Lip-Reading and Fashion Criticism: Meghan’s U.K.
Trip Under Scrutiny
The actions of Meghan, and her husband, Prince Harry,
as they mourn the queen have been the subject of biting social commentary — as
usual.
Sarah Lyall
By Sarah
Lyall
Sept. 17,
2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/17/world/europe/meghan-harry-queen-funeral.html
LONDON —
All Meghan Markle did was put on a somber outfit and a sympathetic expression
and walk around in public with three other people for 45 minutes. But the
pointillistic armchair analysis of that brief event — a surprise outing outside
Windsor Castle last Saturday featuring Meghan and her husband, Prince Harry,
and Prince William and his wife — has gone on ever since.
The
incident, for those following this particular saga, represented a brief
cessation of, or maybe presaged an eventual thaw in, the coldness and hostility
that has developed between the Prince and Princess of Wales (William and Kate)
and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (Harry and Meghan) in the past few years.
Thrown, or
perhaps pushed, into shared mourning after the death of Harry and William’s
grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, the four came together for the first time in
more than a year to express their gratitude to the crowds, admire the bouquets
of flowers left for the queen and demonstrate that they were able to exist in
the same general location without seeming overtly hostile to each other.
From the
moment Meghan appeared in public, and in the days that followed, Meghan-watchers
in the papers and on social media have analyzed the video of the event as if it
had been filmed by Zapruder himself, turning into instant lip-readers,
body-language analysts, fashion critics and protocol experts in service to a
never-ending parlor game: What Has Meghan Done Now?
How did
Meghan’s dress (black and calf-length, with a flared skirt) compare with Kate’s
dress (black and calf-length, with a slim skirt)? Did Kate snub Meghan by
apparently not looking at, talking to or acknowledging her? Was it true, as
someone claimed on TikTok, that Meghan tried to forge ahead of the others into
the flower area, only to have Harry remind her “of royal protocol by subtly
holding her hand back to let William and Kate come through to the flowers first”?
Becoming
queen. Following the death of King George VI, Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary
ascended to the throne on Feb. 6, 1952, at age 25. The coronation of the newly
minted Queen Elizabeth II took place on June 2 the following year.
A historic
visit. On May 18, 1965, Elizabeth arrived in Bonn on the first state visit by a
British monarch to Germany in more than 50 years. The trip formally sealed the
reconciliation between the two nations following the world wars.
First
grandchild. In 1977, the queen stepped into the role of grandmother for the
first time, after Princess Anne gave birth to a son, Peter. Elizabeth’s four
children have given her a total of eight grandchildren, who have been followed
by several great-grandchildren.
Princess
Diana’s death. In a rare televised broadcast ahead of Diana’s funeral in 1997,
Queen Elizabeth remembered the Princess of Wales, who died in a car crash in
Paris at age 36, as “an exceptional and gifted human being.”
Golden
jubilee. In 2002, celebrations to mark Elizabeth II's 50 years as queen
culminated in a star-studded concert at Buckingham Palace in the presence of
12,000 cheering guests, with an estimated one million more watching on giant
screens set up around London.
A trip to
Ireland. In May 2011, the queen visited the Irish Republic, whose troubled
relationship with the British monarchy spanned centuries. The trip, infused
with powerful symbols of reconciliation, is considered one of the most
politically freighted trips of Elizabeth’s reign.
Breaking a
record. As of 5:30 p.m. British time on Sept. 9, 2015, Elizabeth II became
Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, surpassing Queen Victoria, her
great-great-grandmother. Elizabeth was 89 at the time, and had ruled for 23,226
days, 16 hours and about 30 minutes.
Marking 70
years of marriage. On Nov. 20, 2017, the queen and Prince Philip celebrated
their 70th anniversary, becoming the longest-married couple in royal history.
The two wed in 1947, as the country and the world was still reeling from the
atrocities of World War II.
Losing her
spouse. In 2021, Queen Elizabeth II bade farewell to Prince Philip, who died on
April 9. An image of the queen grieving alone at the funeral amid coronavirus
restrictions struck a chord with viewers at home following the event.
