that together we can address society's greatest challenges, led by the prince and princess of Wales.
00:22:48
Speaker
So you know what I mean?
00:22:49
Speaker
That's what they're saying they're about.
00:22:50
Speaker
It's quite wishy-washy though, because they don't get involved in anything political, like anything to do with politics.
00:22:57
Speaker
They just don't comment on because it's just not convention for them to do that.
00:23:01
Speaker
It used to be...
00:23:03
Speaker
It says impact.
00:23:04
Speaker
Like they have an impact statement, right?
00:23:06
Speaker
So they have all these things on the website.
00:23:08
Speaker
So it quite literally says on the Royal Foundation website, impact.
00:23:11
Speaker
We focus on issues that matter to our principles and to society where the Royal Foundation can have a significant impact.
00:23:16
Speaker
So like they kind of try to put the image out there that they are trying to be involved in society's issues without actually being involved in society's issues.
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:23:27
Speaker
But Megan probably wasn't to know that and maybe Harry didn't tell her.
00:23:31
Speaker
But anyway, what's up, Queens?
00:23:34
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:24:37
Speaker
Now back to the show.
00:24:39
Speaker
So they have a bit of a honeymoon period, to be fair.
Royal Jealousy & Public Perception
00:24:42
Speaker
The president wasn't always gunning for Meghan, but then things change quite dramatically when Harry and Meghan go on their first solo tour of Australia.
00:24:51
Speaker
And we sort of got hints of this when, on her first solo engagement with the Queen to Cheshire, I'm surprised they didn't air this, actually, but probably out of respect for Queen Elizabeth II.
00:25:02
Speaker
So Meghan went with Queen Elizabeth II to Cheshire to do a meet and greet and a walkabout, which is where they basically greet members of the public.
00:25:09
Speaker
And the public absolutely loved Meghan to the point where somebody was like to Queen Elizabeth, oh, can you give these flowers to Meghan?
00:25:17
Speaker
And I remember seeing the Queen awkwardly just gesturing her lady and waiting saying, take the flowers.
00:25:21
Speaker
Like, can you imagine like asking the Queen of England, can you pass these flowers to like a junior royal?
00:25:27
Speaker
And I was like, oh, so then Harry and Meghan go to Australia and that tour was an overwhelming success for them.
00:25:33
Speaker
Like they were so, so popular, so well loved.
00:25:37
Speaker
And, you know, they were so, so well received.
00:25:40
Speaker
And, you know, William and Kate, they had never received such reception anywhere they went.
00:25:45
Speaker
And this is when I think the royal family started to panic and think, wait, hang on a minute.
00:25:48
Speaker
We could have, I'm not going to say that Meghan is like Diana, but that similar dynamic where the royal family weren't expecting Diana to be more popular than Charles to the point where when people are meeting Charles, the first thing they'd say was, oh, where's your wife?
00:26:02
Speaker
And look visibly like disappointed when she wasn't there.
00:26:07
Speaker
And if you can't see the misogyny in that, I don't know what to say, right?
00:26:11
Speaker
They are so threatened by a woman having any type of political influence, right?
00:26:18
Speaker
And even if it's like positive.
00:26:20
Speaker
Or independent pull.
00:26:21
Speaker
Like, this is why, like, in pictures of Charles and Diana, because they were the same height.
00:26:26
Speaker
Diana was quite a tall woman.
00:26:27
Speaker
I mean, but they took the picture so that Diana would look shorter than Charles, but they were the same height.
00:26:32
Speaker
It's petty stuff like that.
00:26:33
Speaker
And even Diana said, like, once I became more popular, people in the royal family started getting jealous because, you know, when the person who was meant to be the spotlight...
00:26:43
Speaker
Charles as Prince of Wales or William and Kate, who are the next Prince and Princess of Wales, you know, when they're being upstaged by junior royals, they don't like that.
00:26:51
Speaker
If you look at the way, you know, Kate's image is managed as well, you see that they basically managed her down to the point where, you know, she couldn't possibly ever upstage William.
00:27:01
Speaker
And I remember seeing an article, you know, where, because like Kate likes to run, like she's an avid runner, she's really active and
00:27:08
Speaker
And she went on a public appearance with William where they had to basically run like a hundred meters.
