The Meghans of the Pops: Their First Public Relations Controversy Since Their Wedding and Their Implications for the Future of the Royal Family

The culmination of the breakdown between the royal institution and Harry and Meghan, who were once touted by parts of the media as the modernizing force the monarchy needed, was their historic and controversial decision in early 2020 to quit as working royals and leave the UK.

The fourth, fifth and sixth episodes of the show cover the couple’s challenges since their wedding, as well as their decision to quit as working members of the family.

The relationship between Harry and his brother was tense and his father was also tense. And it emphasizes the suggestion that the royals wanted to sideline and isolate the couple, often through the planting of negative media reporting, rather than have them dwarf more senior royals in popularity.

Buckingham and Kensington Palaces will likely be braced for the fallout from the series, after sustained tensions between Harry and his father, King Charles, and brother, Prince William.

“It’s really hard to look back on it now and go, what on earth happened? Harry said in the first episode of the video diary how they ended up here, shortly after finishing their final royal duties.

He said that he became very concerned for the safety of his family because of the intrusion of the media.

I was told by my dad that I couldn’t take on the media. The media will always be the center of attention according to Harry, who described the palace’s relationship with news outlets as a dirty game.

The palace said last week it would not comment on the series until it was out, but no one has commented so far.

It is the first major public relations test for the monarchy since it became a republic, and it is related to the split of the family from King Charles III and his son Harry.

Buckingham Palace isn’t going to respond to the allegations raised in the docuseries, with the royal household again telling CNN Thursday that it won’t be commenting. Instead the royals continued with business as usual and carried on with their scheduled engagements. The King and Queen Consort were visiting a community kitchen in London before joining other members of the family at a Westminster Abbey carol concert put on for a second year by the Princess of Wales.

The couple have spoken before about the constraints placed on them while members of the royal family, and that frustration re-emerged repeatedly in the documentary.

Meghan described her engagement announcement in 2017 as an “orchestrated reality show.” According to Harry, members of the royal family were not comfortable with the media’s fascination with the prince’s then-girlfriend.

“As far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well. Harry said that it was almost like a ritual. “My wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why should you be treated differently? He spoke of their argument and asked why she should be protected.

The monarchy had a conversation with American talk show host Oprah Winfrey about race. A member of the royal family commented on how dark the baby’s skin might be before they were born.

“These are the skeletons in the closet that frequently make an unwelcome appearance in daily life in this family – sometimes, you know, you’re part of the problem rather than part of the solution and there is a huge level of unconscious bias,” Harry said.

There is no one’s fault with unconscious bias. He said that once it has been pointed out, you need to make it right.

Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, in Los Alamos, California, in the wake of their first marriages

In the first batches of episodes, Harry spoke about his ancestors and relatives previous marriages. “I think for so many people in the family, especially the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit the mold as opposed to somebody who you perhaps are destined to be with,” he said.

“They were surprised … the fact that I was dating an American actress was probably what clouded their judgement more than anything else at the beginning,” he added. “The actress thing was the biggest problem, funnily enough,” Meghan added.

Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, stepped back from royal duties and moved to California, alleging racist attacks by Britain’s tabloid media. Harry’s criticism of the media was tinged with anger over the way the press treated his mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car accident in 1997 while being followed by photographers. The couple’s new life in America has been funded by lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify.

“I remember thinking, how can I ever find someone who is willing and capable to be able to withstand all the baggage that comes with being with me?” He told them so.

The breakdown of her relationship with her father was explained by the controversy over whether he staged a series of paparazzo-style photographs in the build-up to their wedding.

“Of course, it’s incredibly sad what happened – she had a father before this and now she doesn’t have a father. Harry said that if Meg weren’t with him, her dad would still be her dad.

“Harry & Meghan”: What We Learn from the Royal Family and What We Don’t Know About Their Exit from Buckingham Palace

The first three episodes were released on Thursday, with three more scheduled for next week. The interviews were completed in August, which was the month before the Queen died.

CNN Royal News is a weekly dispatch that brings you the inside track on the royal family, what they are up to in public, and what’s happening behind palace walls.

