Vanities /Conscious UncouplingShe reigns over 16 Commonwealth
realms, including Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and Jamaica, to which she
and members of her extended family
have embarked extensively on royal
tours to flex their symbolic power (see:
Harry and Meghan getting lei’d on
Bondi Beach in 2018; wee Prince George
greeting a bilby with William and Kate
in Sydney in 2014).
Fewer senior members of the
family acting as brand ambassadors for
the crown could lead to discord
with, or, worse, defections among the
Commonwealth states. Australia
held an unsuccessful constitutional
referendum in 1999; Jamaica and
Barbados have, at various times,
considered replacing the queen with a
president. “If the royal family is less
visible in the Commonwealth realms
in the next reign,” Harris said, “the
question of the future of the monarchy
in these 16 countries might arise.”
SO MUCH FOR the dream of the first
biracial duchess in modern British history
ushering in a progressive new era.
Instead, Meghan and Harry lasted just 19
months—a blip in a centuries-long reign.
A gospel choir had heralded “Stand
By Me” at their royal wedding; perhaps
never in Windsor Castle had an African
American preacher quoted Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. and waxed poetic about
the power of love (assorted kings
entombed therein may well have rolled
over). But the belief that, just by marrying
Harry, Meghan could blow the mothballs
off the monarchy—in the midst of a
sharply divided post-Brexiting Britain
teeming with nativism—may have been
the biggest fairy tale of all.
“As far as I’m concerned, the monarchy
really lost out,” says Kali Nicole Gross,
the Martin Luther King Jr. professor of
history at Rutgers University, who
specializes in black women’s experiences
in U.S. history. “You push aside that
pomp and circumstance and what’s
underneath is not pretty.”
One might have guessed that Harry
and Meghan would gradually drift into
their own royal/celebrity hybrid roles; he
had a TV deal with Oprah; she designed
a capsule fashion collection to benefit
underserved women. They declined
to give their son, Archie, a title. But the
brevity of Harry and Meghan’s time
as senior royals begs the question: How
inhospitable must the royal mantle be
to a biracial self-identified feminist and
her rebel-hearted husband that they
said goodbye so soon? The Irishman felt
longer than Harry and Meg’s tenure.
“I don’t think it reflects well on the
institution or its place in contemporary
Britain,” Afua Hirsch, the Booker Prize–
winning author of Brit(ish) & Equal
to Everything, told V. F. “The big question
when this engagement and this
marriage was announced was whether
a woman of color could thrive in the
very specific context of the royal
family.” Harry’s emotional statement
that “there really was no other option”
seems to provide a deflating answer.
There was what Harry called
a “ruthless campaign” of “relentless
propaganda” against her by theBritish tabloids, and bald gestures,
like Princess Michael of Kent’s
blackamoor brooch. “The royal family
is ground zero for a history of white
supremacy and imperialism that
they’ve never acknowledged, let alone
apologized for it,” Hirsch said.
Buckingham Palace’s onetime
silence on the press treatment of the
Duchess of Sussex now feels like a
missed opportunity to have protected
the first biracial duchess it initially
seemed so pleased to claim. It was only
as the two sides jockeyed over thepublic narrative, and attempted to
iron out the terms of Meghan and Harry’s
exit, that the queen took corrective
measures. In a warm statement amid the
Sussexes’ departure in January, Queen
Elizabeth said she was “particularly
proud of how Meghan has so quickly
become one of the family.” But the
show of solidarity may have been too
little, too late.NOW, THE REMAINING members of the
royal family find themselves stuck in
a “toxic relationship” with Britain, says
Hirsch, submitting to vicious cycles of
tabloid scrutiny in exchange for seasons
of positive coverage. It’s a codependency
Prince Harry knows too well. For all the
suggestion that Meghan masterminded
the couple’s relocation to North America,
Harry’s own reasons to seek a more
untethered life have been mounting since
the death of his mother, Princess Diana,
in 1997. “I’ve seen what happens when
someone I love is commoditized to
the point that they are no longer treated
or seen as a real person,” he said in a
statement announcing a lawsuit against
The Mail on Sunday last year. “I lost my
mother, and now I watch my wife falling
victim to the same powerful forces.”
Diana never escaped the vicious cycle
between the royals and the tabloids;
Harry seems determined to try.
To others, the saga will only make the
monarchy even more relatable—“royal
families: They’re just like us!”—and, in
turn, beloved. Her majesty’s January
statement, referring not to the monarchy
but to “my family,” is a parallel to 1997,
when she spoke “as a grandmother” about
Diana’s death. Reminding the public that
the queen is also “Gan-Gan” goes a
long way to humanizing the institution.
Just as she did in the wake of 1992,
the queen and the remaining senior
working royals will carry on with public
engagements as normal “to make clear
that the monarchy is not being paralyzed
by any one disagreement,” Harris
said. As the queen has said: “I have to be
seen to be believed.”
“The royal family is only in danger,”
says Kehinde Andrews, a professor
of Black Studies at Birmingham City
University, “when nobody cares.” nNot since the
queen’s self-
described ”A N N U S
HORRIBILIS” in
1992 has the state of
the ROYA L U N I O N
seemed so shaky.