Just call me Harry. (Everything Harry & Meghan)

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MsZem

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I think an argument can even be made that he was right. While this isn't specifically about getting to know Meghan, if they had taken it a little slower, they might have had a smoother exit à la Madeleine and her husband. It sounds like it would have been preferrable for everyone involved.
I agree. According to reports, Harry was upset that William referred to taking time to get to know this girl - that is, the language was objectionable to him. But the advice itself was perfectly reasonable.

If the British royals hung out more with their European counterparts, maybe Harry could have called up Madeleine for some advice, and Meghan could have spoken to Queen Letizia about moving from a high-visibility career to being a royal (though Letizia was a journalist, not an actress). And everyone should call up Letizia for wardrobe advice. She and the girls dress so well!
 

Vagabond

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I agree. According to reports, Harry was upset that William referred to taking time to get to know this girl - that is, the language was objectionable to him. But the advice itself was perfectly reasonable.
And there's no way of knowing from the book whether William actually referred to Meghan as "this girl." Neither Harry nor William was interviewed.
 

taf2002

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And the list of grievances, as others have noted, comes across as petty. If Harry's issues with his brother stem from William suggesting that he take his time getting to know Meghan, that strikes me as perfectly reasonable advice from one sibling to another - especially given that they both know what it means to marry into the BRF and have the example of their parents who did marry quickly (albeit at a younger age). That's the main reason that's been consistently reported, and it doesn't paint William as petty, image conscious or temperamental (for someone who dislikes petty gossip you seem oddly inclined to believe anything said about William, whose childhood was no simpler than Harry's).

A lot depends on William's tone & his wording. Harry was about to turn 30 so that advice would have been unwelcomed no matter how it was worded. If in fact it came off as snobbish or racist that would be enough to cause a rift between brothers. Or if it came off from a position of power (I'm going to be king & you're not) that would be offensive too. I think since there has been a 2 yr rift we should considers that it's not Harry being petty but maybe William's fault.
 

Lemonade20

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There’s always more to the story than we think. People don’t like change, so I can see why the Royals are nervous about MM. They had years getting to know KM before the engagement, so for Harry to suddenly announce he’s engaged caught them off guard. If Harry had slowly introduced her to the family, perhaps it wouldn’t cause so much of a rift? Who knows.

I also feel like MM can come across as arrogant as she’s American and used to speaking up and sharing her personal thoughts.It doesn’t surprise me that she would run people the wrong way. It’s so easy for the British to hate someone who’s completely different from their beloved KM simply because they don’t know who she is really. All they see is this American biracial actress who wants to steal Harry away. It’s bananas.
 

MsZem

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A lot depends on William's tone & his wording. Harry was about to turn 30 so that advice would have been unwelcomed no matter how it was worded. If in fact it came off as snobbish or racist that would be enough to cause a rift between brothers. Or if it came off from a position of power (I'm going to be king & you're not) that would be offensive too. I think since there has been a 2 yr rift we should considers that it's not Harry being petty but maybe William's fault.
Or maybe Harry is just overly sensitive. Omid Scobie is a very H&M-friendly reporter, and the only accusation is that Harry thought that saying "that girl" was snobbish.

Since this is getting filtered through various intermediaries, it's impossible to know what exactly happened - but the advice itself, given what it means to marry into the BRF, was very reasonable.
 

MsZem

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Except calling it snobbish sounds like code for "racist" to me.
Those terms are not interchangeable.

This is the quote that appears in the Cosmo article I linked to yesterday:
In those last two words, ‘this girl,’ Harry heard the tone of snobbishness that was anathema to his approach to the world.
I think if the authors wanted to argue that Harry perceived the comment to be racist, they could have easily written that instead.
 

Vagabond

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Except calling it snobbish sounds like code for "racist" to me.
"This girl" has very different connotations in England from what it does in America.

I lived in England. To my ears, it sounds so stereotypically snobby that it's a bit difficult to believe that William actually said and that no one is putting words in his mouth.
 

canbelto

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These are probably third-hand accounts of conversations so take them with a grain of salt. It sounds like a very typical family situation. Boy meets girl, and the boy's family just doesn't take to her. In most families these situations sort of work themselves out one way or another. But Harry sounds unusually stubborn and the BRF probably not the best family for ironing out differences.
 

starrynight

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All the royal family are snobs - including Harry and Meghan.

They'd have to be snobs to introduce themselves as 'Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex' and 'Meghan Duchess of Sussex' every time they mention themselves.

And if anything, the sermons that Harry and Meghan give to the common folk confirm that they are snobs too. The fact that Harry, who has no education, feels fit to lecture people shows that he has a very very high sense of self-importance.

I'm just so incredibly sick of two incredibly wealthy and privileged aristocrats who live off other people's money acting like victims. It's getting really tiresome. Especially now that we know how petty all of these alleged grievances are.

