Harry and Meghan. - This is NOT the Andrew Tate Thread.

[SeanF]

10 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Luckily all these false rumours will addressed in her upcoming slate of Netflix shows which will set the record straight:

2023. Meghan: How I cured cancer

2024. Meghan: World Peace my lasting gift to the world 

2025: Blameless - An Autobiography

2026: The Queen of our Hearts

2027: Ghandi, Mother Theresa and Me. A history of modern day saints 

2028: Meghan Markle: A series of Fabricated Events.

Hopefully the Netflix contract holds out long enough that we get to see all of those riveting pieces of entertainment 

Don’t forget the “flight to freedom” to a billionaire’s mansion, and the South Africans dancing in the streets.

[Heartofice]

8 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Interesting.  He now says the royal family is not racist, and further, that they never said this.  I thought they just got an award from a 2nd tier Kennedy for combatting racism in the royal family.  Maybe I'm mistaken.

It's pure gaslighting at this point, though I do think there is a bit of tension between Meghan and Harry on the issue. In the Oprah interview it's Meghan who wants to make these claims about what was said about Archie's skin colour, whereas Harry was always 'I'm not ever going to say what was said in public'. Him trying to row it all back now and just blame the press instead just doesn't work, every thing said in the Oprah interview was an allegation of racism, even if it was done with a wink and a nudge (choice of words is very careful you will notice and Oprah never challenges any of it)

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Him trying to row it all back now and just blame the press instead just doesn't work, every thing said in the Oprah interview was an allegation of racism,

He didn’t declare anyone racist.

.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

even if it was done with a wink and a nudge

 

It must be so exhausting in trying to find malicious in everything the couple does.

Anyway, do you still maintain he’s as bad as a literal child-rapist?

 

[JoannaL]

I do not get Harrys point of view.

You do not like how things are done in the royal family? Your wife suffers? then you leave. Good for you. Everyone could happily go on now on their own.

but then you throw malicious attacks against your father and brother? What exactly for? You have a great confy life in California with wife and children and a lot of money. Why shooting at your brother and father ,who you say you love, and who cannot just pack up and leave, like you did, but have to go on (and also have to take the attacs in silence)? Why make their life harder?

It is wrong from a loving relative point of view.

But if you believe in the monarchy, and Harry says he does, then it is also morally wrong because then it is also his duty to protect his father and brother, it is his duty to be the wingman and spare , which he so whines about.

you can not be a royal prince and a private person at the same time. He just should decide and then go on.

[Cas Stark]

Harry being almost offended now at the idea his family is racist is quite strange. 

It's true they never used the word racist, but unless he's like Sleeping Beauty and has been under a spell since the Oprah interview, he knows that the headlines, stories, experts, pundits, bloggers, twitterati have been accusing his family of racism since that interview.  I'm sure they would have appreciated it if he had thrown some water on the fire back in 2020 with a statement about racism v. unconscious bias.

[Gaston de Foix]

22 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

I do not get Harrys point of view.

You do not like how things are done in the royal family? Your wife suffers? then you leave. Good for you. Everyone could happily go on now on their own.

but then you throw malicious attacks against your father and brother? What exactly for? You have a great confy life in California with wife and children and a lot of money. Why shooting at your brother and father ,who you say you love, and who cannot just pack up and leave, like you did, but have to go on (and also have to take the attacs in silence)? Why make their life harder?

It is wrong from a loving relative point of view.

But if you believe in the monarchy, and Harry says he does, then it is also morally wrong because then it is also his duty to protect his father and brother, it is his duty to be the wingman and spare , which he so whines about.

you can not be a royal prince and a private person at the same time. He just should decide and then go on.

It's impossible to get his point of view without recognizing (1) leaving the royal family without financial independence is a pyrrhic and short-term victory at best; (2) the responsibility to be a wingman and spare is fundamentally in conflict with the principle of equality between sons and siblings. 

Harry wanted private and public recognition of his equality in order to perform his role as wingman and spare without grudge or complaint.  His job as "spare" is done anyway now William has 3 kids. 

He felt he never got that recognition or treatment and he wanted to secure his financial independence.  Sad to say, his only marketable asset is his status as a Prince of the United Kingdom.  So he achieved both freedom and revenge by selling his story.  He feels he gave them many opportunities to treat him fairly, and meet his demands, and they didn't.  Charles is a cheapskate, William is an equally entitled prick, and the Royal family is always concerned with precedent and not with the problem at hand.  

