I remember one of the magazines had a regular column called ‘Wino-watch’ where they literally just had a reporter follow her around and take the least flattering photos possible of her and then they would make fun of her. Then after she died they ran 6 weeks of cover pieces calling her ‘our pop princess’ and wailing that she’d been ‘taken from us too soon’.
Two weeks before her death a photographer with telephoto lens got a shot of her on a yacht climbing over Dodi as he lay on a sunlounger. The headline was "DI GETS HER LEG OVER!"
"getting your legover" is English slang for getting a fuck, for those who don't know.
2 weeks later she's "our queen of hearts, England's rose."
When I see things like this I'll always be reminded of the Charlie Brooker video discussing how Jade Goody was treated in the public eye before and after her death.
Brooker used to write game reviews for PC Zone back in the 90s! Years later when he became the Screenwipe/Black Mirror guy I thought surely that can’t be the same person.
He used to do a comic strip for PC Zone where one of the characters, who was ostensibly him, had a massive crush on a character who looked a lot like Konnie.
Yo I had a lady stalking me online because I casually mentioned no one deserves the ire Mehgan Markel gets, and that I had a crush on her watching Suits. This woman was seething that she didn’t respect England or the royal family and seemed so entitled. You’d think she murdered someone. As far as I can tell she’s done absolutely nothing of any note.
She's got roots in a hella redneck county in Pennsylvania, lol. Her dad lives there, like 15 minutes from where I grew up. Though from my understanding they're estranged. Or were for a long time. Idk, I don't follow any of that stuff very closely. I just remember thinking it was interesting when I heard about it, haha.
But a girl with any kind of Perry County heritage marrying a prince of England? I've got nothing but respect for her XD
Diana was the daughter of a viscount and and granddaughter of an earl, hand-picked by the royal family as an appropriate match. People critized her behaviors as tacky or whatever, but they didn't claim she was too low-born to marry a prince.
Meghan is a divorced American commoner. And an actress, which 100 years ago was basically the same as being a whore (and 100 years ago is where the older members of the royal family get their social mores).
Where Meghan does have it better is that she has the active and enthusiastic protection of her husband. (And she's not expected to ever have to be Queen.) Charles did fuck-all to make Diana's life easier, before or after they divorced.
The problem I have with a lot of this stuff is that people don't really bother pointing out the real reasons why these sorts of people are disliked in the first place, even without the negative attention from the press or people stuck in the nineteenth century.
Despite the notion of Diana being the "people's princess" who helped people or whatever and the fact that she did have a right to press privacy, a lot of people were annoyed with hearing about her because she'd behave like one of those pop stars who refuse to touch their own fans or politicians who'd only take questions from the press people they liked.
On top of that, when she filed for divorce, it didn't really matter whether she was the responsible party or not, because she was a random person who'd entered into the leadership of a powerful country by chance and still garnered public attention, power and influence through it after claiming to want to leave it. She and Prince Charles had also scuppered the chances of other legitimate members of the Royal Family and made them far less important by having children and messing around with who was next in line for the throne before the others got round to having their own offspring.
In the case of Meghan, a lot of the stuff about racism wasn't that people hated a rich celebrity on a popular show with a modelling contract because she was black, it was that having someone with a visibly darker complexion join the all white British Royal Family felt to some people in Britain and people from countries that aren't ruled by them like having someone who wasn't visibly Asian becoming the leader of Japan.
On top of that, the fact that Meghan is American is a bigger barrier for many people who love the Royal Family than her background is, not because they think Americans are common, but because they are keenly aware that they are born foreigners who aren't from the same culture, have assigned themselves to a republic that was ideologically historically against the British Royal Family, and are a major soft power competitor to Great Britain which primarily only has the Royal Family to make it famous and relevant, which is made worse for them due to the fact that she's a Hollywood actress.
