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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35341 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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So...the interminable Duchess Megan scandal is in the news again. It seems like with Charles becoming King and Harry soon to have a book out everyone is going back to their corners to relitigate this.

(For those of you who were complaining about frivolous Anglosphere topics : you're welcome :))

Last time I actually dug into this the conclusion I came to was that there was essentially a cultural clash between Hollywood and royal values. I similarly felt that the geographic divide in the reactions (Americans seeing her treatment as obviously racist, there being a more mixed British reaction) was a product of clashing ideas about work and just how awful life could be for a royal of any race (my take being that the Americans vastly underestimated the relevance of classism and foreign culture - since they tend to see this stuff through a mainly racial lens, other factors either merely being aggravating ones or just dogwhistles)

Recently, a new book based on the Courtier's perspective had excerpts published in the Times that go into more detail.. It had some interesting tidbits that were reported years ago.

The take of Palace courtiers is - unsurprisingly - that they tried to be accommodating but a combination of culture clashes made this impossible: Megan not respecting that the Palace staff had no interest in being called on late, Megan being directly hostile and rude, Megan simply not understanding how the Royal family worked (as that Palace Papers' excerpt puts it "she thought she had more seniority [than she did]").

However, relations between Meghan and the team at Kensington Palace were fraying fast ... a senior aide discreetly raised with the couple the difficulties caused by their treatment of staff. People needed to be treated well and with some understanding, even when they were not performing to Harry and Meghan’s standards, they suggested. Meghan was said to have replied, “It’s not my job to coddle people.”

...

At around the same time, Meghan spoke particularly harshly at a meeting to a young female member of the team in front of her colleagues. After Meghan had pulled to shreds a plan she had drawn up, the woman told Meghan how hard it would be to implement a new one. “Don’t worry,” Meghan told her. “If there was literally anyone else I could ask to do this, I would be asking them instead of you.”

Later, Prince William, who had heard of some of the treatment that she had been subjected to, came to find the woman. “I hope you’re OK,” he told her. “You’re doing a really good job.” She promptly burst into tears.

On another occasion, when Meghan felt she had been let down over an issue that was worrying her, she rang repeatedly when the staffer was out for dinner on a Friday night. “Every ten minutes, I had to go outside to be screamed at by her and Harry. It was, ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this. You’ve let me down. What were you thinking?’ It went on for a couple of hours.” The calls started again the next morning and continued “for days”, the staffer said. “You could not escape them. There were no lines or boundaries – it was last thing at night, first thing in the morning.”

...

On another occasion, there was confusion over the arrangements for a London engagement by the duchess. Meghan thought that no media would be there, but it was on a press rota. It was the sort of mishap that did not go down well. The member of staff involved knew they would have to talk to Meghan about it and was dreading the prospect. After they missed a call from her, they rang back, but she did not pick up. They said: “She hasn’t called back. I feel terrified.” A short time later, they added: “This is so ridiculous. I can’t stop shaking.”

The excerpts paint a picture of what is, essentially, a "girlboss". In multiple senses of the word . How you feel about Meghan shapes which girlboss you see. From what I've heard from pro-Meghan Americans keen on Royal gossip the Palace staff essentially come across as lazy and incapable of handling a driven woman who has strong expectations for the work ethic of her staff. To the people on the other side she comes across as a crass American determined to drive "her" workers into the ground in the name of her empowerment, incapable of adapting to a more traditional organization (one that has more...refined means of showing aggression*) - aka a "girlboss" in the pejorative sense.

Does this really come down to just a different work culture in the US vs UK? Cause, to be honest, my stereotype was that UK was basically European Canada on this: there are a few differences (and they never stop bragging about them where they feel they're ahead) but work culture and its expectations are much closer than with other states. The Palace staff sound positively French at some points of this! Is the Palace just some oasis sheltered from the rat race that envelopes other parts of Britain?

* I'm not convinced that the Palace considered her behavior immoral. At worst, it was probably considered...uncouth.

First, all of this is celebrity gossip, and it's not just the gutter press or tabloid rags who eat it up with a spoon, even the 'serious' papers generally have royal correspondents. Tittle-tattle and controversy sell papers, so there is interest in having 'exclusives' and 'insider stories'. Even twenty-five years after her death, papers will still run articles on and about Princess Diana.

Second, a good deal of this is manufactured, and silly stories to boot. Before Meghan came along, Kate (as a commoner married in) was subject to the same kind of "she's a nightmare to work with, she doesn't understand the culture, she's too big for her boots" stories. As well as stories about who had the better arse, her or her sister. Yes, that level. Where drama doesn't exist, the media make it up, because conflict is needed for a juicy story. 'Tell all' books by courtiers and insiders and close friends and what-not have long been serialised by the media, and they whip up interest by giving juicy extracts like the "Meghan is a nightmare" one. 'Meghan and Kate are deadly rivals' is the story all the media love, and now Kate has been rehabilitated as the Good One to Meghan's Wicked Witch.

Third, there probably is a lot of behind-the-scenes (and not so behind) power tussles going on, especially now that Charles is finally king and William has moved into the position of Prince of Wales. Harry should be moving up as well, except that he and Meghan (or looks more likely Meghan) resigned as senior royals. So she definitely doesn't understand the role or how the monarchy works, and is behaving like a Hollywood celebrity and treating staff accordingly. The precedent of how the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were eased out is always there, and Meghan cut off her nose to spite her face when she walked out in an ultimatum. Doing chat show interviews about racism may go down well in the USA, but they don't make the Sussexes look good to the family back in Britain, and right now Meghan is doing all she can to bring down the fate of Fergie (Sarah Ferguson, ex-wife of Prince Andrew) on herself - reduced to having to go the chat-show circuit and make money wherever she can because she put herself beyond the pale. Just because you marry into the family doesn't automatically mean you are now rich; the 'working royals' are the ones who carry out various state duties, and they get paid from the monarch's allotment which is a combination of personal wealth and government income. If you don't want to do the duties, as Meghan allegedly didn't, then you don't get paid anything (Andrew, because of the Virginia Giuffre scandal, was stripped of titles and awards and right now is in limbo about his finances, for instance). Harry doesn't have any money of his own (unless his mother left him something, I don't know) because up to now he's been paid the allowance as a working royal. He doesn't own any estates or property personally. EDIT: Oops, I forgot that he was created Duke of Sussex as a revived title, and that is hereditary. So he is possessor of whatever estate goes with that.

We don't know what is really going on, and all the 'insider tell-all' books won't let us know, either.

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