The difference between him and Princess Mako is she wants to be a private citizen.  Harry doesn't want that.  He and Megan want to be celebrities/public figures/ a split between Brangelina and Barack & Michelle.  They have universal name recognition and they are going to keep marketing that.  15-20 years from now, Harry will either be divorced or selling diet supplements on the shopping channel.  

[Heartofice]

One of the difficulties Harry has seemingly had is getting his head around the fact that he is special, and not special. He was born into a world of privilege, money and status and is treated like a demi-god by the people he meets, but at the same time he is also literally a 'Spare', with no real role or purpose in life. 

Its baffling that he complains that William gets better treatment than him or that he and is family are not given the same level of support. That is the whole point, of course you aren't, you are literally just a hanger on, you don't do anything. It's embarrassing for them to complain about these things. 

Then at the same time, because of his status and privilege he hasn't really managed to negotiate how to behave when you are in that position. It's much harder to get sympathy for all his complaints when he himself has been given a much better life than most people on the planet, and he is moaning about not getting enough money or respect. It is also very hard to take him seriously when he wants to become a social justice warrior and speak on issues he has no real knowledge on, it really stinks of elite guilt washing. 

It also occurs to me that differing opinions on Meghan might be connected to whether you see them as punching up or down in this scenario. I think if you consult your intersectional chart of oppression Meghan somehow comes across as the oppressed, despite being wealthy, high status and privileged. If you are so inclined, the chart would tell you that she would always been the victim here and could never be in any way responsible what happens to her. If however the chart is meaningless to you then you will see that she is just as responsible for her situation as others. 

[DanteGabriel]

On 1/7/2023 at 8:31 PM, Zorral said:

Maybe not shocking considering that somebody dragged Meghan into the Andrew Tate sex criminal thread and thus it got entirely derailed starting this one? /cdn-cgi/mirage/05efe95a8b659bcfac3e504f985f8648f0f677814edf5a65015b98f759cc3a8d/1280/https://asoiaf.westeros.org/uploads/emoticons/default_lol.gif

I suppose I should take credit/blame for this, by mentioning The Prince Who Was Un-Promised as a male role model, mostly to bait the crowd that hates Markle so much. Even I am surprised by how much it derailed that thread and spawned its own rabid reaction thread. It's like dropping a stone in the river and then watching a dam burst a few miles down.

[Gaston de Foix]

11 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

One of the difficulties Harry has seemingly had is getting his head around the fact that he is special, and not special. He was born into a world of privilege, money and status and is treated like a demi-god by the people he meets, but at the same time he is also literally a 'Spare', with no real role or purpose in life. 

Its baffling that he complains that William gets better treatment than him or that he and is family are not given the same level of support. That is the whole point, of course you aren't, you are literally just a hanger on, you don't do anything. It's embarrassing for them to complain about these things. 

Then at the same time, because of his status and privilege he hasn't really managed to negotiate how to behave when you are in that position. It's much harder to get sympathy for all his complaints when he himself has been given a much better life than most people on the planet, and he is moaning about not getting enough money or respect. It is also very hard to take him seriously when he wants to become a social justice warrior and speak on issues he has no real knowledge on, it really stinks of elite guilt washing. 

It also occurs to me that differing opinions on Meghan might be connected to whether you see them as punching up or down in this scenario. I think if you consult your intersectional chart of oppression Meghan somehow comes across as the oppressed, despite being wealthy, high status and privileged. If you are so inclined, the chart would tell you that she would always been the victim here and could never be in any way responsible what happens to her. If however the chart is meaningless to you then you will see that she is just as responsible for her situation as others. 

It seems to me that you are bringing a lot of political opinions into what is essentially a correct analysis.  Harry is a hanger-on, but of course so is William and so is Charles: the entire monarchy is about as useful to the modern world as the appendix is to the human body.  The point is that the institution of the monarchy ascribes a function for Charles/William and not for Harry (any longer anyway).  And so he gets only those perks of being a royal prince that his father/brother graciously give him.  It's an objectively ridiculous system.  Imagine being disinherited by your parents because you are younger in favor of your elder brother.  How happy would you be? 

His views on social justice are neither here nor there.  

[Heartofice]

Just now, Gaston de Foix said:

It seems to me that you are bringing a lot of political opinions into what is essentially a correct analysis.  Harry is a hanger-on, but of course so is William and so is Charles: the entire monarchy is about as useful to the modern world as the appendix is to the human body.  The point is that the institution of the monarchy ascribes a function for Charles/William and not for Harry (any longer anyway).  And so he gets only those perks of being a royal prince that his father/brother graciously give him.  It's an objectively ridiculous system.  Imagine being disinherited by your parents because you are younger in favor of your elder brother.  How happy would you be? 

