A plea to stop hearing from Harry

by Honour Astill

I initially suspected the outcry towards Meghan Markle (and Prince Harry) was just another manifestation of the broad du jour – a woman who many love to hate – à la Amber Heard and Hilaria Baldwin. Women who, for some vague reason, have generated whole Twitter and Reddit communities dedicated to dissecting their every move in order to bolster their perception that so-and-so woman is bossy or conniving. Men like Piers Morgan and Jeremy Clarkson, and innumerable women – no doubt neglecting to work through their internalised misogyny – seem to take to Meghan in particular as their scapegoat for the Prince’s unceremonious exit.

I’m not one for celebrity gossip, but the impression I had gathered – back when it was a choice in hearing about Sussexes or not – is that she is perceived by her nay-sayers as  manipulative and ‘gold-digging’, taking advantage of the stupid, but well-meaning, Prince. I, of course, am loath to hear about any narrative which unfairly minimises the agency of men to instead cast all blame on women. I was particularly revolted by Clarkson’s infamous piece and the countless offensive tabloid pieces about Meghan, like the Mail’s ‘(Almost) Straight Outta Compton’. But, having been forced by my family to watch their six-hour long documentary over the December break, I have found that such criticisms have been entirely misplaced. Instead, it is the Prince who comes off as deeply unlikeable, ignorant, and generally ridiculous.

You’ll have to allow me to indulge in a bit of celebrity drivelling. Choosing this nonsense to christen my first piece felt appropriate having gone home to Australia and witnessed the dwindling support for the monarchy among Commonwealth subjects firsthand. I suspect this has only become more pronounced with the passing of the Queen – because who wants their Head of State to be a man who was once so down-bad that he said he wanted to be a tampon? 

Regarding the documentary, the narrative is as insubstantial as Harry’s thinning red crown. Throughout the middling first half, they seem desperate to prove to the audience that they really are so in love, to an extent that comes off as cloying and insecure. This is perhaps understandable, given the unfair perception of Meghan as a ‘gold-digger’, but what it actually elucidates is that they seem so far-removed from how real people actually talk; at one point Harry actually tells the audience that ‘this is a great love story’. At certain points they almost lend credence to theories about elites being reptiles (perhaps a familiar feeling for some of us at LSE?). He dances around the dramas of his departure, evidently careful to not burn bridges and name names, but what rapidly becomes apparent is that the documentary is mostly just an exercise in airing old grudges with Harry’s brother, father, and the media which has done oh-so-immeasurable damage to his private life.

Instead of desiring privacy, however, they both come off as desperately obsessed with curating their own image, so much so that everything else is called into question. The occasional flashes of contempt on Harry’s visage towards Meghan’s off-the-cuff comments appear rather disturbing. It is not unexpected that a documentary produced by themselves would be biassed in their favour, but the documentary is transparently one-sided, self-aggrandising, and seeks to offload blame onto anyone except themselves; all of this is not only deeply patronising to the viewer but also yet another illustration of how deeply out-of-touch Harry and the people who have somehow put this on my TV screen actually are.

Harry can’t decide if he’s left the royal family for moral objections or for personal grudges, and I don’t think he even knows himself. Halfway through, we witness a pigeonholed section in which we are explained how the Commonwealth is ‘Empire 2.0’, and how the Monarchy is inextricably tied to its imperial past. Yet, he never fully fleshes out this actually intriguing point; it has the pungent air of someone trying to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. In a similar vein, he discusses how his ‘internalised racism’ led to his erroneous decision to wear a Nazi uniform to a costume party, but how he ‘spoke to’ the Chief Rabbi of Britain and, I suppose, discovered Nazis were bad and not funny? Somehow, I suspect, by 21, many of us don’t need to be told that this is an inappropriate look for AU Carol. For all of Harry’s harping on about being barefoot in Lesotho and his drunken tattoo of Botswana, he has nothing substantial to say about his very real personal and familial racist past. 

What’s clear is that, no matter how many titles he is stripped of, Harry is as out-of-touch and narcissistic as you would guess an embittered Prince would seem. Perhaps the most personally offensive part of the documentary consists of when the pair whinge about their ten-bedroom royal cottage being ‘so small’. Harry also complains about the King ‘cutting him off’ upon his departure from royal duties, which I feel like shouldn’t even be the term anymore when you’re pushing 40. To me, it seems obvious that no longer contributing to a country – or even living there – should not entitle you to absorb millions of its tax pounds. After all, it was the British public – whom the documentary is eager to paint as irredeemably racist, bigoted, and backwards – who financed their £32 million wedding whilst many, even the poor and infirm, go without heat this winter. When I searched for a flat in London with my budget only turning up car parks, Harry and Meghan moaned about the trauma of having to shack up in an L.A. mansion thanks to one of their celebrity (no doubt parasocial) friendships. 

Although they note the Royal Family’s charity work provides them a convenient alibi for massive expropriations of wealth, the pair talk extensively about their nondescript charity projects, which seems to mostly consist of attending panel discussions, being on Zoom calls, and interacting with unimpressed African children. Their actual humanitarian achievements remain an unknown quantity to me. The depiction of Meghan as some revolutionary princess also eludes me; much of the first half is dedicated to discussing how the (allegedly racist?) British public were oh-so taken by Meghan. What is obvious is that Harry remains nonetheless deeply entrenched in a belief system of superiority and exceptionalism, but this time one in which his and Meghan’s love can conquer racism and imperialism, despite failing to acknowledge in any meaningful ways the very histories placing him on our screens in the first place. Ultimately, this is the bastard product of enriched celebrities and opulent royals appropriating real causes (many of which directly result from economic or colonial exploitation) for PR purposes, as most in the public eye are wont to do.
It’s great that Harry and Meghan have, in their own words, finally taken their ‘freedom flight’. But I thought this would imply we could hear less from them. With the release of Harry’s new book, I now know more about his frostbitten penis, kill-death ratio, and mummy issues than I ever could have wanted. The Queen was able to win the hearts of many in part due to her enduring strategy of being silent and letting the public perceive her as they pleased. Harry should take heed, because hearing him speak can turn the passively sympathetic into the actively revolted.