The Queen is generous to Harry and Meghan
The Trooping the Colour has marked the birthday of the British sovereign for more than 260 years. And, as one of millions glued to it on Thursday – the first time I’ve ever seen it – it was instantly clear that this is a superlative tradition, a display of military discipline, pomp; a jamboree of centuries-old knowledge about showing both respect and might. Nothing says “all that is great and awe-inspiring about the British Monarchy and therefore Britain” like it. (Well, almost. Quite a few horses, merrily number two-ing their way around the parade ground, seemed to have other ideas).
The lurking presence of Harry and Meghan sat badly with it, though; indeed has done so with the whole Platinum Jubilee. What are they doing here? After all, coming to Britain for the Platinum Jubilee violated their core tenets, those they have espoused for profit on Oprah and elsewhere: that the Firm is a conservative prison and disfigured with racism, that it is a mean and nasty family that ignored Meghan in her psychological moment of need. Then there’s the eco angle to it all: with Harry among the most diehard of greens, a haranguer of ordinary folk about the evils of flying, it’s surely a black mark that he and Meghan arrived by plane. They could at the very least have sailed; it’s not as though they have demanding office jobs at home.
And yet there they were, and with the Queen’s blessing, no less. At Friday’s Service of Thanksgiving in St Paul’s, Harry and Meghan, who was dressed primly in white (honestly, love, why bother?), processed down the aisle, once again hogging the limelight. In fact, they are thought to have been charitably given it by a tirelessly forgiving, diplomatic, family-oriented Queen.
It’s fine that they want their second child, impudently (in my book) named Lilibet, to meet her great-grandmother and namesake. It’s also understandable that some in the Establishment are still genuinely attached to Harry; there was no mistaking the jolly looks on some of those Church dignitaries in St Paul’s when he stopped and chatted to them. But the couple’s play-acting at respect when it suits them is transparent. Perhaps they feel that their histrionics have grown old, and they risk falling out of the limelight – having spurned the Firm for being oppressive, it now seems as though the prospect of being genuinely shut out from it in exchange for the palm trees and dollar signs of California is not so appealing after all.