Prince Harry and his wife Meghan announced that their daughter had been christened in a private ceremony in California, publicly calling her a princess and revealing for the first time that they will use royal titles for their children. Photo / AP
OPINION:
It’s a damn shame that Marie-Antoinette, she of the towering wig and doomed fate, never actually said, “let them eat cake” because there is no quote more useful when writing about the royal family.
It’s not that much of a surprise, really - that those born to titled and great families, those born to immense wealth, privilege and swan sangers on demand, might not have the most solid grasp on seeing things objectively.
And today, there is no greater example of a royal scion who seems to both want to keep a towering stack of gluten-free iced fancies for himself and to also simultaneously scoff them than Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and his relationship with the media.
He hates the press, you see! Loathes ‘em. They are “the devil”. They “chased” his late mother “to her death.” They made his life a misery and tormented his poor saintly wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex who just wanted to write empowering messages on bananas and to get the royal family on board with pranayamic breathing, except all those hacks were so nasty about her.
Except that is, when it would seem to suit the Sussexes just fine if a very nice publication wanted to write very nice things about them.
This week, we got a masterclass in the dangerous game the Sussexes are locked in with the press; that same dangerous game that his own mother Diana, Princess of Wales tragically thought she could play.
So, let’s start here: with the world learning this week that Harry and Meghan had decided it was time to unbox those fresh, new titles their children Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1, became entitled to the second their grandpa became the 62nd monarchy to rule over England. (Well, and those bits of the UK which are always threatening to secede.)
The hypocrisy of the Sussexes’ decision for their children to have royal titles is obvious given that they have spent much of the last couple of years turning royal-baiting into Montecito’s newest cottage industry.
Not since Edward VIII packed in the crown game and decamped to France with paramour Wallis Simpson to idle away the days lacking purpose, meaning and a steady income stream, have two people consciously made themselves into such anti-palace figures.
But never let the threat of a pesky thing like being wholly contradictory get in the way of something advantageous, with Harry and Meghan having now sailed forth and laid claim to the grand royal titles available for their children. (The kids could have been the Earl of Dumbarton and Lady Lilibet from birth, you should know.)
Then there is the double standard in terms of how the news came out, with celebrity bastion People magazine somehow getting the drop on the christening. So did the Sussexes then kick up an angry fuss that a private family event had found its way into the tabloid press?
Not at all.
And thus we get to the perilously tilting, Marie Antoinette-style stack of cakes that is the Sussexes and their approach to the media.
There would seem to be no greater nasty in their world of oat lattes, hugs and hummingbird feeders than the press, especially the British press - and the couple have made no bones about their loathing of Fleet Street’s biro-stained hacks.
In Harry’s 60 Minutes interview he said tabloids “want to create as much conflict as possible” and that “certain members of my family and the people that work for them are complicit in that conflict”.
In their Netflix series, Meghan said that after the couple became engaged in 2017, the media “were still going to find a way to destroy me”.
(Of course, the duchess has faced, at times, racist coverage in the press and is clearly still a victim of despicable, unimaginable social media abuse.)
It made sense, then, that when they decided to up sticks and quit the royal game in January 2020, their new website detailed that they intended to “amend their media relations policy” and would “engage with grassroots media organisations and young, up-and-coming journalists”.
But, in the months and years since then, the couple have predominantly worked with only mainstream titles, including the New York Times, Time, Variety, Oprah Winfrey, Today, Good Morning America, US 60 Minutes, New York’s The Cut, the UK’s ITV and even, prepare yourself, the British Telegraph newspaper. (The exception was them being interviewed by the Teenager Therapy podcast.)
This week’s Lili christening story was broken by the most tabloid of titles, and by a London-based journalist who frequently covers the royal family and has to spend grey mornings in Welsh towns reporting on the Princess of Wales’ outings, no less.
Ah, what a tangled web we weave eh?
To be clear here, the actual story does not directly quote the duke or duchess – but it does include confirmation from a spokesperson and details about when the event took place (Friday, March 3) and by whom (“the bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, the Rev John Taylor”) along with a plethora of intimate details.
Archie danced with Lili! A 10-person choir was flown in by uber-producer Tyler Perry from Atlanta to sing Oh Happy Day and This Little Light of Mine!
Yet there has been no outcry by the duke and duchess about their privacy being breached, about the press poking their rapacious noses into the family’s private life.
Funny how Harry is so willing to call out other members of his family for getting too close with the media, high on the mount of moral outrage, and yet when it would seem to suit him and Meghan, they are happy for the press to glowingly report on the family.
In Harry’s autobiography Spare, or as it could have also been called, the Secret Diary of an Angry Man Who Needed More Hugs, he writes stepmother Queen Camilla had “left bodies in the street” in an attempt to improve her image.
Speaking to 60 Minutes he spoke of “the connections that she was forging within the British press” early on and that “there was open willingness on both sides to trade of information”.
In their Netflix series he said that the palace was involved in a “dirty game” with the press and that “there’s leaking, but there’s also planting of stories”.
But Harry and Meghan are kidding themselves if they think they are not playing the media game too.
In January, in the space of 48 hours four major TV interviews with Harry aired because the man had a book to sell, sell and sell some more.
Last year Meghan gave a lengthy interview to The Cut to promote her debut podcast Archetypes.
The duke and duchess can stomp their feet about the press but at the end of the day, they don’t seem to have a problem with the media when it suits their own ends.
This Lilibet christening story came at a very advantageous moment for the duo, who are in dire need of some good, upbeat PR.
In recent weeks, South Park went to town mocking them mercilessly and comedian Chris Rock called out Meghan’s claims about royal racial bias.
Meanwhile, their approval ratings in the US have melted faster than a Paddle Pop left in the sun, with them hitting new lows not once but twice this year alone.
They could have easily announced Lili’s christening and the title news via their Archewell website, which they have previously used to pay tribute to Prince Philip when he passed away, to announce news like Harry’s 2021 book deal and Meghan’s now-shuttered animated kids’ series.
That the story ended up with People, and that they have not pushed back against a media outlet revealing personal details about a family event, shows the degree of inconsistency at play here.
The life the Sussexes have built for themselves is wholly dependent on maintaining public interest in them and that requires a steady diet of media appearances.
Netflix, Spotify and Penguin Random House are not going to happily pay for the services and creative output of two cashmere-wrapped hermits who refuse Greta Garbo-style to give interviews or leave their estate.
The problem is that Harry and Meghan seem to want to be able to pick and choose, to cherry-pick the plum outings, to be able to use the media to promote their money-spinning projects and good causes when it benefits them.
Heaven forbid if the fourth estate wants to cover them when it does not suit their own ends, though.
This is the same perilous path Diana walked down.
Take the final week of her life. On that holiday with Dodi Al Fayed, she reportedly took a motorboat over to the boat where a group of British snappers were bobbing as they gave chase after the couple. “You will have a big surprise coming soon, the next thing I do,” she “teased” according to biographer Sally Bedell Smith.
And yet within days she would be in tears when the paparazzi pack tormented her in Paris.
During the Diana years, Fleet Street was a “many-headed hydra” and the late princess “may have thought she could control the beast”, media critic Stephen Glover has written, per Vanity Fair.
What Harry and Meghan seem to be locked in at the moment is a battle to “control the beast”.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex simply can’t have it both ways when it comes to publicity and coverage. No one gets to have their cake and eat it too, not even members of the royal family.
If you need a break from the slopes or don’t fancy a ski, there’s still a lot to do this.