LONDON — Britain’s monarchy is bracing for more bombshells to be lobbed over the palace gates Thursday as Netflix releases the first three episodes of a series that promises to tell the “full truth” about Prince Harry and Meghan’s estrangement from the royal family.

Prince William defended the royal family to reporters after an interview, saying that they are not a racist family.

But Buckingham Palace faced renewed allegations of racism only last week when a Black advocate for survivors of domestic abuse said a senior member of the royal household interrogated her about her origins during a reception at the palace. The palace hoped that William and his wife Kate’s visit to Boston would highlight their environmental credentials, but their visit was overshadowed by coverage of the issue.

The program will be watched carefully in the U.K., where even the teasers were criticized for offering misleading images to back up the emotive narration alleging misogyny, unfair media treatment and racism.

In one section of the film, clips of the media are mixed with old footage of Princess Diana being followed by the media as he said: “The pain and suffering of women marrying into this institution, this feeding frenzy.” … I didn’t want history to repeat itself, and I was terrified.

Sky News reported that one of the clips used to show his words shows the reporters and photographers waiting for Price outside the court.

“There’s a hierarchy of the family,” Harry says, over an image of the royal family standing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. There’s leaking, but there’s also planting stories.

Next, a picture of a photographer on a balcony as Harry and his bride-to-be stroll with their son Archie down below. While the scene suggests the photographer was covertly snapping pictures of a private moment, the photo actually shows an accredited press photographer who was covering the couple’s meeting with Desmond Tutu in 2019.

Indeed, what we learn from “Harry & Meghan” is that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are less interested in staying out of the spotlight than in staying in complete control of how that spotlight makes them look. That is not how celebrity works.

In the coverage of William and Kate’s trip to Boston, where they handed out environmental prizes and met with anti-violence activists, both the Telegraph and the Broadcasting Beep picked up on this theme.

The right and left are very different in Britain. “Harry & Meghan,” the intimate Netflix series released Thursday, is quickly shaping up to be the exception.

The first three episodes of the docuseries, directed by Liz Garbus and produced in conjunction with the production company of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, were quickly skewered by a bipartisan group of critics, from The Sun to The Guardian. Although “skewered” may not actually capture the harshness of some of the commentary.

In his review of The Sun, which is owned by Murdoch’s News Corporation, Piers Morgan wasted no time in attacking the couple and their show.

The Princesses of Meghan Markle and Harry: A Tale of Two Misleading, Poor, Rich Narcissists in the Age of Thirty

Who are the world’s biggest victims right now? You might think that the people of Ukraine are poor because they have been bombed, shot and raped by Putin. Or those whose lives have been ruined by the Covid pandemic that continues to cause widespread death and long-term illness. The global cost-of-living crisis has swept the globe, and the millions of people who have suffered hardship in financial hardship are fighting to survive.

But no. The world’s biggest victims are in fact Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, a pair of incredibly rich, stupendously privileged, horribly entitled narcissists.

Morgan warns viewers that they might need a sick bucket in his review. He was not the only one to evoke gastrointestinal distress. The headline for Lucy Mangan’s review in the left-leaning Guardian, exclaims that the first three episodes were “so sickening I almost brought up my breakfast.”

Mangan does point out that the series so far has plenty of sweet moments — particularly of Prince Harry and Meghan “being charming and funny together” — but she ultimately finds the finished product wanting:

What do we left with in the end? Exactly the same story we always knew, told in the way we would expect to hear it from the people who are telling it. The people who don’t care will not watch. Those who care will read into it any way they want, and they will confirm their previous ideas as well. There is plenty here to start another round of tabloid frenzy, particularly in Harry’s mention of members of the royal family who consider the pressure placed on anyone “marrying in” a rite of passage and resist allowing anyone else to avoid what their own spouses went through, and who bow to internal pressure to choose a wife who “fits the mould.” Which is to say — it is hard to see who, beyond the media, the villains of the piece, will really gain from this?