00:27:13
Speaker
And you know, Kate is an experienced runner and you could see Kate in this video.
00:27:17
Speaker
She was deliberately like, you know, being slow just to not make William look bad.
00:27:24
Speaker
And she was just running like she didn't know how to run.
00:27:27
Speaker
But she's almost like a seasoned runner.
00:27:29
Speaker
She runs all the time.
00:27:30
Speaker
They basically managed Kate down to not upstage William in the way that Diana upstaged Charles.
00:27:35
Speaker
I mean, Harry was always quite a popular member of the royal family in the sense that he was the one that was seen as the most relatable.
00:27:42
Speaker
Obviously, I think in part because of his wild child stage where he was caught doing coke or saying racist stuff or, you know, doing strip poker.
00:27:50
Speaker
Or donning a Nazi uniform.
00:27:53
Speaker
I mean, but the thing is with that is that, you know, one thing that I will give like Harry massive credit for is that he's the only member of the royal family who held his hands up and said, yeah, that was shit.
00:28:02
Speaker
And he actually went to South Africa to do better, to understand it, you know, racism better.
00:28:09
Speaker
And the press never reported that.
00:28:10
Speaker
They never said that he spent a lot of time in South Africa, you know, meeting black people, just trying to be better.
00:28:17
Speaker
Like he's the only member of the royal family who's done that.
00:28:20
Speaker
And even more so, I think what came across to me in the documentary is that the time he spent enlisted actually really affected him and that he actually found genuine brotherhood and family and camaraderie in his fellow soldiers.
00:28:32
Speaker
Because he was in the military for like 10 years, right?
00:28:35
Speaker
So having that much exposure and like an arm-to-arm exposure with regular people
00:28:40
Speaker
probably opened his eyes to a lot of the way that society operates outside of the royal family, how the royal family is viewed, and then like the struggles of regular people in a way that I don't think the rest of the royals would have ever been exposed to.
00:28:53
Speaker
So it's very clear that, like he did the work, right?
00:28:56
Speaker
He clearly knows he screwed the pooch.
00:28:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:59
Speaker
I mean, I don't even know what to say.
00:29:00
Speaker
Like, it's just objectively awful and completely fucked up to, like, be wearing a Nazi uniform, especially as a part of the monarchy.
00:29:07
Speaker
But, you know, that was probably, like, his teenage edgelord phase.
00:29:09
Speaker
And him as a 30-plus-year-old man now is, like... Actually, how old is he?
00:29:13
Speaker
He's in his 40s?
00:29:14
Speaker
No, he's younger than Meghan, right?
00:29:15
Speaker
So he's, like, in his... He must be late 30s.
00:29:18
Speaker
He's late 30s.
00:29:19
Speaker
Yeah, he's in his late 30s.
00:29:20
Speaker
So, like, him now...
00:29:22
Speaker
As an adult, like trying to work on his own self-awareness and work on himself, that was very cleared throughout the documentary, which I was actually surprised at because I don't know what I thought about Harry before, but I thought he was a little dumb.
00:29:35
Speaker
And I don't mean that like in a mean way.
00:29:37
Speaker
I just thought he was just like a person who is...
00:29:40
Speaker
he'd be a lot more ignorant than he came across.
00:29:43
Speaker
He seemed to understand that, you know, yeah, I didn't get this racism thing before, but I'm doing the work now to try and get it.
Harry's Awareness of Change Needed
00:29:50
Speaker
And the fact that he was basically willing to cut off his family because of the racist treatment that his wife is receiving, I think that, you know, that act itself is quite high value to take a stand against your family, especially a family like the Windsors, who are very, very powerful, because not many people are
00:30:08
Speaker
A lot of people can't even cut off a friend who they know holds racist views.
00:30:12
Speaker
They'll just say like, okay, we'll just not talk about that because I don't want to hear it because hearing that you're racist makes me feel uncomfortable, but I don't want to cut you off.
00:30:20
Speaker
Do you know what I mean?
00:30:22
Speaker
I think he's also keenly aware of the optics in a way that the royal family is not because he's been around regular people that he now sees this shift in public consciousness.
00:30:31
Speaker
and that you can't keep doing things the old way when like the pre-internet age and the pre like global consciousness age where people are interconnected from different countries.
