Harry and Meghan: welcome to the House of Whinger

Harry and Meghan during their interview with Oprah Winfrey. Picture: CBS

Australia will celebrate the official birthday for Queen Elizabeth II next weekend ahead of her platinum jubilee in 2022. The Queen is a study in resilience and the embodiment of duty, but it has been another annus horribilis for her. The death of her husband, Prince Philip, and her close friend, Michael Oswald, in April were followed by a series of public attacks on the royal family by her wayward grandson, Prince Harry. The royals’ response was a stiff upper lip. They rose to the occasion by rising above the fray.

The great virtue of America is to have produced a first-rate stereotype of how the world sees Hollywood, in the figure of Meghan Markle – a supercilious, self-promoting member of the PC class who bemoans the lot of the poor from a multimillion-dollar mansion in California. She is America’s princess now, but only after she failed to make it in the House of Windsor. Markle’s main virtue is to have whisked hubby Harry away to California where he can reign like pop royalty while his big brother, William, bears the burden of royal duty in Britain.

Meghan Markle’s main virtue is to have whisked hubby Harry away to California where he can reign like pop royalty. Picture: AFP

The Me You Don’t See was the unlikely title of a series about Harry, an already overexposed royal who basks in the spotlight yet deplores the glare of press scrutiny. In recent years, Harry has undergone a transformation. The former party boy known for dropping his trousers at a Las Vegas party later complained his privacy had been violated when photos of his naked romp leaked. Having found himself a 30-something bachelor with no bride in sight, Harry met Meghan, a TV actress with a blog. Shortly after their relationship went public, the dreary duo started to complain. First, they flew at the press. Then, the British public got a serve. And this year, in the warm bosom of an Oprah Winfrey show, Harry and Meghan capitalised on their liberty from royal tradition by trashing the royal family.

Harry might have been remembered as the royal spare who left luxury behind to fight terrorism in Afghanistan. Post-Meghan, he sounds more like a spoiled toff with an Oedipus complex taking talk therapy to extremes. On Oprah, he compared his wife to his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. He also said Prince Charles had stopped taking his calls. Wouldn’t you? We saw a therapy session where he sat arms crossed and eyes closed with his fingers tapping. Apparently, it releases trauma. But his chosen therapy, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, has been studied in controlled conditions and also shown to increase susceptibility to misinformation as well as inaccurate memories.

In the Armchair Expert podcast, Harry spoke about his relationship with his father and something called “genetic pain”, which he believes is passed down through generations. Like many parents, Harry and Meghan believe they will break the generational cycle of pathos they seem to hold responsible for their own character failings; a serious and constructive goal, but unlikely to come to fruition unless they stop blame-shifting, drop the attitude of entitlement and learn to respect others’ privacy as much as they demand respect for their own.

As long as Meghan and Harry make a profit from trashing family, they can expect some criticism in kind. A recent return-fire incident from England is a kindly invitation issued by Lady Colin Campbell to Prince Harry to have him request that the Queen put his titles into abeyance. At the time of writing, Campbell’s online petition had more than 58,000 signatures, well short of the golden number 75,000, at which point the letter will apparently become “one of the top signed on Change.org!”. It is a dismal exercise, but pales in comparison with 30-something kidults maligning family members on TV.

The exploits of Harry and Meghan have played well in the US. However, Australians maintain loyalty to the royal family. Earlier this year, an Ipsos poll showed 40 per cent reject the idea of Australia becoming a republic while only a third (34 per cent) favour it – the lowest level of support since 1979. Consistent with previous such polls, support for the royal family increases as you travel left to right on the political spectrum. Greens and Labor voters want a republic (46 per cent and 41 per cent, respectively) more than Coalition voters (27 per cent). However, the figure that bodes well for the monarchy is the youth vote, with only a quarter of those aged 18-24 indicating they would support Australia becoming a republic.

Some republic supporters saw Harry and Meghan’s interview as a fresh start for their cause because it was an emotional plea. That theirs is a vulgarity passionately expressed makes it no less vulgar, only more compelling. They excel at the kind of anti-social behaviour that is the stuff of reality TV; interpersonal betrayal masked as a cri de coeur. The violation of privacy involved in publicly betraying loved ones plays into the human desire for voyeurism, gossip and schadenfreude. What makes the Harry-and-Meghan show more devastating is their unwavering sense of personal responsibility for disseminating their truth about the world, even when it happens to be false.

Harry and Meghan left the House of Windsor for the House of Whinger. Their milieu brims with champagne socialists who have revived the Ancien Régime for a new age where “let them eat brioche” is démode but let them eat tosh is de fabulous. All hail Harry, California princeling.