3 Harsh Truths: Why Harry and Meghan Left

By

Sonia. G

It’s not the media, it’s the Royal Family, specifically three members (which doesn’t include the one being accused of sleeping with an underage girl). Yes, the media has been awful to Meghan, vicious, and racist in its pursuit. The reckless, irresponsible and sensationalist coverage, calculated to do maximum damage is not being excused here. Instead, it’s being recognized as the festering sores seeping through from the British Royal Family (BRF) court life. 

The heartbreaking truth is that the people being accused of feeding the media these lies and encouraging the inhumane treatment are the courtiers of Clarence House, Buckingham and Kensington Palaces. The people led by Harry’s grandmother, father, and brother.  His family. The people whom he once signaled to the world, that for his wife it’s “the family she never had”. How does a man recover from a missile like this? The discovery that he stood alone against the media’s cruelty, and that his family is seen as essentially standing by doing nothing, and in other cases aiding and abetting? The clues were littered throughout his message confirming the coming battle against the depraved Mail on Sunday. In those words, we heard and felt his anguish, and for some of us looking on, knew then that one simply doesn’t recover, not without leaving first. 

No Family Is Perfect, But….

There’s a term coined by a popular business writer – perceptual acuity. It means “the ability to sense what is coming before the fog clears”. The Family sensed what was coming before the wedding ended – the Sussexes were going to be worldwide superstars and they were desperate to control them. But Harry and Meghan were never going to just do what they were told. They had ideas and they planned on using them. As Meghan said, “it’s very important to want to hit the ground running”. She and Harry were seen to be outworking and outshining the heirs to the throne. So, they had to be stopped.

They appear to have employed the media to do so. From Dan Wootton after bellowing “Royals don’t guest edit magazines” (conveniently forgetting that Prince Charles had done so several times), explaining that: “The Royal Family and the staff of the Royal Family are often the very ones leaking these stories to the Press.” To Palmer gleefully announcing that no one in the BRF is supporting Harry and Meghan, the truth began to emerge, they couldn’t help themselves. 

It’s a pattern you will see repeated when you listen to the media terrorists working for the axis of news evil that is the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Express, The Times, the Telegraph, etc. How can it be racism, when the tone and the coverage of Meghan is coming at the behest of the Royal Family and their staff? It never occurs to any of them to analyze whether the BRF is racist. It’s important to note here that racism is not an opinion, its existence isn’t determined by the uninformed views of a few “reporters”. But it does explain the bias behind the contrasting headlines we see when Meghan and the rest of the Family undertake the same act.

The norm for the BRF is to work with the media to get good coverage. In return, the media appears to look the other way, for as long as possible, from their dirty deeds. Just a listing of them turns your head.

They hate the media but appear willing to weaponize it to punish those who don’t comply. The leaking to the press escalated to pressure Harry and Meghan into doing things their way. But Harry knows you don’t negotiate with media terrorists. He learned that lesson the hard way when as he saw it, they killed his mother. 

In the documentary recognizing the 20th anniversary of her death: 

“I think one of the hardest things to come to terms with, is the fact that the people that chased her into the tunnel were the same people that were taking photographs of her while she was still dying on the backseat of the car. And William and I know that we’ve been told that numerous times by people that know that was the case. She’d had quite a severe head injury but she was very much still alive on the backseat and those people that that caused the accident instead of helping were taking photographs of her dying on the backseat and then those photographs made their way back to the news desks in this country.”

Let’s look at the three harsh truths, shall we?

