Let’s talk about the famous fairy tale tagline “they lived happily ever after” for a second or two — specifically about how the Brothers Grimm, and others who fabricated these fantasies, spoon-fed us lies.
There is no “happily ever after” and there never was. Oh, sure, some people find happiness, and often in the strangest of places and strangest of ways. But it’s definitely not a given that they find it after marrying princes, or even into money. Or by sudden windfalls of economic fortune. Often, that sudden change in status creates more confusion and heartache than it solves.
This is why people who win large sums of money in the lottery go out and get lawyers before they show up to claim it. Many of them prefer to remain anonymous lest relatives they never knew they had crawl out of the woodwork looking to get in their good graces.
Then, because of their lack of experience with handling such large sums of money, they either spend themselves into bankruptcy or go completely the other way and stash the money in the mattress and continue to live as if life was a paycheck-to-paycheck proposition.
Sunday night, in prime time, we caught a good glimpse of the latest “poor little rich girl” in Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. I’d vowed not to watch it. Sorting my socks seemed like the better option. But halfway through, I got bored enough that I sat down and watched the second hour.
And despite every inclination I had to stay away, I ended up glad I saw it. Not because I found it interesting, or riveting. I did not. I have no use for any of these “royals.” As a true-red-white-and-blue American, I detest that stuff. I don’t care about the queen, Prince Philip, Charles, Anne, Andrew (except if I see him in jail, then I might raise an eyebrow), or any of the next generation. And that includes Harry and his wife.
But there is the matter of degree. It’s sort of like what Napoleon the Pig said: “All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Well, all British royals are obtuse twits, but some of them are more obtuse than others.
First, let me just say that if you’re Meghan Markle, and you lived through the spectacle of a British princess careening through the streets of Paris to escape the paparazzi — and dying in a violent auto accident stemming from that — you have to know that the minute you marry into royalty you will inherit that kind of scrutiny. In other words, she had to know what she was stepping in (pun intended). And so did he.
Privacy? What privacy? She was an actress, for crying out loud. She’d never heard of Fleet Street? He hadn’t?
All that said, though, there is the question of degree. First, it’s obvious from the interview that someone in that group of royal parasites was a little too concerned about the purity of royal blood. And by that, I mean the whiteness of it. Why else would anyone connected with this collection of royal doofuses wonder, out loud, about how dark the baby’s skin would be?
I get it. Mixed racial marriages are probably not the norm in the upper strata of British society (except if you watch “Bridgerton”). Still, in the year 2021, if you have even the hint of an education, these are the types of feelings you keep to yourself.
And then, when Markle said she’d contemplated suicide, went to another unnamed minion to seek help and was told it was inadvisable because it wouldn’t be a good look for the family, it just reaffirmed the following to me: These are clueless, insulated half-wits who know nothing about life; that they spend their days and nights conjuring up various “good deeds” that have zero effect on the actual lives of their subjects; and they then smugly congratulate themselves for it.
Spare me.
I watched Sunday vowing not to be sucked into seeing Meghan Markle as a person deserving of even a minute of my sympathy. I came away admitting that she deserved at least some. And that just speaks to how arrogant the rest of them are.
