Apparently, there was a documentary on British television over the weekend called Harry and Meghan: The New Revelations. It was about, I suppose, the excerpts from Finding Freedom. What is hilarious to me is that there are so many British people – not to mention royal commentators – insisting that Harry and Meghan are boring and terrible and everyone needs to move on and stop paying attention to them, and yet… the British media outlets absolutely still see the Sussexes as revenue streams and cash-cows. Anyway, Andrew Morton was interviewed on the documentary and he had some notable sympathy for Meghan. Morton is best known as Princess Diana’s once-authorized biographer, and while Morton has absolutely said and done some problematic sh-t, he’s also been making some interesting points about how little the monarchy has actually changed since the days of Diana.

Lady Diana’s biographer Andrew Morton has claimed that Meghan Markle may have felt frustrated by the fact she could not speak for herself. Speaking during Channel 5 documentary, Harry and Meghan: The New Revelations, the royal author, most famous for writing Diana: Her True Story, reveals how he feels for ‘poor’ Meghan, who had wanted to do her best when she joined the royal family.

Commenting on the Duchess of Sussex’s first steps as a royal, Morton claims opinionated 21st-century woman Meghan was bound to struggle to adapt to the ‘say nothing’ royal rule of thumb – adding that Finding Freedom was her chance to set the record straight. Morton goes on to say that he believes Finding Freedom was Meghan’s way of trying to express how she approached the royal family and ‘how she was dismayed by the easy criticism of everything that she was trying to do.’

‘She’s been frustrated by the fact that she’s not been able to give her side of the story,’ he explains. ‘All kinds of stories have come out about her, and she’s not been able to answer back, and it’s something she’s found immensely frustrating.’

Morton adds that Prince Harry’s apparent hostility for the media, and especially for tabloids and paparazzi, has only grown stronger over the years. The documentary touches on the fact that Meghan, being an active, outspoken feminist and wanting to speak on different political issues, was going to experience a ‘culture clash’ with the traditional – and white – royal family. Morton also says he feels that modern woman Meghan wanted to do her best when she moved to the UK to be with Harry.

‘I feel for this poor girl, I mean, she came into this country, parachuted in,’ he explains. ‘She’s marrying into a very difficult family, that everybody finds difficult to come into. And she’s someone who didn’t know an awful lot about British history, British culture and as she said herself ‘she’s gonna hit the ground running’. And she hit the ground running, but she found she came up against a brick wall.’

Looking back at Meghan’s first engagement with the Queen, which took place at Merseyside in 2018, Morton says Meghan ‘was trying her best’ but had no idea how to behave. She didn’t know the protocol, she didn’t know the etiquette. I’ll give you a perfect example,’ he explains. ‘She went up to Liverpool with the Queen, and she’s sitting on the chairs and it’s a windy day. She doesn’t know what side of the car to get into,to get out of, what hand to hold her handbag in, and you can see that kind of confusion in her face. Meghan, even though she’s an actress, has had to swap the red carpet for the royal road show.’

[From The Daily Mail]

Was a memo sent out from the palace or something? Why are all of these (male) commentators going on and on about how “Meghan didn’t know the rules.” This is what Edward Enninful said too – that Meghan didn’t know “the rules,” which is all part of the Holy Royal Protocol, and no one has ever written these rules down and yet everyone is supposed to know the rules, and as we all saw, the rules were often applied arbitrarily or solely for Meghan. But really, the “rules” conversation is just another way to otherize Meghan and to tell her (repeatedly) that she “didn’t know her place.” Meghan legitimately did feel silenced and otherized and smeared… because they were silencing her, otherizing her and smearing her.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red and WENN.