Opinions
about Meghan vary widely, and with facts thin on the ground, responses to
events like these tend to reflect deeply held, and entrenched, emotions. So
some people reported on social media that a happy murmur went through the crowd
at Windsor when they saw the two couples together; others said the opposite,
declaring that while some mourners were excited to see William, Kate and Harry,
they were actively opposed to Meghan’s presence. Various topics trended on
Twitter: #Meghan (mixed views but with a healthy pro-Meghan contingent) and
#MeghanMarkleGoHome (self-explanatory).
A similarly
robust and mostly fact-free conversation erupted on Wednesday, after the two
couples, along with other members of the royal family, left a service at
Westminster Hall following the arrival of the queen’s coffin. Harry and Meghan
walked out holding hands, unlike most of the other royal couples. A debate
ensued: Were they disrespectfully behaving like “lovesick teenagers,” or was it
OK to hold hands with your spouse while leaving a somber occasion?
It turned
out, too, that another pair — Princess Anne’s daughter, Zara, and her husband,
Mike Tindall — also held hands on the way out, which added an element of
confusion to the issue. As Meghan fans have long pointed out, she is often
attacked by the hostile tabloids and on social media for doing the exact same
things that other royals, particularly Kate, the Princess of Wales, are praised
for.
In the
United States, where they moved after stepping back from royal duties in 2020
(“Megxit”), Meghan and Harry have been working diligently to raise their two
children and reposition themselves as celebrities and influencers — that is,
American-style royals — with a splashy Netflix deal and multiple charity and
business ventures. They have made high-profile speeches at places like the
United Nations (Harry), started a podcast series featuring interviews with
famous guests (Meghan), brought the cameras along to record them as they do
charity work and spoken publicly about issues like mental health and how they
feel betrayed and mistreated by Harry’s family.
They are
collaborating on a memoir that they say will be a candid account of who they
are and how they feel, with plenty of details about their falling out with the
royal family and their uneasy departure from Britain.
When
Elizabeth died last week, the couple were already in Britain at the tail end of
what The Daily Mail derided as a “pseudo-royal tour” and The Times of London
unkindly called “a mini freelance royal tour.”
Accusing
Meghan and Harry of blatant attention-seeking during this trip, the papers
nonetheless stepped on their own arguments by showering them with attention,
albeit mostly negative. “For those of us who have had more than enough of Harry
and Meghan, I’m afraid they’re back on this side of the Atlantic,” Hilary Rose
wrote in The Times of London.
Then the
queen died, and Harry traveled by himself to Balmoral, in Scotland. Some
reports said, without verifiable attribution, that he had been ordered to leave
Meghan behind so as not to upset the rest of the family. Harry stayed for just
a short time before returning to his wife. There things stood until they
accepted the invitation to walk around for a bit with William, Kate, the crowds
at Windsor and a bunch of cameras.
Alas, we’ll
never know the truth behind it. We’ll never know, for instance, if the possible
rapprochement came about because King Charles III “ordered his warring sons to
set aside their ongoing feud,” as The Daily Mail reported on Saturday — or
because Prince William unilaterally sent a “bombshell text” to his brother
laying out the terms of the proposed joint appearance, as the paper
(contradicting itself) reported on Sunday.
The Mirror
tabloid followed what appeared to be an anti-Meghan party line in reporting
that some of the mourners in the crowd refused to shake her hand and, in one
case, haughtily donned a pair of sunglasses in response to her arrival.
According to the paper’s analysis of a video of the incident, another woman
turned away and then pointedly “gave the Duchess of Sussex the stink eye,
before laughing” in her general direction.
Meanwhile,
the commentator and controversialist Piers Morgan, an obsessively close
observer and relentless critic of Meghan, inevitably waded in with his usual
splenetic views.
“Don’t be
misled by the scenes of supposed hatchet-burying between William and his
brother at the weekend,” he wrote in The New York Post and on the Fox News
website, in a piece titled, “Harry, If You Really Want to Honor Your Dad, Nix
Your Salacious Tell-all and Rein In Your Royals-Trashing Wife.”
To which
one reader responded on Twitter: “‘Rein in your wife’…?! What is this, the
Middle Ages?!!!”
Sarah Lyall
is a writer at large, working for a variety of desks including Sports, Culture,
Media and International. Previously she was a correspondent in the London bureau,
and a reporter for the Culture and Metro desks. @sarahlyall
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