Harry and Meghan deserve to tell their story, but…

Today I’m going to talk about Harry and Meghan, because given the volume of media coverage surrounding the release of Harry’s book Spare, it just seems like the thing to do. 

Also, it’s fascinating. But my fascination comes less from the “Royals, they’re so weird” perspective, and more from the slight – and major emphasis on the word “slight” – point of commonality I have with Harry… slight.

Which is that for many years, due to my work as a daily teller of personal stories, I was one of the earliest waves of lifestyle bloggers, i understand how giving yourself to whatever size of the public, can be both exhilarating and deeply damaging.  

At the time I started blogging, circa 2009, the field attracted a unique kind of fascination and a ton of vitriol, largely because, well, sexism, and also because as people who are both  emotionally revealing and very accessible, we were vulnerable to all sorts of Internet nightmares. 

I became very exposed – by choice, which is different – than what Harry is dealing with – but this choice subjected me to an online narrative about me and my family that I had very little control over. It was distressing on a level that I find difficult to communicate from where I am now, which is a place of, frankly, not giving a [bleep this] what people who don’t know me have to say about me on the Internet. This is a nicer place to live. 

So Harry has been on a serious media tour in which he’s talked openly about everything from his true feelings about Camilla – not great – to his struggles coming to terms with the reality of his mother’s death. One of the points most harped upon, though, is Harry’s description of a fight with his brother that escalated to William pushing him to the floor, where Harry cut his back on a dog bowl. Ok. 

Let’s all take a deep breath for a minute and take a quick peek at the sheer volume of cultural context that encourages men to react physically, and that portrays brothers physically fighting as a totally normal part of family life. This isn’t to say that violence in any form is okay, obviously just…I don’t know. 

Airing out something like that feels…icky to me. Like, he knows the overblown reaction any mention of a physical interaction with his brother will get. And he’s using that to suit his narrative. 

Anyway. What’s been interesting to me in the story is that I’ve been taking what I think would be the more conservative – or at least socially conservative – attitude towards all the fuss.  Like I feel too aligned with Piers Morgan right now. 

The thing is I completely understand Harry’s frustration with having his story told for him. I completely understand the desire to take that narrative back through any means necessary – and he has means like, you know, 100 million dollar Netflix specials. So yes. I understand why he’s doing this. 

But something that I believe from the bottom of my heart is that trying to manipulate others’ opinions of you always – always – backfires, for the simple reason that…they don’t matter. The palace can come out tomorrow and say Meghan is heaven on toast, and there will still be lunatics out there fantasizing about her demise. 

Should the palace have protected them better? Should they protect them even now? Of course they should. This is an embarrassingly antiquated institution that pulls outrageous amounts of money from the British coffers based on a legacy of colonization. They’re pretty terrible. 

But enough people seem to like them that they’re still around and kicking, so they do have a responsibility to those who were brought into this extravaganza by virtue of being born, or falling in love. 

But a very public character assassination – and that’s what this is – of one’s family, when the importance of public opinion is both the issue at hand and very, very much the problem…it doesn’t sit right.