I don't know how anyone could be criticised for thinking Meghan was unsuited to royal life. It's a confirmed fact she was completely and utterly unsuited for it in every way. As is Harry these days.

I think that Harry has such little insight into his privilege that he has no idea what a delicate balance the royal family is in. He's sawing off the branch he's sitting on. After the Queen dies, there could well be a big shift in attitudes and those millions of pounds of income he takes for granted may not be as guaranteed.
 
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Vagabond

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All the royal family are snobs - including Harry and Meghan.

They'd have to be snobs to introduce themselves as 'Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex' and 'Meghan Duchess of Sussex' every time they mention themselves.
Do they? Or are you just making stuff up as you go?
 

starrynight

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Do they? Or are you just making stuff up as you go?

The egos of the aristocracy would all be out of control. What then, makes them 'better' than the regular folk? How do they justify the golden carriages, tiaras and millions of pounds of other peoples money to themselves?

And whenever it is tried to be explained as to why they deserve all the money, palaces and coaches it just gets into dicey territory about privilege of birth, power and engrained class systems. A lot of the time, these questions are papered over by the appearance of charity work and 'giving back' to the country.

Then of course, right now Harry has put a spotlight on this arrangement, because he has rejected his country and the royal family and yet is still exercising the privileges of his position.

I doubt Harry and Meghan would be willing to give those Skype Sermons if they didn't believe themselves to be better than everyone else.
 
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MsZem

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Of course not. But racists often come up with dog whistles to hide behind. Plus we don't know what was really said.
We know what two reporters, at least one of whom is considered close to Harry and Meghan, chose to put in their book. As I wrote before, there's no indication that Harry considered the comment racist or that William uses racist dog whistles. Not everything has multiple layers of meaning.

The BRF has a history of telling members to rethink their choice of partners (Edward and Wallis, Margaret and Peter Townsend, Charles and Camilla). That doesn't appear to be the case here, just one sibling who advised another to take his time with a new relationship. If Harry and Meghan had done so, maybe they'd have been better prepared and able to exit royal life more smoothly (see ballettmaus's post about Princess Madeleine). Or maybe Meghan would have decided, like Chelsy Davy, that this wasn't the life she wanted (OT: Harry's ex Cressida Bonas got married recently).

I'll add something else. Harry's life will never be as private as he wishes, even if stopped doing high-profile nonprofit stuff. It would be better for him if he could find a healthier way of dealing with that reality than trying to wish (and sue) the media away.
 

taf2002

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I still maintain that it must have been something not acceptable to Harry to still rankle more than 2 yrs later. So it's either Harry being petty or William at fault. Otherwise why the rift?
 

Vagabond

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I still maintain that it must have been something not acceptable to Harry to still rankle more than 2 yrs later. So it's either Harry being petty or William at fault. Otherwise why the rift?
I think most people can relate to how it would feel to have a close family member question one's choice of spouse, whether before or after the wedding and no matter how well intended and even kindly phrased the questioning may be.

If you want to think the worst of one brother or the other, then do so. But you are doing so based on your own predilections and third-hand information.
 

taf2002

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I think most people can relate to how it would feel to have a close family member question one's choice of spouse, whether before or after the wedding and no matter how well intended and even kindly phrased the questioning may be.

If you want to think the worst of one brother or the other, then do so. But you are doing so based on your own predilections and third-hand information.

GMAFB. Yarite, that's what I want. :rolleyes:
 

canbelto

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You know, this is one of those things I just learned in life:
If Person A doesn't like Person B and Person B doesn't like Person A, it doesn't make either Person A or Person B a jerk.
If William and Meghan didn't like each other it doesn't make either William or Meghan a bad person. It just means they didn't like each other.
 

Winnipeg

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I don't see anything nefarious about advising Harry not to rush into marriage. Look at what happened to their parents and many other marriages that happen when the 2 don't know each other well. It doesn't mean he has to listen to William but the advice seems sage to me. If that is all that it takes for a rift, I suggest it is deeper than that.

And yes, I think that if Harry and Megan were true to their words, they would try harder to stay our of the public eye.
 

starrynight

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I still maintain that it must have been something not acceptable to Harry to still rankle more than 2 yrs later. So it's either Harry being petty or William at fault. Otherwise why the rift?

Probably because William was proven right?

If Meghan ended up fitting in perfectly, then the whole conversation would have been forgotten.

After all, Charles actually convinced William to break up with Kate at one point. Worse things would have been said than 'are you sure about this girl' to William. But time shows that Charles was wrong about that and hence things have just moved on.

I suspect it's more that in a world of hanger ons and sycophants, William is one of the few people who will actually talk to Harry plainly (and care enough to take the bother to do so).