00:30:41
Speaker
And you're starting to see the like the anti-commonwealth sentiment bubble up, but that was probably always there.
00:30:46
Speaker
And Harry is aware of it.
00:30:47
Speaker
So I'm not even sure it's like, so I give him credit for protecting his wife, trying to combat, you know, the racist texts against her as well as like
00:30:55
Speaker
talking about aspects of systemic racism.
00:30:57
Speaker
But I also think he saw where the wind was blowing in a way that the institution does not.
00:31:02
Speaker
And so he's trying to get ahead of it politically.
00:31:04
Speaker
And that's why he also thought like, oh, Meghan could be an asset to the royal family because first of all, like she's a person of color, quote, you know, like she's a mixed race person, even though she's very white passing.
00:31:14
Speaker
And so a lot of people felt like, okay, this represents a change in the direction of how the monarchy has traditionally presented itself
00:31:24
Speaker
when dealing with most of the Commonwealth, which is people of color.
00:31:27
Speaker
But so I feel like Harry is the only person who gets that in that family versus like everyone else because they've lived very insular lives has not like grasped that yet.
00:31:38
Speaker
And that's why they're like failing in popularity.
00:31:40
Speaker
And I'm sure that maybe women who've married into it, like Diana seemed to understand it.
00:31:45
Speaker
Obviously she was a white woman, but she seemed to understand the need to give a genuine shit about people who didn't look like you.
00:31:52
Speaker
I'm not sure if Kate and Fergie would, but maybe they've been muzzled as well.
00:31:57
Speaker
I don't know.
00:31:58
Speaker
But this is where I think the sympathy for Meghan and Harry...
00:32:02
Speaker
at least in the UK, begins to drop off a bit, purely because what they're asking for, you know, because Harry was saying, as Rose said, that, oh, Meghan will be a great ambassador for the Commonwealth, so people look like her.
00:32:13
Speaker
And I was like, firstly, you know, most people in the Commonwealth don't look like Meghan.
00:32:17
Speaker
They're a lot darker skinned.
00:32:18
Speaker
But secondly, it's like, ultimately, we are talking about racism in the context of an institution that built its wealth on racism.
00:32:27
Speaker
And whether Harry and Meghan like to admit it or not,
00:32:31
Speaker
Being part of that family means that they have benefited from said racism.
00:32:36
Speaker
And I really agreed with Ash Sarka's comments on this in that there is no way to make the royal family an equal institution when it is built on inequality.
00:32:46
Speaker
This whole idea that there is an heir in the spare
00:32:50
Speaker
You know, that's what keeps the royal family going.
00:32:52
Speaker
The idea that some people are better than others, you know, that is the bedrock of the royal family.
00:32:58
Speaker
So I understand what Harry and Meghan are asking for in the sense that they wanted the racism and the inequality to stop, but equality is not compatible with a monarchy.
00:33:08
Speaker
It just can't
Monarchy vs. American Ideals?
00:33:09
Speaker
be.
00:33:09
Speaker
So this is like my perception as an American.
00:33:12
Speaker
We're not part of the Commonwealth.
00:33:14
Speaker
A lot of our institutions in America were quite literally built on slavery, colonialism, genocide, right?
00:33:21
Speaker
And so how we've reconciled that as Americans is like generally focusing on the idea that we believe in the overarching principles of creating a more perfect union through sticking to the idea of personal freedom and
00:33:36
Speaker
freedom of speech, et cetera, like all of the things that are guaranteed to us in our Bill of Rights.
00:33:40
Speaker
And then by the 13th, 14th, 15th, all the way up to the 19th Amendment, which granted more rights under our citizenship laws.
00:33:46
Speaker
So I think in the eyes of most Americans, we've grappled with and live with the fact that our
00:33:52
Speaker
country in a lot of ways has a very terrible history, but that you can still reform it such that it can work for the people in it.
00:34:02
Speaker
So I would not be surprised if that was like, once again, for people who lived outside of the British monarchy might have that perception, like, is there a way to modernize the institutions, even though it has a really horrible past, such that it works for the people
00:34:17
Speaker
who are in habit, because you can't really go back and like undo colonialism.
00:34:21
Speaker
The question is like, what do you do from here?
00:34:23
Speaker
And it seems like for most of the Commonwealth, it's like, well, fuck being part of the Commonwealth, which is a totally like a totally legitimate response.
