THEPrince Harry officially declares war on the royal family. They are accusations of racism, subterfuge, harassment, those that the Duke of Sussex hurls against the Crown. Everything revolves around a question that has been going on in Harry’s head since, in March 2020, he decided to move away from the royal family: «What happened and how did we get here?». The prince’s goal, even if this role is close to him, is to keep his family safe: «In England the hatred expressed towards my wife did not allow me. Anyone would have done the same.” Meghan Markle denounces with her husband the period of racial harassment suffered during her years in England: «I was never really treated like a black woman until I came to Britain», says the Duchess of Sussex. The harshest criticisms are those of his father, the current King Charles III. Harry blames him for the responsibilities of the royal family and for the paternal relationship that has failed: “In Africa I found a family”, referring to his travels in Botswana, in the footsteps of his mother Diana.
“This is who we really are”
No filters, no makeup. Harry and Meghan tell their story in the Netflix docuseries which bears their name, the first-person account of the couple’s history. The whole story dates back to shortly before the queen’s death, in August 2022. At the beginning immediately a disclaimer: the family has not released any comments following the series’ release.
«They want to destroy us», «Everything has always been bigger than us», «The public doesn’t know» is the refrain of the series, released for the moment in three first episodes. It is the story of something beautiful and intimate that is born, grows and then is destroyed. The love story between Harry and Meghan begins like in a movie: secret meetings, fancy dress parties, walks in Windsor gardens. Then the scoop, the tabloids, the paparazzi. And the nightmare that Prince Harry had seen in the eyes of his mother, Lady Diana, begins again. “Seeing another woman I love go through that savagery was the hardest thing,” says Harry.
“It’s not just about our history” specifies the prince of the United Kingdom, but the story of an institution, of a universe that perhaps only there Queen Elizabeth has managed to keep intact. Meghan’s voice is thoughtful and decisive: «With this documentary I want to have the opportunity to make the public understand who we really are. For this we will record a video diary every day, to counter everything that is being said about us. Start like this, Harry&Meghan.
The love story
«Ours is a great love story, and the most beautiful thing is that I feel that it is only the beginning». Prince Harry begins to piece together the timeline of their meeting. Meghan had just finished filming a season of Suits, the TV series that made her famous: «My only aim was to stay single and have fun traveling around Europe all summer. Harry was my twist.” They met on Instagram through a mutual friend who shared a video of the actress. “In the end we said: let’s meet. We booked into a club, Harry was late and stuck in traffic. I immediately had a bad impression of him, I thought he had a huge ego,” says Meghan of their first meeting. Actually the date went surprisingly well and the following evening they had dinner at the same place. this time she was late. “At that moment I understood that she was what I was looking for, a woman who was so relaxed in my company”. «I’m crazy about him, Meghan wrote to her friends.
Princess Diana’s son
Harry describes himself as impulsive, empathetic, confirming the theories that the press has made about him over the years: «It’s all about the difference between making decisions with your head and with your heart. My mother always took them all with her heart. And I am my mother’s son.” The figure of Lady Diana hovers throughout the series as an awkward and extremely influential presence. From the videos of the hospital with the second child in her arms to the interview with BBC Panorama, excerpts of which are again on the screen. «I don’t have many memories of the first years of my life with my mother, it’s as if I had blocked them inside me. But I remember her laugh of her cheek of hers, and I will always have that cheek.’
The thing that Harry reproaches the Crown the most is that of having left his mother alone after the separation from Prince Charles in 1992: «From the moment she left the institution she remained alone. She was one of the most influential people on the planet but she was also the most exposed. I have seen the suffering of women who marry into the royal family: how will I be able to find someone who can bear all this?
For this reason, Harry and Meghan talk about their first moments together in secret: alone chatting at Kensington Palace or strolling around the Windsor estate. “Everything was so relaxed and easy,” recalls Meghan Markle.
After Diana’s death
One of the most talked about aspects of the docuseries, before it even came out, was the account of the death of Lady D: the Crown fears Prince Harry’s point of view on the matter and invokes delicacy, much criticized also in The Crown. To open the topic, the videos of the British destroyed by pain, which we have seen many times on television. “When she died we were divided in half. On the one hand there were two destroyed children, on the other there was an ideal: to appear serious, composed» says the prince.
From that moment everything that had happened to his mother also began to happen to Harry: «Everything was exaggerated and reworked. Drugs, alcohol, girlfriends, clubs. “The prince of wild parties”, wrote the newspapers. It was just too much.”
At the light of the Sun
The impact of the tabloids on the life of the royal family is extremely real, and the documentary reveals what is really hiding behind the British press: «We only allow royals to exist if we can constantly have every detail about their personal life», comments a journalist to the Netflix cameras.
October 2016. Harry and Meghan discover that a British tabloid had the scoop on their relationship. The last gesture before the world learned about them was a costume party. The next day they were all over the newspapers and on television. “It was overwhelming, but I told Harry that I trusted him and that I knew he would protect me,” she says.
Harry’s harshest criticism goes to the paparazzi, the first recipients of his complaint in the Netflix series: «I was always surrounded by journalists, cameras sticking out of the bushes. The order was: don’t give rope. But every time I saw my mother’s tears, I thought: what a world am I part of?”.
Source: Vanity Fair
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