1. William Has A Role But Lives Life Without Drive or Passion: Tim Shipman’s article in the Times was the first time what we long suspected was put in print – William was working with the media. There was a cold war between the brothers and the papers had seemingly chosen the side of the brother who was willing to work with them.  
   William, heir to the throne, was apparently also jealous of his little brother and that extended to the Queen’s gifts to Harry. As Emily Andrews puts it: “they’d fallen out over positions, Harry had been giving these plumb positions in the Commonwealth Queens Commonwealth Trust by the Queen. William hadn’t, of course, Williams gonna be king he doesn’t need to be, but he didn’t see it like that.” Harry has found his purpose, first with the military and Invictus Games, and now with Meghan focusing on the Commonwealth. William has never articulated a coherent strategy on what kind of Heir he wants to be, he’s only ever managed to babble it will be different from his father. He’s said, “I want to be my own man and take my own style”. We’ve yet to see any difference, beyond him doing less work. A beast like the media needs to be fed constantly, and William was doing his part. While he was fighting off rumors about an affair on the basis that it violated his human rights, poor Harry and Meghan were seeing an increase in the Press assaults with countless stories from their “Palace sources”. From William, there was nothing but silence about the treatment of Meghan. No joint statements were ever made. His first salvo against accusations of bullying was to come to his own defense.  For the first time, since the saga began, jointly with Harry he issued a denial against the charge made in an article that said Harry and Meghan were forced out by the “bullying attitude of his brother the Duke of Cambridge”.  In the statement, they denied that there was any truth to this charge and that they were brothers who care “deeply about the issues surrounding mental health”. This denial harkens back to those issued by the Palace when Andrew Morton broke the story on Diana, and it rings just as false as we now know those were. 
2. The Queen is 93 Years Old: That doesn’t make her incompetent, but you try running an institution like the BRF at 93 – Monarch of the UK and head of state for the 53 nations that make up the Commonwealth. There is no CEO, leadership is left to a revolving set of palace courtiers who have no strategy in place (that we can see) and little influence over what the other family members do. If they did, no one would have let Andrew give that interview. But that doesn’t seem to keep them from trying to get control. The Palace has been shown in the past as fearful of women with agency. Diana put it succinctly: ” They see me as a threat of some kind I think,” she said of her lack of support from the Palace at the time, “I think every strong woman in history has had to walk down a similar path and I think it’s the strength that causes the confusion and the fear. Why is she strong? Where does she get if from? Where is she taking it?”Meghan is accomplished, smart, and capable. The questions that were asked of Diana, were now directed to Meghan. Again, at 93 the Queen is brought decisions to approve and most likely doesn’t participate in the discussions that precede the molding of the options presented to her. It’s why there was no doubt in my mind that when Harry was finally allowed to present his case to his grandmother, she would give him exactly what he wanted. Buckingham Palace needs a skilled CEO. The Palace lacks direction and it’s too much to ask that of a 93-year-old woman. So, who should we turn to? The Heir, of course.
3. Charles Lacks the Courage to Lead: Charles was a horrible husband to Diana, but he doesn’t appear to be a bad man. When he isn’t supporting a pedophile Bishop convicted of molesting young boys, he’s doing a lot of climate change activism and engaged in humanitarian and conservationist efforts. But the situation with the Bishop exposes a common theme across his life – a lack of courage to have tough conversations. The independent inquiry into how the case was handled found that “the actions of the Prince of Wales were misguided”. Charles submitted a letter saying he had been deceived for a long time.
   
   This has been a character trait of Charles, which has led to a lot of “misguided” actions on his part. From when he apparently interpreted the letter his father sent, according to his cousin Pamela Hicks as a “ghastly threat” that ended in him marrying Diana.  To now, showing no leadership in taking a more proactive approach to mending the cold war between his sons that started this crisis. As Wootton with a much calmer demeanor on BBC News stated: “part of the reason is that his team is very often briefing against his sons”. It’s a challenge, to be at an age when people are retiring and handing over the reins to the younger generation, to be overlooked. He’s a man that is clearly driven, working hard every day to prove his worth but doesn’t take the opportunities when presented or is misguided when he acts. This is what the absence of leadership courage looks like. 

Poor Leadership, Toxic Environment

The poor leadership displayed by the Queen, Charles, and William are what led to the Sussexes leaving: the lack of support, their staff’s apparent collaboration with the couple’s media abusers, and their constant efforts to control them and dim their lights. These are harsh truths that must be confronted. These form the toxic conditions that a man, trying to do better, who works hard and has a clear vision, had to get out of for his survival and that of his family. When you work in a firm that is toxic because of poor leadership, leaving is always the best action. 

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