The beginning of the end for the royal family?

THE upcoming interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex continued to dominate newspaper comment sections, with columnists debating the wisdom of giving such an interview and who the “victims” are.

The Daily Mail

Jan Moir asked if this was the beginning of the end for the royal family.

“It certainly feels like something ugly is afoot, and that it comes equipped with a steel toecap rather than a Regency buckle,” she said.

“Some say the Sussexes are only finding freedom and their own truth, others that they are behaving like petulant B-listers scrambling for a foothold on the Hollywood ladder, selling their secrets to the highest bidder.”

Moir tends towards the latter interpretation, she conceded. “The unedifying spectacle of the most privileged people on the planet all accusing each other of bullying would be hilarious, were it not quite so tragic. And that this is all happening while the 99-year-old Duke of Edinburgh lies in his hospital bed only adds a layer of sadness to the unfolding drama.”

She commiserated with the Queen, she said, as “it makes it particularly awful that the last years of her impeccable reign are shadowed by the antics of fools”.

The Daily Express

Ross Clark said for a royal couple to give such an interview at any time would be wrong, and to do so when millions around the world are suffering either directly or indirectly from Covid-19 showed an astonishing lack of selfawareness.

“The British public is not going to take kindly to a couple of millionaires, sitting in their leafy Hollywood garden, telling us that their royal life in Britain was ‘almost unsurvivable’ at a time when more than two million people around the world have failed to survive Covid-19,” he said.

“Harry and Meghan’s behaviour contrasts horribly with the sense of duty shown by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh over the past 70 years. The Duke sacrificed his naval career upon his marriage, and the Queen has never breached the protocol which surrounds the royal family.”

He said their idea of being part royal, part celebrity was never going to work. “With the Oprah Winfrey interview they have cut themselves off from royal life for good.”

The Independent

Funmi Olutoye said the excessive criticism and abuse directed at the couple since their marriage had been “ferocious, relentless and, frankly, absurd.”

She went on: “This, I think, is about that unique type of racism that many British people of colour experience, complain about and are hurt by every day,” she said. “The type where you know it and feel it but, ever elusive, you can’t quite place it or ‘prove’ it. I suspect the Duchess has tasted this, a bitter taste indeed.

“This interview could cause potentially irreversible damage to the royal family. This time, they cannot control the message.

“But we must also remember that, while this may be box office stuff for you and me, it is real life for a young couple.”