Honestly trying to layer victimhood onto the expression 'this girl' which is an extremely common phase is really desperate of them. There must not have been much content for this book.
 
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ballettmaus

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I still maintain that it must have been something not acceptable to Harry to still rankle more than 2 yrs later. So it's either Harry being petty or William at fault. Otherwise why the rift?

People are known to overreact. People are also known to have confirmation bias. Harry was known as the "black sheep" of the family, so who knows how he sometimes felt about what was expected of him. It would also appear that he still hasn't fully dealt with his mother's death and the BRF is not known to be the most welcoming to "outsiders". If any or all of the above made Harry believe that Meghan wouldn't be entirely welcome or there would be bias against her because of who she is, William's comment might have been all that he needed to believe that they didn't approve of Meghan.
 

kittyjake5

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Who do they want to tell their side of the story too and what did they think they would accomplish from the book.
It was the "intrusive" press that speculated on what went down and HM did not like that narrative. So now they are using the "good" press to put out their side of the story.
If it was the RF that put out a negative narrative regarding their exit I could understand their need to set the record straight clearly it was not, it was the press.
Do the general public really care that William said "this girl" or that Kate did not invite Meghan shopping or the gray suits were preventing them from accomplishing
their vision and this one killed me "Meghan gave up her life for this family".

I am sorry but the excerpts from this book come across to me as sensationalism, petty and vindictive on H&M part.
 

ballettmaus

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Do the general public really care that William said "this girl" or that Kate did not invite Meghan shopping or the gray suits were preventing them from accomplishing
their vision and this one killed me "Meghan gave up her life for this family".

That's in the book?

I didn't know there was a rule that said Meghan and Kate had to be BFFs and shopping buddies. And Meghan gave up her life?! Pulease. Who forced her to get married to Harry? Who forced her to become a royal? Who forced her to do it so quickly? Who forced her not to talk to Harry and tell him that she wants to take more time before the wedding so that she is sure that this is what she wants? We all make decisions in our lives and we're responsible for the decisions we make.

Again, if we look to Sweden, while Madeleine's husband had to resign from his financial firm so that they wouldn't have to divest entirely from companies that traded with the Swedish Stock Exchange, he remains a private citizen and is continuing with his career in finance.
As I said before, if they had thought and talked this through before the wedding and had had a longer engagement that would have allowed Meghan to see what life as a royal is like, things could have gone differently and they all might have been happier.

In a way, it makes me sad. From all that I'm reading it seems that one rather hasty engagement and wedding caused so much tumult and unhappiness and it looks like it all could have been avoided by simply taking a little more time.
 

MsZem

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That's in the book?

I didn't know there was a rule that said Meghan and Kate had to be BFFs and shopping buddies. And Meghan gave up her life?! Pulease. Who forced her to get married to Harry? Who forced her to become a royal? Who forced her to do it so quickly? Who forced her not to talk to Harry and tell him that she wants to take more time before the wedding so that she is sure that this is what she wants? We all make decisions in our lives and we're responsible for the decisions we make.
Queen Maxima's father was not allowed to attend her wedding. I mean, fair enough given his past, but it meant that she got married without her parents present. I don't believe there was ever a book about how this meant she was being treated shabbily, or how dare Princess Laurentien not go shopping with her. These are things to bitch to your friends about, not something that you want in a book designed to paint you in a sympathetic light!

I suppose it was written more for a US audience, where many identify with Meghan and her experience.
 

MLIS

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The more I read, the more I think the problem here is Harry. If these kinds of stories are to be believed, like the shopping one, the it was on him to explain things. If I understand correctly, the shopping trip was before or shortly after Harry had confirmed he was dating Meghan (with a press release that he apparently only told his family about 20 minutes in advance ... hmm, almost like there’s a pattern there). If Meghan and Kate had been seen shopping together it would have caused a frenzy. And Kate, of all people, was going to avoid that. Also, there was then a blind gossip item about it very shortly thereafter in a blog known to have connections to Meghan’s camp. I can see where Meghan would have felt it was unwelcoming or a snub, but why on earth did Harry not sit her down and said “Look, poppet, here are the reasons Kate didn’t invite you to share her car. And if she sees leaks like this in gossip columns that obviously come from your friends, she’s going to close ranks even further”? He KNOWS how this stuff works. He may not like it, that’s fair, but it was on him to make things easier for her. Same with the tiara story. If she really did turn up at Buckingham Palace with her hairdresser and ask to see the tiara, that’s not a completely unreasonable thing to do. But HARRY is the one who knows how the protocol works. Explain it to her!

A poster on another board I read said, basically, Meghan gave up her life and career and jumped in with both feet and the best of intentions. Little did she know Harry didn’t want a partner-in-crime, he wanted someone to drive the getaway car. To me that seems more and more likely.
 
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