Stop using Meghan Markle’s struggles to further your agenda.

It's been all anyone could talk about for the past week or so: are Harry and Meghan the victims here? What about the royal family? And who made *that* comment about the colour of Archie’s skin? Clearly there’s an issue somewhere, and of course the racism and mental health struggles that Meghan had dealt with are awful - anyone speaking up about their mental health should be listened to and believed. But the issue here is royal sceptics using this woman’s experience as an excuse to advocate for the abolition of the monarchy, with #AbolishTheMonarchy trending on Twitter, and leftist commentators having a field day, secretly loving the drama their tell-all interview had caused, with the concern of the situation turning on whether the monarchy should still exist and being an ‘anti-racist influencer’ rather than actual genuine concerns about Meghan Markle’s mental health.

Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion. If you’re anti-monarchy, naturally you’d use this interview as evidence as to why it’s so problematic. The issue is however, the way many people are discussing the situation is almost as if to say ‘ha, gotcha, racists!’ to monarchists rather than trying to find an explanation or context to the story and details behind the interview. Now that’s not to say they lied, I personally believed Meghan when she spoke of her mental health struggles and issues with racism - why wouldn’t I? But people seem to have forgotten that there are two sides to every story and Harry and Meghan’s words should not immediately be taken as absolute truth without any context to it whatsoever.

Now what I’m referring to here is more issues with their ‘version of events’ if you like, rather than personal mental health struggles. This meant that a lot of what both Harry and Meghan said was sometimes quite vague and out of context, leading to a lot of it being debunked by both royal experts and eagle-eyed viewers. One example of this is when Meghan claimed that Archie was offered ‘no protection or a title’. What we were led to believe in their interview is that the Queen and the rest of the royal family refused to protect Archie or give him a royal title; however royal experts have pointed out that by ‘security’, they are referring to taxpayer funded security, which is only really used for working members of the royal family, which is why Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie do not have any. This does not mean that the child will not be protected at all - do you really think the Queen wouldn’t protect her own great grandchild? Another example of an exaggeration of the truth is when they said Archie would be given no title. This was because royal titles are 1) not an entitlement of a royal baby, and 2) only really given to those in the direct line of succession, which also explains why Princess Eugenie’s newborn son, August, also does not hold a title. Meghan also discussed ‘not being allowed to leave the house for months’, a claim disproved with various photographs taken of Meghan out and about with friends during this time. The final claim I’m going to mention is her claim that she was ‘poorly educated’ about the royal family, a claim disproved by her former long-time friend, who stated she has said her alleged social-climbing buddy always wanted to be “Princess Diana 2.0,” while royal biographer Andrew Morton has written that the duchess cried watching the funeral of her husband’s mother on TV in 1997. This aside, it is also very difficult to believe that Meghan, knowing who her partner was, did not at any point research him or his family.

As you can see, Meghan cannot be said to have ‘lied’ about anything really, but more exaggerated the truth or told her version of events with no real context as to how and when everything took place, but somehow royal sceptics on Twitter seem to have forgotten that there are always two sides to a story, so why are they taking Harry and Meghan’s word as the absolute truth? It’s because this interview and the couple’s troubles with the royal family give anti-monarchists the perfect alibi. It is now easier than ever to think of an excuse to abolish the royal family: ‘look how they treated Meghan! Look how they treated Diana!’ (conveniently forgetting the fact that the late Princess was a monarchist). If these people actually cared about Meghan’s mental health, along with anyone else’s, they would have done actual work with mental health charities and spread genuine awareness for depression, anxiety, etc., but instead they’re sitting behind a computer screen tweeting why the monarchy should be abolished. The royal family are not a racist family, which Prince William has also recently reiterated, but even if they were (hypothetically speaking), how would abolishing the monarchy stop them being racist? They would continue to be racist, only in private if that was the case.

To summarise, I absolutely do sympathise with Meghan Markle’s mental health experiences. People need to realise that mental health can affect anyone - no matter how rich or poor a person is - and the racism she experienced was also awful. But people need to learn that there are two sides to every story, and unless you have definitive proof of what someone is saying, you cannot take someone’s version of events as absolute truth. Also, do not use somebody else’s experiences to further an agenda. Abolishing the monarchy would not help Harry and Meghan very much, and will certainly not ‘end racism’, not that the royals are racist.

Sources:

https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/a35828375/palace-insists-archie-denied-title-royal-protocol-nothing-to-do-with-race/

https://pagesix.com/2021/03/14/markle-claims-during-oprah-interview-debunked-by-2014-blog-post/