The whole point of being a royal, in fact the struggle that almost all royal members have is accepting the system that they are born into. Him being a spare and not being treated equally is simply the rule of the game. If he doesn't like it he can leave, which he sort of did, but only kicking and screaming and complaining.

2 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

His views on social justice are neither here nor there.  

It's relevant to his own lack of perception of his own privilege.

[Cas Stark]

He seems a very sad person trying hard to convince himself he is happy now.  The litany of weird complaints against his brother & family...bad parking place, basement apartment, Ikea lamp [oh the horror]...show someone who has been jealous of his brother his entire life, resentful of his 'place' in his family, and who seems unaware of the bubble of privilege he was living in.  I can't imagine that Prince Harry's basement apartment in Kennsington Palace was really some kind of hovel.  This is sad.  It's sad from a human perspective to see an adult still saddled with these childhood/childish resentments after years of therapy.

 

[James Arryn]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

intersectional chart of oppression

Remember when I compared it to a Rorschach test that says a lot more about the perceiver than the perceived? This is EXACTLY what I was talking about. 

 

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

If however the chart is meaningless to you then you will see that she is just as responsible for her situation as others. 

Yes, the secret to true objectivity is that knowing that true oppression, especially systemic oppression of others, is a myth. So fictional that it’s interchangeable with any kind of mistreatment, prejudice, and/or suffering of other people, ergo equally mythical, excepting I’m assuming the endless attacks on things like traditional marriage, British sovereignty, and of course masculinity to which the world is witness each and every day, right? 

Anecdotal off-ramp, when I first came into the uk thread years back, knowing fairly little about Brexit except that I was in London for it and it seemed very self-destructive, you were the voice of Britain to me, you took the time to explain that the vast majority of Brits were very happy with Brexit, that you yourself had been staunchly against it up until the vote, no doubt giving vent to your naturally progressive instincts, but since the vote had come around and realized that it was really a great thing, and that happily you had healed the great rift between yourself and the Conservative party on this issue if no other. 
 

And, knowing nothing else about you, I took that all more or less at face value and not knowing at the time that your position on almost any issue can be predicted by a Conservative Party brochure, I was kinda impressed at your ability to change your mind. Impress me again, will you? Show me that you aren’t just the natural end result of that shit show in Westminster, that you would not, in fact, be able to happily time machine back to the days of the Raj when dogs and Indians knew their place and political correctness inevitably gave way to batons and if necessary the good old Lee-Enfield. Show me that that you at least understand that a racist, snobbish, exclusive and historically antagonistic family behaving in a racist, snobbish, exclusive and antagonistic way towards a complete outsider (again) does not require anything but them being themselves. 

[Gaston de Foix]

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The whole point of being a royal, in fact the struggle that almost all royal members have is accepting the system that they are born into. Him being a spare and not being treated equally is simply the rule of the game. If he doesn't like it he can leave, which he sort of did, but only kicking and screaming and complaining.

It's relevant to his own lack of perception of his own privilege.

So your point is you can either accept an inferior status or reject it but never complain.  Why not? 

Yes, of course he lacks perception of his own privilege.  That is also true of you and me.  No doubt a month living as the poorest in the world would lead us to a much more deserved gratitude for the things we take for granted.  I mean that sincerely. 

But I think your dislike of his opinions is coloring your understanding of why he is expressing them.  It's not heartfelt, it's opportunistic.  His audience is precisely the progressive "woke" media and liberal elites.  He's sharing opinions (women should have the right to terminate abortions) to ingratiate himself.  I get it, you dislike him doing that.  But unlike other members of the royal family (great-great-uncle David: "Hitler was much misunderstood"), his opinions are commonly held, reasonable, and boring.  

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

So your point is you can either accept an inferior status or reject it but never complain.  Why not? 

One of the reasons the British Royal Family has stuck around so long is because it keeps its mouth shut and doesn't complain too loudly about anything, it doesn't have opinions and it doesn't really try and do anything. If it makes too much noise or tries to break things then the Brits will notice and take away everything they have. Thats the first principle.
The second principle is that its a hereditary Monarchy, the whole basis for the system is that the first born (used to be the son) inherits everything and everyone afterwards gets the scraps. It's almost the whole point of the system. Just go and play Crusader Kings 3 and see what happens when you go from Primogeniture to Confederate Partition! Its a disaster!
He could complain about it, but it isn't going to be changing, and the more he moans the less aware he appears of his own privilege. 
 

