The Interview

The Netflix series The Crown necessarily fictionalizes its interpretation of historical events in 20th-century British history in situations such as the private conversations of the Queen, her Prime Ministers, and members of the Royal Family, the actual content of which we will never know. That said, it does a good job of capturing that distinctly modern dilemma of royal life - the conflict between a traditional understanding of commitment to duty to Crown, country, and Commonwealth and a contemporary obsession with freedom, autonomy, and personal happiness. In the 20th century, the locus classicus for this conflict was, of course the 1936 abdication of King Edward VIII, who notoriously abandoned the traditional expectation of his royal role as one of public commitment to duty and instead prioritized his desire for freedom, autonomy, and personal happiness in his shocking insistence on marrying an American divorcee contrary the advice of his Government and the other governments of the Commonwealth. 

History, Karl Marx famously reminded us in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, repeats itself "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." The second iteration of the Edward and Wallis tragedy is the contemporary Harry and Meghan soap opera, the focus of the couple's much anticipated TV interview with Oprah Winfrey last night. (Given that Harry has five people between him and the throne - his father, his brother, and his nephews and niece - his abandonment of his royal role lacks the constitutional consequences of Edward's abdication and serves, soap-opera style, mainly to entertain an easily distracted popular audience, especially on this side of the Atlantic.)

Duchess Meghan presented herself to Oprah as someone previously unfamiliar with and surprisingly naive about what it means to be a working member of the British royal family, someone who experienced a misalliance of perception and reality. In contrast, she describes her current situation as living "authentically." 

In fairness to Meghan, there is certainly something seriously problematic about contemporary tabloid and social media culture - a crazy culture which elevates royal princesses and princess only then to drag them down. (Non-royal public persons increasingly experience this as well.) 

Obviously, "outsiders" - even members of aristocratic families with longstanding connections with the Crown (like the late Princess of Wales) - have experienced enormous difficulty in navigating the complex and contradictory expectations contemporary tabloid and media culture have created. Even the Duke of Edinburgh, a royal prince, whose mother had been born at Windsor Castle, and who married into the family at a much more deferential time in history, was treated as an outsider and experienced difficulty dealing with the many complex and contradictory expectations. That Meghan would also have experienced such stresses seems to have been almost inevitable (and should accordingly have been expected and prepared for). Admittedly that is an aspect of the modern era, to which there seems no obvious answer. (The older alternative of arranged marriages between lifelong royals who already know the drill is at present, for all sorts of reasons, no longer feasible, nor is a return to an if not deferential at least more civil media environment at all likely.)

That said, certainly it needs to be stipulated, however, that royal life, while obviously very glamorous and privileged, is, by its nature, intended to be a vocation - one of lifelong commitment to Crown, country, and (in the British case) Commonwealth. And Meghan's complaints are not just about the media but also about the "institution" (as she likes to call it) itself. Clearly, Meghan found real royal life quite constricting. Revealingly, she unfavorably compares it in the interview with her previous - obviously freer - life as an American celebrity. But, of course, the whole problem lies in the total difference between being a royal person and being an American celebrity. If, perhaps, she really was unaware of that difference and was as unfamiliar with royal life as she suggests, someone should certainly have enlightened her sooner rather than later.

And there is, unfortunately, also at least an apparent perception on Meghan and Harry's part that racial prejudice has played a part in the difficulties the couple have experienced.

Both Harry and Meghan acknowledge that she was welcomed into the family at first and that things went well for a while, before things started to go wrong. The menacing cloud covering all this seems to be the memory of Harry's mother, Diana - someone who was very differently experienced by different members of the family, the media, and society, and who is still very differentially interpreted. Likewise, if Harry feels "let down" by his father, one suspects his father feels let down by his son as well.

There are some problems that have no perfect solutions. There is obviously a legitimate need for royal persons (like other public personalities) to find some sort of livable balance between a life lived on a public stage and some sort of normal human existence. Somehow all royals and royal couples have to figure out how best to do that. How adequately they do so will depend in part on their individual personalities and on the sorts of resources that are available to them. So far, it does not seem that the solution that is being tried by this couple is the optimal one.

The contemporary popular culture and media environment will always prioritize freedom, autonomy, and personal happiness at the expense of the more traditional expectations of lifelong commitment to duty. Yet the nature of monarchy and its contemporary purpose both for constitutional governance and a society's symbolic structure of values require all involved to prioritize the traditional expectations of lifelong commitment. In the end there is no getting around that.