“King Coal” : The Story of a Man Who Hates What He Has Learned and Don’t Wanna Know

Two books about gender and family will be published by Simon & Schuster in the next two years, as will a book about women behaving badly. The film “King Coal” will premiere at the Independent Film Festival. This commentary is hers and she has the opinions expressed in it. CNN has more opinions on it.

But who’s to say that people haven’t gotten a glimpse of who they are? What makes their version — a heavily produced, edited and controlled version — more honest than any version of their lives that’s come before? The series shows how the events are different in real life than they are in the filtered version. In the beginning of her relationship with Harry, she wanted to review his photos on the photo-sharing site, and social media posts are a large part of the archive that guides their narrative together.

We have seen or heard many of the same things, so it is just as disappointing that the series content is the same. There are some new aspects of them, but they don’t change people’s minds about them. It’s self-promotional, self-aggrandizing and, frankly, a little boring. They do not come off as more likeable and that is probably what they are. It’s not the first time that dislike is directed toward Harry, but it is the first time that it’s focused on Harry.

He will now be viewed as a man who has suffered from a form of “repetition compulsion” in which he is repeating a scenario familiar to him from growing up Princess Diana’s son. It is clear that he is willing to see what he wants to see.

The Netflix Experience of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex : Red Flags Around Prince Harry, Meghan, and Institutional Gaslighting

Are you ready for round two? The final three episodes of the eagerly awaited Netflix docuseries from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are releasing on Thursday.

Speculation a series was in the works had been rampant for months and when it finally landed on Netflix, the project ended up becoming the platform’s biggest documentary debut ever.

The series was touted by the streamer as a “global event” and was teased in punchy trailers as a tell-all of Prince Harry and Meghan’s departure from the royal front lines in 2020.

The Windsor clan will be watching these next three episodes very closely. Signaling what lies ahead, trailers released this week will undoubtedly have raised some red flags within the royal household.

A friend of the couple says unfavorable stories about them were leaked to the press in order to cover up unflattering information about other members of the royal family.

Meghan adds: “You would just see it play out. A story about someone in the family would pop up for a minute, and they’d go ‘we gotta make that go away.’ There is real estate on a website, there is real estate on the newspaper front cover, and something has to be written about someone royal.

The trailer released earlier this week showed a woman who said she was fed to the wolves. Elsewhere in that clip, Harry hit out at “institutional gaslighting” and appeared to accuse the palace of being comfortable with protecting Prince William but not his own family.

“It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that simply weren’t true, and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in,” said Harry.

On Meghan’s Miscarriage at the birth of their first baby – Harry and Meghan: a couple of years after the wedding

During a meeting with his family, Harry initially asked for an arrangement where he and his wife would have their own jobs but still work in support of the Queen. “But it became very clear very quickly that that goal was not up for discussion or debate,” Harry said.

You have to understand that there are ways to do things from the family perspective. And her ultimate mission and goal, responsibility, is the institution … she’s going to go on the advice that she’s given,” Harry said.

A montage of previously unseen blissful moments – Harry cutting their wedding cake with a sword, emotional toasts and Elton John serenading guests – soon took a more serious turn. The rest of the family became envious of Harry andMeghan’s rising popularity before it was claimed that damaging stories about the couple were planted by the institution to distract from negative coverage of other royal members.

That upsets people. It upsets the balance. Because you have been led to believe that the only way that your charities can succeed and your mission can grow is if you are on the front pages of those newspapers.”

Meghan recounted how she suffered a miscarriage in July 2020 after moving to Santa Barbara, California, recalling how she was stressed about how UK newspaper the Mail on Sunday had published a private letter to her father, Thomas Markle.

The Princess and the Prince: What happened to Doria and Meghan in Los Angeles in the ’96-Years End of the Royal Wedding?

She told the filmmakers that she believed all of this would stop if she were not here. And that was the scariest thing about it, it was such clear thinking.”

The duchess said she did everything she could to make the royal family “proud,” but at one point “the bubble burst” and there was a flood of negative media coverage.

While Harry says that neither he nor the rest of the family wanted to talk about the situation around Harry and Meghan that day, he did discuss it with his father and brother. He said Prince William and King Charles had the same idea of what was going on.