9 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

But I think your dislike of his opinions is coloring your understanding of why he is expressing them.  It's not heartfelt, it's opportunistic.  His audience is precisely the progressive "woke" media and liberal elites.  He's sharing opinions (women should have the right to terminate abortions) to ingratiate himself.  I get it, you dislike him doing that.  But unlike other members of the royal family (great-great-uncle David: "Hitler was much misunderstood"), his opinions are commonly held, reasonable, and boring.  

Again the whole point of being a Royal is not giving an opinion. I agree he is doing it for disingenuous reasons, but that is all the more reason to roll your eyes at it and see how he misunderstands how his privilege comes across.

[Gaston de Foix]

47 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

One of the reasons the British Royal Family has stuck around so long is because it keeps its mouth shut and doesn't complain too loudly about anything, it doesn't have opinions and it doesn't really try and do anything. If it makes too much noise or tries to break things then the Brits will notice and take away everything they have. Thats the first principle.
The second principle is that its a hereditary Monarchy, the whole basis for the system is that the first born (used to be the son) inherits everything and everyone afterwards gets the scraps. It's almost the whole point of the system. Just go and play Crusader Kings 3 and see what happens when you go from Primogeniture to Confederate Partition! Its a disaster!
He could complain about it, but it isn't going to be changing, and the more he moans the less aware he appears of his own privilege. 
 

Again the whole point of being a Royal is not giving an opinion. I agree he is doing it for disingenuous reasons, but that is all the more reason to roll your eyes at it and see how he misunderstands how his privilege comes across.

Charles has always had lots of opinions, some of which were wise and farsighted (environmentalism) and some of which are batshit like homoepathy. 

Anyway, the defensive crouch that you prescribe for the monarchy (also the conventional wisdom repeated on the Crown) is inapplicable for a minor royal like Harry is now.  It's because the British royal family has historically had lots of "blood and soil" political views with racist undertones and in Phillip's case overtones.  The British public is not progressive, and won't abolish the monarchy even if Charles thinks Nicholas Soames should be PM, or if he asks a racist question about the color of Harry's baby (more's the pity!).  

[Varysblackfyre321]

23 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

The British public is not progressive, and won't abolish the monarchy even if Charles thinks Nicholas Soames should be PM, or if he asks a racist question about the color of Harry's baby (more's the pity!).  

It should be noted when Elizabeth died the public which has mostly said he wouldn’t be a good king did a total reverse before Charles did anything.

 

[Heartofice]

26 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Charles has always had lots of opinions, some of which were wise and farsighted (environmentalism) and some of which are batshit like homoepathy. 

Yes exactly. And that was always a problem for him and the Royal family.

[Gaston de Foix]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Yes exactly. And that was always a problem for him and the Royal family.

Says who? Charles' problems have always been callousness, infidelity and arrogance (and a penchant for taking cash from Middle Eastern royals). 

The monarch cannot have publicly expressed views on issues du jour because it would seem to contradict their constitutional role.   But Charles just became King.  Obviously, he shouldn't now inflict his views on the British public or the government.  But the stuff that the British royal family has done well (the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, the Queen's championing of relations with the Commonwealth) is because they believed in things.  Why do you think Diana was loved? 

Charlie should keep (quietly) championing preserving the environment.  His subjects will think better of him for it.   

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Says who? Charles' problems have always been callousness, infidelity and arrogance (and a penchant for taking cash from Middle Eastern royals). 

The monarch cannot have publicly expressed views on issues du jour because it would seem to contradict their constitutional role.   But Charles just became King.  Obviously, he shouldn't now inflict his views on the British public or the government.  But the stuff that the British royal family has done well (the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, the Queen's championing of relations with the Commonwealth) is because they believed in things.  Why do you think Diana was loved? 

Charlie should keep (quietly) championing preserving the environment.  His subjects will think better of him for it.   

It’s funny, you sound like you are disagreeing with me, but I think we are in agreement. A constitutional monarch should stay well out of matters to do with their government or taking any one side in political matters. There is obviously leeway when it comes to bland, non offensive views. But as a general principal the less they say on matters the better 

[Cas Stark]

Doesn't everyone already know that all the stories about the royal family come either from the family or the staff [or are made up by the reporters]?  How else would you get any information on who said what about the tiaras, jubilee invites, unforms, or whatever?  And that the vast majority of 'sources say' would be sanctioned by the palace/royals.  Elsewise you're not going to keep your job long if you are leaking things on your own.  Harry seems to think this is some kind of relevation, but it is obvious how it works.