00:34:33
Speaker
But all I'm saying is like from the perspective of someone like Meghan, who comes from the United States, once again, I'm just defending her from the British press attacks, because I feel like some of it is like just ignorance on her part.
00:34:43
Speaker
that you could go into an institution and modernize it so that it worked for the people that were within it.
00:34:49
Speaker
Because that's kind of how we operate in the United States.
00:34:53
Speaker
Right, I see.
00:34:54
Speaker
Yeah, so that's another cultural difference is that like... That's how we ended up with a Black president, despite the fact that we're a slave nation far after most nations had abolished slavery.
00:35:05
Speaker
So yeah.
00:35:07
Speaker
But I mean, that's also a testament to your democratic system, right?
00:35:11
Speaker
Is that you can vote in your head of state for the most part, right?
00:35:14
Speaker
You can't vote in a monarchy.
00:35:16
Speaker
And this is why they're allowed to have conventions and traditions that are from the prehistoric ages that are still upheld to this day.
00:35:23
Speaker
Right?
00:35:23
Speaker
So a lot of people don't realise this, for example.
00:35:26
Speaker
So Kate is now Princess of Wales.
00:35:28
Speaker
She is the highest ranking female in the United Kingdom after Queen Camilla, I think, in the order of, like, a precedent.
00:35:37
Speaker
So she comes after Queen Camilla in the formal situations as long as William is there.
00:35:43
Speaker
So if William isn't there, she is seen as of a lower rank than Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, who are Andrews.
00:35:52
Speaker
daughters purely because she wasn't born into the royal family especially for a female who marries into the royal family that's how your rank can shift depending on if your husband is there or not which is quite an archaic like rule anyway yeah there's so many rules here that like i know for a fact the average american has no clue about
00:36:11
Speaker
So it's kind of tough because... Yeah, the curtsying, yeah.
00:36:15
Speaker
Not even just the curtsying, but there's so many of these little rules that you're saying and cultural nuances that this is where I'm saying where Harry should have either stepped in to teach her or prepared her for that reality.
00:36:27
Speaker
And the fact that she was making all these faux pas and then constantly being attacked for it, I can see how that can eventually affect someone's mental health if every move you make...
00:36:36
Speaker
and you're trying your damnedest to try to fit in, is being constantly attacked.
00:36:41
Speaker
And whose fault is that, right?
00:36:43
Speaker
It's to me, I point both fingers at Harry and like you brought in an American bride and you need to defend your American bride.
00:36:50
Speaker
I even said this in episodes past, when you marry cross-culturally, a lot of times it's on your husband to defend you from attacks from that family that's going to act like your wife is not good enough, right?
00:37:01
Speaker
because you're not part of their culture.
00:37:03
Speaker
I said that in like the SK and Raven situation.
00:37:05
Speaker
We're like, I don't like where a guy wants to be with a woman who's not from his culture and then allows everyone from his culture to attack that woman for not being quote enough.
00:37:16
Speaker
To be fair, though, like Harry did begin even before they got married.
00:37:19
Speaker
He started with the statements, calling out the racism, telling them to back off.
00:37:23
Speaker
He started it to try and stick up for her.
00:37:26
Speaker
But the problem is that the palace just didn't back him at all on that.
00:37:31
Speaker
And they were actively part of the briefings against Harry and Meghan.
00:37:35
Speaker
So we then, after the Australia tour, we see a shift and then we start to see the narrative about Meghan changing.
00:37:41
Speaker
So she's duchess difficult.
00:37:42
Speaker
She's a diva.
00:37:43
Speaker
She's demanding.
00:37:44
Speaker
You know, Harry's her lapdog.
00:37:46
Speaker
So I heard that moniker was given to her because she would send emails like really early in the morning.
00:37:51
Speaker
And that's, again, very normal for Americans.
00:37:54
Speaker
It doesn't mean you're like obligated to answer outside of working hours unless you work for a company where you are obligated to answer outside of working hours.
00:38:01
Speaker
But people in the monarchy, it seems like took that as like,
00:38:04
Speaker
she expects people to be up at 5am catering to her every whim, you know?
00:38:10
Speaker
But also it's like, do you not think that other members of the rural family are just as demanding?
