What lies at the heart of Megxit, the planet-shattering desire of two young parents to abandon the suffocating pressures of their lives on a small, formalist island in the North Atlantic and find room to breathe, and lucrative deals to make, in the wide-open spaces of North America?
(Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle made the announcement recently they would “step back” from their official duties in Britain’s royal family and live at least part time in North America. On Saturday, Buckingham Palace announced they are quitting as working royals and will no longer use the titles “royal highness” or receive public funds for their work.)
Is this a consequence of a lingering, nationalist kind of racism? Yes, say many wise commentators with a long view. No, say those who insist that Markle, an American actress of mixed racial heritage, was initially loved and embraced as an opportunity for the British monarchy to modernize and throw off the less desirable aspects of its past — their wedding being both rapturously welcomed and warmly reviewed and the young Royals lauded as a new Fab Four.
Even in clear distress following the famed Megxit summit the other day, Queen Elizabeth spoke only with warmth of her disruptive (Yoko Ono-like?) daughter-in-law, reminding the world with repetition that she was part of her family. At press time, Markle had said nothing similar in support of her husband’s nonagenarian Gran.
Or is this really a story of media harassment? Yes, say those who remember the young Prince Harry following his mother’s coffin down The Mall, part of a whole nation suffering the loss of the beloved Princess of Wales, a vulnerable and poorly treated woman chased to her death in 1997 in a dim Parisian tunnel by a vicious, Euro-tabloid press. No, say those who argue that cameras poking out of the shrubbery is part and parcel of royal life. Now and forever. Like “Cats.”
Or is this all about having one’s cake and eating it too (a ubiquitous Megxit cliche), a desire on the part of a highly privileged and very wealthy young couple to duck dull responsibility in the rain, commune with the likes of Oprah Winfrey and the Obamas and set themselves up to leverage their positions (he, royalty; she, showbiz) to make yet more cash with a veneer of doing glamorous, multi-platform good? Is this really about young people who have yet to figure out that choices have consequences and that to gain something you want, you invariably have to give something up, however painful that may seem.
Well? Which is it? You’ve had several days now, dear reader.
Probably, all of the above. How you feel likely says more about how you look at the world, and your feelings about the British monarchy — heck, your feelings about Britain and/or North America and their ability or lack thereof to make meaningful multi-cultural social progress — than these two humans locked in one of the globe’s strangest personal-professional scenarios.
“Who cares?” you might ask. But that’s disingenuous, since hundreds of millions of people most certainly do care, mostly because of the ability of this one seemingly minor event to crystallize so many of the fissures than make up political and social life in these first decades of the 21st century.
So let’s start with this truth: The only justification for privilege is service.
Decouple those two words and you have a problem. This is the argument consistently made by “Downton Abbey,” for example (its creator, Julian Fellowes, being a prominent advocate for gradual change) and, on occasion, by “The Crown.”
Service, of course, can take many forms. There is doing good for charities, say, but also economic service. British constitutional monarchists rightly note that the massive economic impact of the tourist-baiting royals far exceeds their actual cost to the public purse. By this measure, then, Canada is in a new, good spot. But the moment you remove service from the equation, or maybe even just diminish it, then it is hard to argue why Harry should retain either his title or his familial wealth.
Inequality is laid bare. With no cushion on the horse.
On the other hand, there is a difference between choosing a life of service and being obliged to one by birth. Or marriage. In those circumstances, you can easily imagine a certain dislocation of soul and function. Then again, that’s hard to imagine if you’re living in poverty in Lancashire, England and struggling to feed your kids. You’d take a crisis of the soul over credit-card bills.
Then you have the currently popular, neo-Marxist argument that the very existence of royalty is a powerful conservative force that must be crushed from within or without. This school of thought very much wants to cast Meghan as a republican (lowercase) revolutionary, finally overthrowing the old crew. This theory is compromised by the couple’s digs on Vancouver Island.
And then again, many such folks don’t like the democratically elected (kinda) Donald J. Trump functioning as a head of state who is so divisive that some won’t go to the White House to be honored. Which hardly is a functional way for a democracy to run. Britain, thanks to its beloved, all-seeing, all-knowing, soul-of-discretion-and-politeness Queen, avoids all of that. Up to now.
Defenders of that state of being understandably worry about what damage Harry and Meghan might do, as they bare their presumably raw emotions in some imagined TV expose to which the traditional Royals will be unable to respond. These traditionalists argue that these two young people are not taking the long view.
Or maybe they are — it just happens to be a different long view. But a very hard needle to thread, no?
History teaches us that the royals are vulnerable to the megarich — global jet setters with the access to the toys that the royals tend to crave, as many of us commoners also do, in our rare moments of honesty. For all their resources, the royals typically have to borrow yachts and the like to enjoy them. So if you put yourself in Harry and Meghan’s shoes, feeling unsupported and hounded by the press, you can see why they want resources and control. And, sure, the option for some nearby light service, which might just be more about the server than the served.
Meghan and Harry both seem to me like nice people locked in an impossible situation. Pulled this way and that way, mostly by people with their own agendas, bigger than themselves. It will take years before we see what Megxit really means.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
