Queen’s speech hails togetherness as ‘The Firm’ braces for Oprah aftermath
Royal’s positive Commonwealth Day message a contrast to woes
THE Queen stressed the importance of staying in touch with family and friends during “testing times” in a message broadcast on television just hours ahead of the Sussexes’ Oprah interview.
Focusing on the global impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the monarch spoke of using technology that “transcends boundaries or division” and how there has been a “deeper appreciation” of the need to connect to others during the Covid-19 crisis.
She also praised the “selfless dedication to duty” seen across the Commonwealth, particularly on the front line.
Senior royals including the Prince of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge joined forces to appear in the special BBC One programme on Sunday to mark Commonwealth Day as the bitter fallout from Megxit continued.
The Queen’s audio message celebrated collaboration, but stood in contrast to the troubles facing the royal family.
As Harry and Meghan were due to be seen focusing on their own experiences of life inside the monarchy, the Queen, who is Head of the Commonwealth, used her Commonwealth Day message to highlight the “friendship, spirit of unity and achievements” around the world and the benefits of working together in the fight against the virus.
“The testing times experienced by so many have led to a deeper appreciation of the mutual support and spiritual sustenance we enjoy by being connected to others,” she said.
Buckingham Palace was bracing itself for what Harry and Meghan would say in their controversial two-hour conversation with Oprah Winfrey — which aired last night in the US, while the Duke of Edinburgh remained unwell in hospital.
In extracts Meghan has already accused The Firm — as the royal family is sometimes known — of “perpetuating falsehoods” and told how she now felt liberated to make her own choices.
As footage was played of the Queen’s numerous official video calls, the 94-year-old acknowledged that the innovative technology “has been new to some of us, with conversations and communal gatherings, including Commonwealth meetings, conducted online, enabling people to stay in touch with friends, family, colleagues, and counterparts who they have not been able to meet in person.
She said: “Increasingly, we have found ourselves able to enjoy such communication as it offers an immediacy that transcends boundaries or division, helping any sense of distance to disappear.
“We have all continued to appreciate the support, breadth of experiences and knowledge that working together brings.”
She praised the “selfless dedication to duty” of medical staff and other key workers.
“Whilst experiences of the last year have been different across the Commonwealth, stirring examples of courage, commitment, and selfless dedication to duty have been demonstrated in every Commonwealth nation and territory, notably by those working on the front line, who have been delivering health care and other public services in their communities,” she said.
Last Friday, CBS This Morning aired a fourth clip from Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, which was broadcast in full last night in the US and will be tonight on ITV.
The chat-show host was talking to just Meghan in this clip, and spoke of a telephone call between them shortly before she and Prince Harry got married in May 2018.
Oprah begged Meghan for an interview, but was politely turned down by her, as it was “not the right time”.
Meghan’s response to this in the Oprah interview was to disclose that while she was on that call, there were people in the room, presumably staff.
“I wasn’t even allowed to have this conversation with you personally, right? There had to be people from the... sitting there, everything was..., ” says Meghan, trailing off.
Oprah says: “You turned me down nicely... ‘Perhaps there will be another time when there’s the right time.’
What is right about this time?” What is right about this time? Now there’s a question.
In the opinion of many, this is the “not the right time” for Meghan to, as Oprah puts it, “speak (her) truth”, as Harry’s 99-year-old grandfather recovers from heart surgery.
In fact, plenty would feel there is no right time for it; that doing this interview is all wrong, is disrespectful, petulant and selfish. Now is the time, however, with the Sussexes officially and fully stepped-down as senior royals and even stripped of all honorary titles and patronages, too.
The Oprah interview, however, was in train before that decree nisi occurred earlier this month. You could even say, from Friday’s teaser, that it was in train from before Meghan and Harry ever married.