00:38:14
Speaker
Like, why the focus on Meghan?
00:38:16
Speaker
There's Prince Andrew's protection officers have come out and said, or his former protection officers have said, he would sneak in, you know, younger women in their 20s and he would be horribly abusive to his staff as well.
00:38:27
Speaker
Like,
00:38:28
Speaker
that he would greet them.
00:38:29
Speaker
You know, they'd say hi.
00:38:30
Speaker
He'd tell them to fuck off.
00:38:32
Speaker
He'd be verbally really abusive.
00:38:34
Speaker
There's Charles.
00:38:35
Speaker
He was so fucking lazy.
00:38:37
Speaker
He dropped a piece of paper in the bin that was next to him.
00:38:40
Speaker
And he called a butler from the other side of the palace to come and get the piece of paper out of the bin.
00:38:45
Speaker
There was that video that was circulating on Twitter where he was really mad at his assistant for not clearing his desk and like not moving the pen and ink well, like three inches to the right.
00:38:53
Speaker
Like...
00:38:57
Speaker
So that's what the royal family males are like, but they're lambasting the women.
00:39:02
Speaker
But yeah, like aggressively gesturing.
00:39:06
Speaker
Looking back with the media here, I don't even know if Meghan was a difficult bot.
00:39:09
Speaker
I've no idea if that's even true.
00:39:11
Speaker
I just want to put a big question mark around that because...
00:39:14
Speaker
Even if it was true, who is leaking that information, right?
00:39:17
Speaker
Because if you apply to be a member of the royal staff, you usually sign an NDA, non-disclosure agreement.
00:39:23
Speaker
So the source must have come from inside the house.
00:39:25
Speaker
And it's like, why would they be leaking that only about Meghan when I'm sure she's not the only demanding member of the royal family?
00:39:31
Speaker
And you don't hear anything about William and Kay, Charles and all these other demanding, like probably equally, if not more so demanding people.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah, agreed.
00:39:40
Speaker
And yeah, I guess it's not even clear that she was what happened.
00:39:44
Speaker
But I'm saying of the reports that are coming out, some of the things that they were saying was evidence of her diva behavior is just very common practice in the US.
00:39:52
Speaker
You know, so that's why I'm just saying that it could be cultural misunderstanding if it is probably a little bit of that.
00:39:58
Speaker
And then William stoking the flames to make it worse in the press.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:04
Speaker
So then in the second half of the series, we begin to see just how fucked up the relationship between the Vora family and the press actually is.
00:40:14
Speaker
And Harry, you know, comes out and says that basically a lot of the negative press around Meghan, it came from the
Media Manipulation & Royal Family
00:40:23
Speaker
palace.
00:40:23
Speaker
They were actively feeding, basically feeding Meghan to the wolves in order to distract from their own, you know, terrible behaviour.
00:40:32
Speaker
And William was at the centre of that or his private office was at the centre of that.
00:40:36
Speaker
I think that Harry was quite careful to say this was William because he was like my brother's office.
00:40:41
Speaker
But the thing is, is that there's no way William couldn't have known what his office was doing.
00:40:46
Speaker
There's just no way.
00:40:48
Speaker
And even if he wasn't aware, like when he saw the negative press about Meghan, again, like none of them said anything about it.
00:40:55
Speaker
that none of them defended her.
00:40:57
Speaker
And what's equally ironic is that William and Kate talk a lot about mental health in the UK, but their sister-in-law's mental health was quite...
00:41:06
Speaker
you know, visibly declining and they said nothing.
00:41:09
Speaker
And so the manipulation, it comes almost to a head where Harry and William released a joint statement, joint in quotation marks, basically saying that there's no fighting, there's no racism, you know, everything is fine.
00:41:24
Speaker
And then Harry basically says, but I never saw the statement.
00:41:28
Speaker
They just put my name on it and I knew nothing about it.
00:41:32
Speaker
And furthermore, leaks their plans to depart from the monarchy, which he said wasn't even finalized and was just like a bunch of suggested roles that they could play.
00:41:41
Speaker
And then either Prince Charles or Prince William leaked that to the press pretty deliberately, like force their hand and make it seem like, oh, they're going to depart for sure.
00:41:50
Speaker
And so then like they were forced into a corner.
