“One Year of Meghanomania” is the title of a new dishy piece by David Jenkins published in Tatler yesterday. It’s basically a summary of the last six months of gossip about Meghan Markle – whether or not she’s difficult, whether or not she made Kate Middleton cry, along with a couple of pieces of new information, like supposedly the staff at Kensington Palace have nicknamed her “Me-Gain”. And that Meghan is coming between Prince Harry and his friends, namely Tom “Skippy” Inskip. Not surprisingly there’s some comparison here too, between Meghan and Kate, of course. And how Meghan is so much more savvy. That, evidently, is something to be criticised: a woman who can hold her own and wasn’t about to present herself to the royal institution, eager and ready to be molded into whatever they wanted her to be.
The key to understanding the big picture here though isn’t in what’s said about Meghan in this article. Rather it’s this sentence, which I’ve highlight below, from the third paragraph of the piece:
It’s been there from the beginning, that criticism [of Meghan]. Very shortly after her engagement was announced, I had dinner with some old-fashioned grandees, one of whom has connections with Kensington Palace. Meghan came up in conversation. ‘She’s trouble,’ said one peer. ‘I’m not at all sure it’s a good thing.’ The KP-connectee sighed: yes, he said, that’s what a few people there felt.It’s always the way; courtiers are plus royaliste que le roi – more royalist than the king himself.
I’ve been writing about those f-cking courtiers for months now. That’s the politics of being royal: often the trouble isn’t with the actual royals themselves but with the courtiers, the staff, the descendants of Tommy Lascelles, who are the gatekeepers of what is and isn’t “royal”. And you can imagine already what those colonisers think of a biracial, divorced American former actress.
Nothing here, then, changes the conversation. It merely extends the conversation, a conversation that’s been the intrigue over the past half year. For the British papers, this is the sell. Everybody getting along is boring. Drama sells papers. For the courtiers, this is how they can weaponise the media to push their agenda and, at the same time, remind Royal Meghan that they are in control – or that they want to be in control. As we’ve seen from Meghan lately though, she doesn’t seem to be playing along. This is a war of attrition. And she’s surprised them with not only how much she’s been able to sustain but that she can play offense as well as she can play defense.
But enough about Meghan…
Because there’s even better gossip here that people are missing in this piece! It comes at the very end:
And some of it is... some of it is the fact that people love a good gossip. Love to hear that the Clooneys, sitting next to John and Lady Carolyn Warren at the wedding, were bickering in the choir stalls.
克鲁尼是战斗在Harr表示y and Meghan’s wedding?!
FOR F-CK’s SAKE – can we turn our telescopes onto that please!?
Also… enough about Meghan. There’s a MUCH BIGGER ROYAL GOSSIP STORY BREWING. That’s coming up next.
