Miranda Devine: Meghan and Harry commit yet another royal betrayal
The situation Meghan Markle finds herself in is totally different to that of Princess Diana, and she and her husband Prince Harry should stop pretending otherwise, writes Miranda Devine.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
What absolute bastardry for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry to drop a bucket on the royal family for an Oprah Winfrey special on prime-time TV while 99-year-old Prince Philip is in hospital battling an infection and heart complications.
As if the Queen doesn’t have enough to worry about without hearing from her grandson and his vainglorious American wife that being part of the royal family is “unsurvivable”.
To make matters worse, the Oprah tell-all interview with the self-absorbed Sussexes will air this Sunday, the very day the Queen, 94, is due to deliver a televised address for Commonwealth Day.
Harry knows that’s a big deal, particularly in the Queen’s 70th year as monarch, at a time when the pandemic has isolated the royal family from the Commonwealth.
Judging by the two clips released by CBS so far, the interview is a doozy. At one point Oprah tells the couple they have revealed “some pretty shocking things”.
In one clip, Meghan is alone with Oprah, Harry having been banished off camera so his pregnant wife can trash his family to her heart’s content.
“It sounds like there was a breaking point,” Oprah says to Meghan. “Were you silent or were you silenced?”
Meghan, clad in a $4700 black Armani dress, does not have a speaking part in either promotional clip so we’ll have to wait to hear her response, but the unchangingly self-pitying expression on her face sends a distinct message.
Having seen how cruelly she treated her own father and sister after she met her ginger prince, we can see that Meghan is intent on doing the same, or worse, to her husband’s family.
Only this time she is messing with the monarchy, the reputation of the royal family and the honour of Britain.
It’s no way to win friends and influence people.
Meghan is nothing if not calculating, so you can assume she approved every detail of the salacious way her new “friend” Oprah has marketed the show, which will be viewed by tens of millions of people worldwide.
Originally slated for 90 minutes, the interview, titled “Oprah With Meghan and Harry: A CBS Primetime Special”, has been extended to a rare two-hour extravaganza in the most lucrative ad market on American TV.
The New York Post says Meghan and Harry were not paid for the interview, but the notoriety will feed their “billion-dollar brand” in the US, which includes $198 million deal with Netflix and $54 million with Spotify.
So much for the privacy they keep claiming they crave.
Escaping media scrutiny was one reason they cited for moving to, ahem, Los Angeles — home to more paparazzi than any other place on Earth.
Another short snatch of dialogue has Oprah responding to Meghan with the comment: “‘Almost unsurvivable’ sounds like there was a breaking point.”
Honestly.
As if it hasn’t been obvious that Meghan has been trying to cast herself as a victim of the monarchy, just like Princess Diana, in order to manipulate Harry, the second clip makes it explicit.
“My biggest concern was history repeating itself,” says Harry, holding hands with Meghan as she gazes adoringly at him like the B-grade TV actress she used to be.
There’s no doubt what he’s talking about as images of Diana holding baby Harry fill the screen.
Meghan made him believe that unless she got her way, she would suffer the same fate as Diana, crushed by the faceless men of the palace and his uncaring family.
But her situation was nothing like Diana’s. Harry’s mother was trapped in a loveless marriage with a man who had never given up his married mistress. She was just 19 when she married Charles, suffered from bulimia, was hounded by the paparazzi and was desperately lonely in the palace while her husband was off with Camilla.
Meghan, by contrast, was 36 and a divorcee when she walked down the aisle, making her the oldest woman ever to marry into the royal family.
Harry has been nothing but devoted ever since, and his family welcomed her with open arms, staging a lavish wedding and indulging every unorthodox demand.
As thanks, Meghan implied that she was a victim of racism from the royals and the British media.
Somehow, she managed to turn Harry against his brother William when they had been so close.
She cut him off from the military brotherhood that had meant so much to him and the duties that had given his life meaning.
She did it by acting out the worst nightmare of his childhood, when Diana was killed with her boyfriend in a car crash in Paris when Harry was 12. He had not been able to save his mother then, but nothing will stop him protecting his wife from what she has made him believe was “history repeating itself”.
“You know, for me,” he tells Oprah earnestly, “I’m just really relieved and happy to be sitting here talking to you with my wife by my side because I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for (Diana) going through this process by herself all those years ago.
“Because it has been unbelievably tough for the two of us, but at least we had each other.”
His father, Prince Charles, no doubt will be just delighted at the re-airing of these old wounds.
He may not have been the perfect husband but he paid the price, as did his family.
He made amends by forging a loving relationship with his sons.
He doesn’t deserve to have it thrown back in his face by an uppity new daughter-in-law who has manipulated Harry’s childhood trauma to serve her own interests.
Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph
Join the conversation
Albanese’s ‘great’ call with Trump turned out to be a dud, so why can’t Dutton capitalise?
The Prime Minister’s failure to get an Australian exemption from American steel and aluminium tariffs is emblematic of his all talk, no action style, writes James Morrow.
Read more
What Albo needs to do to dodge Trump’s tariffs
Anthony Albanese’s pitch to avoid Donald Trump’s tariffs is simple: we are not ripping anyone off. The President appears to have listened, but the PM has not convinced him yet.
Read more