00:41:53
Speaker
After telling Meghan to put it in writing, by the way, after she said she just wanted to discuss it.
00:41:57
Speaker
So that was very clearly a deliberate manipulation on Prince Charles's part to put something in writing to then have that go out to the press to eat them alive.
00:42:05
Speaker
To have it as source material, yeah.
00:42:07
Speaker
And so Harry then, you know, there's this meeting between Queen Elizabeth, Charles and William and Harry about the proposed Megxit.
00:42:18
Speaker
And, you know, what Harry and, you know, Meghan originally wanted was that they still wanted to promote the Queen and the Commonwealth around the country, just not in the UK because of the press.
00:42:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:28
Speaker
And he thought that option was on the table.
00:42:31
Speaker
But when he got there, he quickly realised that the outcome had been decided and that it was either they were all in and they had to stay in the UK or they should leave entirely.
00:42:41
Speaker
And then William just starts screaming at Harry.
00:42:44
Speaker
The Queen doesn't say anything.
00:42:46
Speaker
Charles doesn't really say anything.
00:42:47
Speaker
And actually, Charles was chatting shit and telling lies in that meeting, according to Harry.
00:42:52
Speaker
And this was when Harry realised they just have no option.
00:42:55
Speaker
What I think was quite callous about the royal family's reaction was that they stripped Harry and Meghan of the protection three weeks before they
Decision to Leave Royal Family
00:43:06
Speaker
were due to leave.
00:43:06
Speaker
And I think they did that to try and get them to stay.
00:43:09
Speaker
Oh, for sure.
00:43:11
Speaker
Because they hoped that Harry would say, oh shit, we're not going to have protection, so we might as well stay here.
00:43:15
Speaker
Because we'll have protection here.
00:43:17
Speaker
It was just a completely abusive tactic to get them to stay in an environment that was very hostile to them.
00:43:23
Speaker
And in an environment where the royal family weren't willing to help them out.
00:43:26
Speaker
So this is where Tyler Perry comes in, comes like a knight in shining armour and offers them his house in L.A.
00:43:37
Speaker
Extra random, by the way, because we were all like Tyler Perry of all people, but he has a compound.
00:43:42
Speaker
He's like a large security gated compound.
00:43:45
Speaker
So I guess he did have the capacity to take them into a place that would be protective of them.
00:43:49
Speaker
But it is sort of random because they didn't know each other.
00:43:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, like he sent Megan a letter before her wedding, basically saying, I'm praying for you that it works out.
00:43:58
Speaker
And then the first time that Megan and Tyler spoke on the phone was two years later when she basically had a breakdown and was saying basically how difficult it was.
00:44:07
Speaker
And then he was like, how can I help you?
00:44:09
Speaker
So he offered them his compound with security for like three months to let them settle in the US.
00:44:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:14
Speaker
And that was what they did.
00:44:16
Speaker
But yeah, Tyler Perry did them a solid on that one.
00:44:20
Speaker
So yeah, they moved to the US and we then see footage of Harry and Meghan settling in.
00:44:27
Speaker
We hear from her mum.
00:44:28
Speaker
And then it comes out that Meghan wants to sue the Daily Mail and by extension their parent company for publishing a private letter that she wrote to her dad.
00:44:39
Speaker
Basically a letter that she wrote, again, on the advice of the palace PR firm.
00:44:44
Speaker
that the Royal Mail had then published.
00:44:47
Speaker
And what was really quite damning, you know, for William especially, was that it came out that Jason, who is currently, I think he's a CEO or chair of, of like one of, you know, William and Kate's like main foundations, I think it's called Earthshot Foundation, who,
00:45:03
Speaker
And at the time, William and Kate's press officer, Jason, he basically released a statement in support of the Daily Mail.
00:45:11
Speaker
So you have, you know, somebody who was intimately connected to William and Kate, basically releasing a statement that nobody asked him for in support of the Daily Mail, like knowing that Meghan was suing them.
00:45:25
Speaker
So they're just trying to sabotage Harry and Meghan at every opportunity.
00:45:29
Speaker
Yeah, basically.
00:45:30
Speaker
I know there's a lot of literature out there about dynamics and narcissistic families, but by birthright, you know, William is the golden child and then Harry is like the perpetual scapegoat.
