Rita Panahi: Soap Oprah shows spoilt royals are shameless grifters

All the Oprah tell-all did was make the cashed-up couple look like entitled, calculating fantasists willing to sell out their own families.

What a spectacular own goal from the Duke and Duchess of Sententiousness.

If the Oprah tell-all was supposed to pull at the world’s heart strings and boost sympathy for Harry and Meghan, then it failed miserably, with the couple looking like entitled, calculating fantasists willing to sell out their own families.

Here were a couple of undeserved multi-millionaires moaning to their billionaire neighbour about how hard they have it.

Meghan is about as likeable as Veruca Salt but it’s too easy to blame her for the royal rift; it’s the quisling prince who is the real villain in firstly abandoning his family, duty and country and then deliberately trashing those who have loved and protected him for decades, particularly since he and William lost their mother.

The interview was a continuation of the relentless grievance-mongering we’ve seen from the pair but this time the focus wasn’t just on the “racist media” but the “racist” royal family. Much of what they said was contradictory, some of it verifiably false, but it will all nevertheless do enormous damage to the Queen and the monarchy she has headed for almost 70 years.

Oprah Winfrey interviews Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on for their CBS special

All in all it was a pitiful performance that should see the couple stripped of their remaining titles and any further largesse from the royal family.

To give Meghan credit, it’s clear she knows her audience and gave the race-obsessed media what they wanted to hear, though one can see why her acting career never took off.

There is something profoundly cowardly about throwing out accusations of racism but then refusing to name the offending party. As the interview aired social media erupted with claims that it was Prince Philip who had made the ugly comments about Harry and Meghan’s child, Archie. As the 99-year-old lay in hospital, his reputation was trashed, though Oprah has since come forward to say that the comments did not come from the Queen or Philip.

The Queen deserves better than to have the institution she has devoted her life to trashed by such an indulged couple

Harry and Meghan’s contemptible race-baiting was perhaps the lowest point in the interview and will do the most harm whether there’s a skerrick of truth to the claims or not.

Headlines from the US to the UK claimed that Archie was denied the title ‘prince’ because of concerns about his skin colour, an absolute untruth. Harry’s children were never going to be born princes or princesses due to an edict dating back to 1917 but what are facts when you have a victimhood narrative to push?

The vainglorious duo knew precisely what they were doing in throwing enough mud and hoping some of it sticks. If the comment was made, and said with malice, then name the person rather than smear the whole family as potential racists. Other false claims made by the pair have since been fact-checked including Meghan’s story that she was afforded no support with mental health issues.

As British columnist Brendan O’Neill noted, the interview showcased a culture clash, “a conflict between the contemporary cults of victimhood and identity politics keenly represented by Harry and Meghan ... and the older ideals of duty, self-sacrifice, stoicism and keeping your s..t together as embodied by the queen.”

Meghan seems desperate to emulate Diana in being the “people’s princess”, so much so that she is emulating aspects of her story and victimhood but unlike Diana, who was a teenager when she was plunged into the spotlight, Meghan was a savvy, worldly woman in her mid-thirties when she began dating Harry. If Diana were around, I wonder how long Meghan would’ve lasted?

Alarm bells should’ve rung long and loud at Buckingham Palace when the ambitious actor came on the scene. Meghan had only one family member attend her royal wedding. No siblings, no cousins or uncles and aunties, just her mother and a slew of new celebrity acquaintances, including Oprah who she’d only met once.

The remaning royals have been embattled by the scandal

But as I said earlier, the real villain isn’t Meghan even with her fantastical tales of oppression and victimhood, the person who deserves the greatest censure is Harry, who came across as an ungrateful man-child crying about daddy cutting the purse strings.

God forbid a 36-year-old man should support himself on the meagre $25m his mother left him or the $20m his great grandmother left him or the huge multimillion-dollar deals he has signed due purely to his royal status.

You’d think Harry would have a little more self-respect than to cry poor but victimhood has become synonymous with virtue. Much of the goodwill for Harry has evaporated with his pathetic carry on from the hypocrisy of his activism to the woe-is-me victim playing about media intrusion.

We should stop blaming Meghan for tearing Harry away from his family and start holding him responsible. After all, Meghan is an outsider and she has no deep ties to the commonwealth nor loyalty to the royal family.

The Queen deserves better than to have the institution she has devoted her life to trashed by an indulged couple who wanted all the fame and riches of royalty but none of the work or scrutiny.

IN SHORT

Was the alleged comment about Archie’s skin tone said with racist intent? Surely it’s natural to wonder who a child will look like when one parent is a beautiful mixed-race actor and the other is a ginger. Perhaps they’d hoped he’d take after Meghan.

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist

@RitaPanahi