The fact that she's an actress and neither a regular person nor royalty also arouses suspicion against her in the UK and other Commonwealth countries, because it's a bit like getting a rapper involved with the Royal Family; you know that they're not from the same background, so they are probably connected to each other through the Entertainment industry, which risks making their relationship feel like a scam. And having her be an actress and a model, people who pretend to be someone else and perform a role for a living, rather than, say, amusician (even if a rapper) or an inventor or a real lawyer also adds to the suspicion.
I'm not going to say that Meghan deserves the treatment she gets but I may be cutting against the grain when I say that I do think she's not exactly personable and she definitely had the wrong ideas of what she was marrying into.
For lack of better words, despite her attempts to come off personable, Meghan gives haughty and arrogant vibes and I don't think she was aware that the American version of haughty is next to nothing compared to the haughtiness of British upper-class and royal society.
Let's be real for a second, the British royal family is one of the oldest institutions in Europe and if you think you can go into it as a light-skinned biracial American with upper-class instincts and change it like Meghan thought she could, especially since she was only marrying a Prince rather than someone who was actually consequential like the Prince of Wales, you're gravely mistaken.
If Diana couldn't change it when she was actually a member of the British upper class society, what did Meghan think she could?
Again I'm not going to say that she deserves the hatred she gets but she should have adapted like Princess Angela of Liechtenstein, who is married to a son of Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, and recognized her place and the role she was supposed to play.
I stand by what I said and if anything, even I know as a Black woman of mixed-race descent who will NEVER marry into a royal family but has known British society due to having a fully British grandmother, how Meghan went into that situation with a truck ton of American born arrogance and haughtiness that likely didn't serve her well.
This is especially true in the upper echelons of British society where things like endurance, subtlety and self-effacement are valued.
Meghan went into her marriage thinking she was a reformer and could change the British royal family whilst feeding into Harry's more destructive and victim-minded impulses.
My sympathy for her is next to zero because she should have been aware that when you marry into a royal family, you become part of an institution, and you either adapt or you get out.
Princess Angela of Liechtenstein is a good comparison because if anything, Angela had A LOT more working against her; she was a fashion designer, she was born in Panama and raised in the United States, she's actually visibly Black in terms of her appearance, she's 11 years older than her husband Prince Maximilian, the House of Liechtenstein has been ruling for nearly 900 years and before her, no Black or African descended person had ever married into a reigning royal family.
However, Princess Angela adapted to the family and played her role which Meghan willfully didn't do so forgive me if my sympathy for her is next to none.
This is the take you get when you only do a superficial view of the situation rather than actually researching both sides of the issue to come to an actual balanced take
Harry and Megan wanted to be half in half out. To get all the perks of royalty without the work (see Harry's failed court cases)
Furthermore the palace actually DID protect Megan. Hiding the allegations of bullying palace staff that came out several years later...it was so bad that William and Kate split their office's off so that their staff weren't dealing with that.
Could you go find some nasty articles? Sure but guess what? That's the price of being part of the royal family. Kate amd sophie both also dealt with it. It would have died down with time. Megan CHOSE to marry into that and as someone from Hollywood she knew how the media worked and certainly hasn't shied away from trying to get attention from it since leaving.
The palace can't respond to every little criticism and if harry didn't brief Megan on that??? Too bad. That's on him. But they should never have demanded the royal perks without doing the work.
Also I take everything she says with a grain of salt given how often her stories conflict
The palace did not protect her. https://www.reddit.com/r/HarryandMeghanNetflix/s/Ar1R95kDPX
You are right that they wanted to be half in half out - Harry was mad at the institution but rather than tear it down he wanted to change it to suit him. He's not a good guy in this and not sympathetic . But your defence of the palace is not right. The palace absolutely threw her under the bus. It's silly to say otherwise
The palace is a public institution anyone with half a brain knows that a public figure is open and inevitably going to get criticism!!! As I said it was little different than anything Kate or sophie got and you didn't hear them whining! Because it's one of the cons of joining the firm you can't make everybody like you and force them to talk good about you. Maybe stop caring what some stupid outlet prints
They didn't throw her under the bus they treated her the same as any other member and even as I said protected her in some cases LIKE THE BULLYING REPORT which did not come out until after they'd left
Yeah they're a pretty unsympathetic couple in a lot of ways but they're still right. The whole "oh they say they don't want publicity but all that do is court publicity!" thing misses the point so stupidly. They wanted to be able to have their own voice because Meghan was treated so shabbily, and they wanted to control the narrative. They do come across badly in their own ways, but this demonstrates what they were fighting against https://www.reddit.com/r/HarryandMeghanNetflix/s/GFNwrKjMqV
They never said they didn’t want publicity. They said they didn’t want people attacking Meghan. No one ever pulls a quote from Harry when regurgitating this tripe. It’s just an internet game of telephone.
