Vicious, excoriating: Harry and Meghan’s Netflix series is a wrong royal revenge

Harry & Meghan’s Netflix revenge is disingenuous and cruel, but also a psychological minefield with Harry conflating his mother and his wife.

A scene from and Meghan’s Netflix docuseries. Picture: Netflix

Harry & Meghan’s Netflix revenge on the royal family is a vicious targeting of Buckingham Palace, Prince Harry’s father King Charles and his brother Prince William but it is also a psychological minefield, with Harry conflating his wife and his mother.

At every point in the six part series, Harry alludes to the experiences of Diana the Princess of Wales and equates them with Meghan. An occasional reference is understandable but this was an astounding cross generational loveathon, from the timing of Meghan’s announcement of their second child, which was the same day as Diana announced her second pregnancy, to the perceived harassment of the press, to how Diana would wipe away tears before carrying out an engagement. Hey, that’s exactly what was happening to Meghan, Harry insisted.

And of course Meghan was so wildly popular on her 2018 Australian tour, just like Diana, that the “internals” in the palace had to redress the imbalance. According to Harry, Meghan (like Diana) was so much better at doing royal things than the people who were born to do it. Diana’s claims in her infamous Panorama interview that: “With the media situation came a lot of jealousy”, Harry insisted that like his mother, “the penny dropped for Meghan” when she was on the front page of newspapers after an event attended by major royals including the Queen.

A scene from Harry and Meghan Netflix docuseries. Picture: Netflix

Cue the evil British press who apparently were complicit in the heartbreaking leaking and planting of stories, which were allegedly racist in tone, from the office of his brother, Prince William.

This series, and indeed Harry’s upcoming memoirs in January, are completely mistimed and misjudged. For this very entitled couple complain about having had to live (rent free) in the “so small” Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, show off their nanny Lauren, and then parade around their own $20m Montecito Californian mansion, including one scene where Meghan is sitting in a chair with a perfectly placed Hermes scarf draped over the back.

All the while the British audience, vilified for telling Meghan during a walkabout in Liverpool that she wasn’t treating her father Thomas very well (Harry still hasn’t met him and Thomas has never met his two grandchildren Archie and Lilibet), face plummeting living standards and a daily struggle to turn on expensive heating in sub zero temperatures.

The Sussexes’ woes won’t find much sympathy in these isles. But then the series was never intended for a British audience, rather an American one with the series’ quite bizarre insistence that everything negative about Meghan was about race.

The series claims media portrayal of Meghan being “Duchess Difficult” and wearing off-the-shoulder dresses that broke royal protocol – comparing similar outfits with Kate that weren’t criticised – was being racist. The series also claims a headline “Get Over Yourself Love’’ was racist.

The series is missing how Meghan’s plummeting relationship with the British public stemmed from her abrasive treatment of staff and complaints that royal duties were often mundane ribbon cutting, and not celebrity filled ostentatious baby showers, or diva-like behaviour in clearing out rows of seats during Wimbledon. Nor was the Sussexes’ constant preaching including about climate change, as they swanned about in private jets, well received. None of this was about Meghan being a woman of colour, but these aspects of their behaviour weren’t addressed in a serious manner in the series.

Charles and Prince Harry.

While it remains to be seen if the American public will believe such one-sided interpretations, the Sussexes have some powerful friends who are clearly supportive.

One funny moment in the series had Meghan exclaiming that she didn’t know Beyonce, who had sent a text to her phone, would know of her. The bigger question is how did Beyonce get Meghan’s number?

And then bizarrely, their new best friend the movie mogul billionaire Tyler Perry, whom Meghan had never met, but who is now the godfather to Lilibet, provided his Beverly Hills mansion for them to escape to for three months in early 2020 after they feared the paparazzi in Canada.

Perry made some of the most controversial claims in the series, inferring that King Charles was acting like a domestic violence abuser by cutting off Harry’s allowance.

A scene from the Harry and Meghan docuseries. Picture: Netflix

Said Perry: “Them making her think she is going crazy, I saw my mother abused for years, I knew the symptoms . this woman (Meghan) was abused, and so was he (Harry). To use the institution to try and do all things batterers do: we are going to cut off money and we are not going to leave you with security, to make you comply and come back, and for both of them to have the wherewithal to say to the palace ‘I don’t give a damn’, I applaud all of that.”

For Harry and Meghan to have allowed such a damaging statement about the royals to survive the editing process in the series of which they are co-producers is extraordinary.

Harry says that the couple had discussed living abroad “for years” living abroad, with New Zealand and then South Africa being seriously considered; so leaving Britain hadn’t blindsided his grandmother, the Queen. He also said he had offered to give up the couple’s royal titles.

Meghan was horrified she wasn’t at the January 2020 Sandringham Summit to discuss their exit from the royal family and Harry believes the scheduling was intentional to ensure she was excluded.

Harry describes scenes of William shouting and then incredibly claims the Queen was somehow deceived by her advisers.

“It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and have my father say things that simply weren’t true and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in,” he said.

With a heavy sigh Harry adds: “She is going to go on the advice she’s been given, everything that happened to us was always going to happen to us”.

While the public in the UK is appalled at Harry and Meghan’s tales of victimhood, just how Charles will respond will be the next chapter in this excoriating, excruciating soap opera.