It was announced last week that the Duke of Sussex has filed legal proceedings against Britain’s two biggest tabloid newspaper groups for phone hacking and concealment, while the Duchess is suing the Mail on Sunday for publishing a private letter written to her father. This legal action follows Prince Harry’s emotionally explosive statement about his family’s relationship with the press. The statement, released on the last day of their tour of Southern Africa, accuses the British tabloid media of perpetuating ‘false, malicious’ and ‘relentless propaganda’ about Meghan. 

This announcement has caused considerable controversy amongst both the press and public, it being labelled a ‘blunderbuss’ by Patrick Jefferson in the Guardian, ‘impulsive behaviour’ by Angela Levin in the Telegraph, and ‘an over-emotional and somewhat ill-advised outburst’ by Royal Biographer, Penny Junor. Of course, it is to be expected that the press, having been accused of such toxic behaviour, should vigorously attempt to defend their position. 

But, these members of the press have quite clearly failed to see, or perhaps just chosen to ignore, the pure, unadulterated, unfiltered vulnerability and humanness to this statement. Harry surely would have been terrified to release words so exposing and self-assertive to such a voluble press.  Yes, it was unprecedented and impassioned in nature, just as the Sussex’s critics have argued. But surely this only reinforces his unbearable desperation and helplessness towards the situation. The subsequent outrage strengthens his entire message and reasoning for acting in the first place. Had there been any other way to send such a powerful message, he would have done it. This is a husband who is truly at his wits end.

Isn’t it time we show the Sussexes some evidently much-needed compassion?

Isn’t it time we show the Sussexes some evidently much-needed compassion? Behind their exterior roles as senior members of the royal family, they are just a wife and mother, a husband and father. We need to destroy this outdated perception that royals should be seen but not heard. Harry and Meghan are showing us that they aren’t stuffy, lofty, stuck-up royals parading around in grand castles with turrets; they are progressive, emotive and human. Harry’s ‘deepest fear is history repeating itself’. ‘I lost my mother’ he writes, ‘and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces’. That they have flung their intensely private feelings so publically onto the world’s stage, is not something to be downplayed or trivialised. 

Granted, being subject to scrutiny is part and parcel of royal life. From the moment they made their first official appearance together as a couple back in 2016, there has been a persistent barrage of negative press and twitter trolling against Meghan. Some of the criticisms have carried weight – campaigning about the dangers of climate change whilst travelling on private jets does carry an unarguable hypocrisy. (Although, it must be noted that 300 guests arrived on 114 private jets for Google’s climate change summit in August. Many public figures are in fact hypocrites when it comes to the environment, so let’s not just pick on the Sussexes for this.) 

However, much of the criticism is sexist, racist, and downright cruel. Take the example of her appearance at the British Fashion Awards in 2018. Meghan was labelled a “narcissist”, “disgusting” and “repellant” for cradling her baby bump so ostentatiously when presenting an award to Givenchy artistic director and designer of her wedding dress Clare Waight-Keller. Her pregnant body was picked apart as if it were public property, a miniscule gesture deconstructed and lambasted on the internet.

Her pregnant body was picked apart as if it were public property

Afua Hirsch for British Vogue, wrote, shortly after Meghan and Harry’s wedding that the royals ‘are a blank canvas onto which we, as British people, paint our feelings, fantasies, fears and identities.’ In this case, Meghan had become the vessel carrying the problems society still evidently has with the pregnant body. 

More generally, the reactions against the Duchess have become symptomatic of a deeply disturbing resurgence of racist hegemony and misogyny seen in our post-Brexit Britain and Trump-dominated world. 

However, to describe Meghan as a ‘blank canvas’, is to ignore and forget her Hollywood history, her role as a UN Women Ambassador and a vocal spokesperson on feminism and current affairs. Every other royal is a blank canvas: mute receptacles of the status quo. But perhaps, the press and public have such a complex relationship with Meghan because she isn’t. The Duchess has already established herself as a vibrant portrait of a woman who is determined to retain a modicum of the voice she chose to give up by marrying a man she loves, in this case, through suing the tabloids for breach of privacy.  

The Duchess has already established herself as a vibrant portrait of a woman

She is also a woman, however, who is a victim of bullying, and we must applaud Meghan and Harry for speaking out against this. Much of their charity work is focused on mental health, and getting young people to speak out about their feelings. They are proving that they are a thoroughly modern couple, who are practising what they preach. In an increasingly polarised, fear-mongering, hate-filled world, these are the role models our society so desperately needs.