00:45:41
Speaker
You can just kind of see like he's just used to being able to abuse his brother at will, right?
00:45:46
Speaker
Well, yeah, because the firm will back him.
00:45:48
Speaker
If there was a rife between, you know, William and Harry, and I think, you know, Harry grew up knowing this, they will always side with William.
00:45:54
Speaker
It's like a non-starter.
00:45:56
Speaker
So it's just odd because, I mean, we talk about these dynamics as like horribly toxic and unhealthy and having, you know, near crushing effects on the scapegoat's mental health when they're constantly being...
00:46:09
Speaker
the target of familial abuse because of them not being whatever the golden child standard is set.
00:46:16
Speaker
And so just seeing that play out in this family on an international stage, and then it's just kind of
Harry's Protective Nature
00:46:22
Speaker
wild.
00:46:22
Speaker
I don't understand how people don't have as much sympathy.
00:46:25
Speaker
I know they're royals and they're rich and they have a lot of connections and wealth, but just from a human standpoint...
00:46:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's not nice to constantly know that you're second fiddle.
00:46:35
Speaker
And then like, not only that, that the media that arguably caused your mother's tragic death, and even if she hadn't died, they were certainly causing her to be suicidal and have bulimia.
00:46:47
Speaker
And he witnessed his entire life the abuse of his mother by the press to the point where she was bulimic and suicidal.
00:46:54
Speaker
Finally, this kid grows up, starts to do the self-work on his own mental health, and then also a more social awareness, finds a wife, despite all of the nastiness from the press that he knew was going to come her direction and scare most women away.
00:47:10
Speaker
And then...
00:47:12
Speaker
Have them try those same attacks on her, trying to bully her to the point of suicide, in which Megan said that she was frequently suicidal while in the house because of like how restrictive everything was, not being able to talk to people without, you know, everything being very controlled.
00:47:25
Speaker
And she was not able to see a mental health representative because they didn't want that out in the press.
00:47:29
Speaker
And she's probably suffering from postpartum because she just had a baby.
00:47:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:33
Speaker
So to have all that happen and then like, you know, he's in the position now to maybe right some wrongs.
00:47:39
Speaker
Like I almost like feel for him, you know, like I feel a sense of sympathy because I get like, yeah, he's finally trying to stand up against the abuse that's been happening to him his whole life and which arguably killed his mother.
Rift Between Harry & William
00:47:50
Speaker
And then now his brother's like re-perpetuating that cycle against his wife.
00:47:54
Speaker
Like that's a huge betrayal.
00:47:55
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:47:56
Speaker
And that's what Harry said was that it wasn't even the press that was the worst part.
00:48:00
Speaker
It's just the fact that
00:48:02
Speaker
that William was either behind it or knew of it and did nothing, especially knowing, you know, what Diana went through and he's basically doing the same bullshit against Harry and his family.
00:48:14
Speaker
That's what he said is the most painful part.
00:48:16
Speaker
And it would be painful.
00:48:17
Speaker
Like, and especially like William and Harry growing up, even when they...
00:48:21
Speaker
were young men.
00:48:22
Speaker
Like, they were so, so tight.
00:48:23
Speaker
You could tell they were really, really close.
00:48:25
Speaker
And I'm guessing that losing their mum in such a way probably brought them a lot closer.
00:48:31
Speaker
And even up until, I think, about 2015, like, Harry, you know, William and Kate, they were, like...
00:48:36
Speaker
a threesome, like they shared a household and they were really, really close.
00:48:41
Speaker
And it is really, really sad just to see just the distance between them now, the distance that just seems to be getting bigger and bigger because I don't see William ever admitting that what he did was just totally fucked up.
00:48:52
Speaker
The palace don't issue apologies like that.
00:48:55
Speaker
Even Diana, they've not really apologised for how they treated her.
Media Misogyny & Social Media Impact
00:48:58
Speaker
I know.
00:48:58
Speaker
That's what's so wild about it is like how now she's deified because she died, but they can't see the same cycle of abuse that they're perpetuating on the women of that family.
00:49:08
Speaker
So yeah, I think this episode is going to be a two-parter episode purely because we have a lot more to get through, especially in terms of the misogyny and the racism, both from the press and from individuals, particularly on social media, who are still going in on Meghan.