It’s interesting to consider that this interview has been three yearsa week of a steady stream of bulletins from both pro and anti-sussex camps. The drip-drip of Oprah trailers has very much painted “The Firm”, as Meghan refers to them, as cloak-and-dagger villains, out to suppress and even destroy her and Harry.
Then, from the other side, there have been resurrected bullying claims, reports of an internal review of Meghan’s behaviour in Buckingham Palace and reportedly up to 10 royal staff members willing to testify that she made their lives a misery.
In the US, Meghan’s friends and former co-stars on the TV show Suits came to her defence following the bullying allegations, which date back as far as 2018. “Goodwill runs in her bones,” said Harry and the general message is that this is just more of the smear campaign that ran against Meghan — and ran her and Harry out of the royal family and out of the UK. However, when Oprah and Meghan first had that chat about an interview, what was her truth to speak? The world was madly in love with Meghan back in early 2018. There was delight that Harry — little boy lost, or lovable rogue — had found happiness. People were happy to see him settle down, having always recognised that his slightly brattish party-boy phase had been born out of a rootlessness after the sudden loss of his mother. When Meghan first spoke to Oprah in 2018 and told her the timing wasn’t right, the goodwill towards her was tremendous. her story then would not have been one of a Press apparently against her and an “almost unsurvivable” married royal life, as they describe it to Oprah. She was beloved and welcomed at that stage. She, Harry and the Cambridges were the Fab Four. It was all wonderful back then. When Meghan speaks of that 2018 phone call now, however, the takeaway possibly should not be the presence of the “men in grey suits”, but, instead, that Meghan never, ever imagined she’d be stuck with the stuffy old Windsors forever. To say that, however, is to say that it’s all down to Meghan, that she always had a plan. This feels too Lady Macbeth, though, too sexist and possibly even too insulting to Harry, who will also appear in part of the Oprah interview. It is possible that Harry chose a wife so different to what would have been expected of him, so different to the girls he grew up with or dated before, so different to the woman William married because he wanted to blow up the life he had been born into. It is undeniable at this point that Harry is pretty angry with his family, so angry that it doesn’t seem to be all Meghan-centric, so angry that it seems like something that might have festered from even before Diana died. A combination of being the spare to the heir, the breakdown of his parents’ marriage and fallout from their divorce, all in the limelight, together with the loss of Diana, may have combined not only to damage his mental health, but to make him hope that, someday, he could get out. Part of what made Harry commit to Meghan, where he had never committed before, might have been her determination for self-determination. Where the worlds awMegh an marrying into the royal family in 2018, maybe she and Harry always saw it as an escape route for him. when the time was right. The common view of Megxit, of moving to the States, of this Oprah interview, is that Harry is burning every family bridge, severing every tie and losing everything, while what his wife gets out if it is ever-increasing wealth, status and celebrity. The week before, Harry had his blokey bus ride with his buddy James Corden on US TV, but it hardly had the clout that this week’s sit-down carries. The growing impression is that one half of the couple is flying high on all of this, while the other does potentially irreparable harm to his family relationships. It’s all made worse, of course, by the fact that 99-year-old Prince Philip is so ill. A source reportedly close to the Sussexes told a newspaper on Friday that no matter what happens to Prince Philip, Meghan wouldn’t be cancelling the interview. Further, this source said, the duchess regarded his health scare as a palace effort to “keep her muzzled”. It’s an ugly image and one that chips away further at any chance that Harry has of maintaining relationships with his family post-oprah Maybe that no longer matters to him, however. in one advance clip of the Oprah chat aired last week, Harry sat with his pregnant wife, their hands clasped, and talked about how this year has made him realise how hard it must have been for his mother to have left the royal family. She was alone, he observed; at least he and Meghan had each other. However, while Diana is often now remembered as a saintly, slighted character, she was also a person who ran hot and cold with those she loved, who manipulated the media when it suited her and who was wilful and difficult when she wanted to be. Harry, who recently referred to himself as his “mother’s son”, is, perhaps, exactly that.