Prince Harry and Meghan Markle talk about the royal family in new documentary
Courtesy | Wikimedia Commons
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle did more than just share their American life together in their new Netflix documentary — they took a jab at family back in England.
“I genuinely feel that I – and we – are exactly where we’re supposed to be. We’ve made it to the other side,” Harry said in the sixth and final episode of “Harry & Meghan,” the documentary.
Harry’s recently published and divisive memoir, “Spare,” which recounts details of long-ago spats between himself, his brother, and their wives, was released less than a month later.
The Netflix documentary follows their progress from anxious years working in the royal family to a heavily publicized return to North America. Many viewers and readers found a multiplicity of reasons to dislike the pair. Overwhelmingly, blame for the couple leaving their roles as senior members of the royal family fell on Markle.
Though Harry is a grown man capable of making his own decisions, some argue that Markle is a heinous, manipulative woman who forced him into this new life. Others claim that such reactions stem from jealousy spewing from women whose husbands wouldn’t do so much as a grocery run for them.
Markle’s plight was more understandable when she lived with a family allegedly largely unconcerned about her well-being, but now the couple has cut themselves off and built the exact life they wanted — and still, apparently, they care what the Daily Mail thinks of their choices?
Pity for the couple now feels woefully misdirected. Markle’s struggle with poor mental health is nothing to scoff at — but after watching her cry on a suede lounge chair, draped in a $1,625 Hermes blanket, it becomes more difficult to summon true sympathy. Harry and Meghan have the life they were always after. Why expose more private family drama now, and through more than just one medium?
Many people suffer the pangs of anxiety and depression, but they don’t choose to broadcast it from the comfort of a luxurious home in a life assured of financial stability.
After all, having invested some of the funds left to him by his mother, Princess Diana, Harry inherited about $10 million on his 30th birthday. The couple has now also accumulated deals with Netflix, Spotify, and book publishers. Fret not, concerned commentators everywhere — you can rest easy tonight knowing that Meghan and Harry certainly will.
The real tragedy here is a simple, timeless, and heartbreaking one. It’s an old story about the break-up of a family. If the royal drama evokes any emotion in readers, it should be sadness at disappointing family dysfunction and gratitude that for everyone else, that happens behind (mostly) closed doors.
Harry directs the memoir’s first chapter at his father and brother directly, writing about how he realized that neither King Charles nor Prince William truly understood why he and Markle left.
“I have to tell them,” Harry begins. “And so: Pa? Willy? World? Here you go.”
Despite Harry’s supposedly vulnerable address to the public, any unfolding drama should only serve as another warning of what happens when modern media consumes people as if they’re living in the world of “The Truman Show.” Once again, parasocial relationships rear their ugly heads.
The American public knows as much about Meghan and Harry, the royal family, and the real intricacies of their life as they do any reality show couple — which is only as much as the family wanted the public to know and then whatever tabloids can get slimy fingers on. In the end, slipping into judgmental hatred of two wealthy people seeking to turn their private lives into mindless entertainment will likely just pay for another shockingly expensive throw.