00:49:23
Speaker
But that will definitely be a topic for another day because unfortunately, Meghan is not the only victim of this.
00:49:28
Speaker
It's happened earlier this year to Amber Heard.
00:49:31
Speaker
It's happening to Meghan Thee Stallion.
00:49:33
Speaker
It's just, I think there isn't anything that unites MRAs and so-called feminists more, you know, than a social media witch hunt against another woman.
00:49:42
Speaker
And that is just really sad.
00:49:44
Speaker
And I don't know what to call these women.
00:49:46
Speaker
I know everybody gets mad when I call them femcells, but let's come up with a term for these, like, basically the Depford wife demographic or, like, the women that still defend R. Kelly.
00:49:57
Speaker
Or Johnny Depp.
00:49:58
Speaker
Johnny Depp, yeah.
00:49:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:59
Speaker
of the depth for wise, like, and the odd thing about it is like, so often they're like, they're definitely outside the demographic of women that the man that they're defending with their life would even be interested in.
00:50:09
Speaker
But like, they are the flying monkeys of the patriarchy.
00:50:12
Speaker
And it's ironic when it is feminist.
00:50:15
Speaker
A lot of these, I don't know if they identify as feminist or not.
00:50:17
Speaker
A lot of them are just like, some of them are just conservatives, because I know there's a lot of conservatives that were seething about like, Meghan allegedly complaining, and she's got so much privilege, etc.
00:50:25
Speaker
And like, they were totally jealous that she got to marry a prince and they didn't.
00:50:29
Speaker
I mean, but I thought conservatives in the U.S. would be like anti-monarchy.
00:50:32
Speaker
Like, they're all about the Constitution and democracy and shit.
00:50:36
Speaker
Okay, it doesn't have to make sense as long as it's misogynist.
00:50:39
Speaker
That is basically what it comes to.
00:50:40
Speaker
And then Fox News, like I said, is Rupert Murdoch-owned.
00:50:43
Speaker
So if you understand, like, the Rupert Murdoch press has a narrative, and that's, like, The Sun...
00:50:47
Speaker
Fox News, etc.
00:50:48
Speaker
And they're going to push that narrative whether or not it makes sense.
00:50:51
Speaker
They hate any woman that stands up to any type of patriarchal authority more so than they love America.
00:50:57
Speaker
And this is my rant about conservatives because we've now seen a couple of times where they turn coat on Americans in a way that cannot be explained by anything other than certain aspects of misogyny and racism.
00:51:10
Speaker
When they were suddenly defending Russia because of Donald Trump's involvement.
00:51:13
Speaker
And the Russians hate our fucking guts.
00:51:15
Speaker
They are not...
00:51:17
Speaker
Defending Russia because Donald Trump had ties to Russia is the most insane shit I've ever heard in my life.
00:51:23
Speaker
But like there was a narrative that was going in conservative media with that.
00:51:26
Speaker
And this is another situation.
00:51:28
Speaker
I'm like defending the monarchy as an American is the craziest shit I've ever heard in my life.
00:51:33
Speaker
But again, you can explain it because of racism and misogyny.
00:51:37
Speaker
Like they're just going to take the narrative that supports the patriarchy.
00:51:40
Speaker
That's it.
00:51:41
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, I definitely want to talk about that because I don't think it's actually spoken about anywhere near enough that the damage that these groups of women can do to the women they're targeting and also indirectly to other women as well.
00:51:56
Speaker
So yeah, that will be in part two of this episode, you know, where we'll go into that.
00:52:00
Speaker
Yes.
00:52:01
Speaker
So stay tuned for further discussion.
00:52:04
Speaker
That's our show.
Closing Remarks
00:52:05
Speaker
Check us out on the website, thefemaledatingstrategy.com, as well as our Patreon, patreon.com forward slash thefemaledatingstrategy, where you can get weekly bonus content and submit a roast to grow and talk to us about this episode on our Discord and do our twice a month war room.
00:52:21
Speaker
Also check us out on Twitter at femdatstrat and on our Instagram at underscore the female dating strategy.
00:52:27
Speaker
Thanks for listening, queens.
00:52:28
Speaker
And for all you royalists out there, get a democracy.
00:52:30
Speaker
Die mad.
00:52:31
Speaker
Die mad.