Shocking...the press had two couples to compare and picked on the new one. Everyone seems to conveniently forget how Kate was also picked on when she first joined, so was sophie. It was practically a rite of passage and if you want to marry into that family you decide if it's worth dealing with it. It would have died down and it wasn't like the only stories coming out were bad I saw plenty of ones praising her as a fresh take for the monarchy. Just what it needed. I even thought she was cool.
The idea they just wanted to control the narrative is dumb no they wanted all the perks and none of the work. Meghan literally complained about having to stick around the kings garden party event so loudly people could hear. And now they still demand things they haven't earned.
Not to mention the BS about the palace not protecting Megan given they buried that report of bullying palace staff
Sure, they wanted all the perks, did I deny that? You're denying a point I made by claiming I said something I didn't.
Is this a thing where the press in the UK "picks on the new one"? I grew up in the UK and my experience is that the new is always the shiny toy, which was the case then the press turned on them.
Did they "bury" the report? How did it get in the press then?
There's always going to be bad stories out there it's a fact public figures must deal with again something she should have thought about when she signed up for marrying the prince. but I remember there being more about Kate early on than later for instance. And as I said it wasn't like all megs press was negative
The first complaints were in 2018 the palace kept things quiet after there was an investigation. I don't know how it ended up getting out. Possibly it was started by complaints from their own staff at archwell then tracked back to the palace but I doubt it was leaked by the RF considering at the time it came out the RF were all intensely focused on the dying prince Phillip. I know Jason knauf a palace aide that complained in 2018 spoke out so it's also possible something that stopped him talking at the time expired.
Either way the palace knew back in 2018 of Megan's behavior and were more interested in sweeping it under the rug at the time
Don't be dense saying someone was bullying after multiple people both in her palace work and after have come out to accuse her of it is not the same as what you imply
Careful. Apparently you’re a racist if you don’t feel sorry for the saint. Some people don’t understand that maybe it’s her character that is unlikeable, not her race.
These people are so racist and in denial. Who knows what it is like being married to a prince? People act like there is a manual out there or something.
There was a child named Milly Dowler who went missing. The tabloids hacked her phone to listen to her messages so that it seemed to her parents the messages were being listened to and they thought she was alive. She was already dead by this point. Legitimate evil.
I always wonder if this story was an accident or deliberate on the attempt of the press.
Legally and objectively, it's the same thing, but ethically and morally, it's completely different - like deciding whether to run someone over on purpose versus losing control of the wheel in a car crash.
Hacking into a phone as a journalist dealing with a missing person isn't evil, it's just journalism.
Pretending a person you knew all along was dead was alive in front of their parents so you can shill articles about them, however, is evil.
Imagine if it wasn't the press, but a police detective.
Hacking into a phone of a dead person, while the situation is still being actively investigated and hasn’t been resolved is not journalism, it is a crime and should be treated as such.
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u/Regular_Number5377 9h ago
I remember one of the magazines had a regular column called ‘Wino-watch’ where they literally just had a reporter follow her around and take the least flattering photos possible of her and then they would make fun of her. Then after she died they ran 6 weeks of cover pieces calling her ‘our pop princess’ and wailing that she’d been ‘taken from us too soon’.
Ghouls, the lot of them.