The couple were critical of the Queen’s aides but again were again complimentary of the late monarch herself, who died aged 96 in September, shortly after filming concluded for the series.

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 to connect with a trained counselor or visit the NSPL site. The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide also provide contact information for crisis centers around the world.

The past few years have taken a toll on the couple and their new life in California and this latest installments show how Harry was able to overcome the problems with his relatives.

The subsequent press attacks, the lack of action from the palace to prevent them and the couple’s increasing suspicions of the royal family feeding the media put the newlyweds in a dark place.

Doria said that her daughter had thought about taking her life after being picked at by the media.

The journalist who asked how she was was thanked the duchess in the official royal documentary. She said that not many people have asked if she is okay.

A narrative developed that the couple were being selfish for not doing a traditional photo call shortly after the birth of a royal baby, and Harry remembers seeing a post on social media of a couple walking either side of a chimpanzee alongside the caption: “Royal baby leaves hospital.”

“The seriousness of what has happened to her and what … happened to us, and what continues to happen to her, that needs to be acknowledged,” said Harry.

It’s not just a tabloid. It isn’t just a story. You are making me fear. That’s real. Are my babies safe? And you’ve created it for what? Because you are bored or because it sells your papers?… and that’s the piece I don’t think people fully understand.”

The Prince and Meghan of a Princess and a Prince in the UK: A Netflix Story about a Miscarriage in the Royal Family

Harry spoke about a joint statement issued in January 2020, in which the brothers denied a newspaper story alleging that a rift in the royal family was caused by William’s “bullying attitude.”

In this Netflix episode, Harry claims he was not aware of the statement. He said that no one asked him to put his name in the statement.

“Now, do we absolutely know the miscarriage was created, caused by that? We don’t. The stress and lack of sleep, as well as the timing of the fetus, made her suffer a stillbirth, he said.

Harry said it took reporters six weeks to find out that the couple had moved into director and screenwriter Tyler Perry’s home in Hollywood, before eventually publishing the location of their new home.

The construction of the large poles is to stop the photographers from taking pictures four hundred meters away. “And as ridiculous and as absurd as this is, you kind of have to laugh about it, because it is madness.”

Archie lived in the UK for five months before his family moved to California, and Lilibet was born in the US.

Harry said that life in the US is very different for the family, and that this is their home. “I get to do things with our kids that I would never be able to do in the UK.”

The episodes picked back up from 2018 as Prince Harry married Meghan at Windsor. The pair recalled fond memories, such as when then-Prince Charles – whom Meghan described as “very charming” – stepped in to escort her down the aisle after helping with musical arrangements ahead of the big day.

With few real revelations in last week’s Netflix release, these episodes were more forceful. The picture Harry painted of the royal household wasn’t especially flattering. He presented a frosty, siloed environment, where suspicion and mistrust guide household staff, who are unsympathetic to their experiences.

If I don’t show up, all of this will stop. She said that the scariest thing about speaking to Oprah last year was how clear her thinking was, she mentioned the suicidal ideations she first raised. Harry blamed the media intrusion as one of the reasons that his wife lost her baby in 2020.

Unlike last week, this batch of episodes saw Harry and Meghan target specific members of the family, with the duke recalling his brother losing his temper during a crucial crunch summit at Sandringham as they discussed the couple’s long-term future.

The Sussexes: What have they done to Harry? What have we learned from their experiences at SLES? Where have we come from?

He said that part of his responsibility was the survivability and continuation of the institution and it was already ingrained in him.

As Harry himself says, “I’ve always felt this was a fight worth fighting for” even if it’s come at the cost of his relationship with his father and brother.

He said he had to make peace with the fact that they wouldn’t get genuine accountability or an apology. We are moving on, we are focused on what’s coming next.

The media was to blame for the pressures that the couple faced as working royals. They feel that the palace could have done something to stop the level of abuse they suffered, challenged the media and prioritized family members before the institution.

The family did not give any oxygen to the show. That might be their best hope of ending this very public row in the short term. But with the Sussexes’ version of events left unchallenged, it will become part of the national memory.