One of the reasons why I step away from commenting on royal posts from time to time, despite a general interest in the topics, is because I become increasingly frustrated by how polarised people are. For many, and possibly even most of the pro Harry & Meghan posters, there is absolutely no nuance permitted. Harry & Meghan are good, and can do no wrong, and any information that suggests they may do is biased and suspect, and all the other people involved in their activities are thoroughly bad, and bullies, with no redeeming features whatsoever. Despite the fact that life, and people, are just not like that in real life. No-one is a paragon of all virtues, incapable of putting single foot wrong ever, just like no-one is patently evil in everything they do, ever.
You can see this playing out on on this very thread. Allegations are made against the Duchess. Contemporaneous evidence from when they were made, including names, is presented and published. It also tallies with reports in the press at the time of the events. But - some tabloid newspapers have vile practices, so despite the fact it's published by a paper of international repute, it's obviously suspect. The timing is suspect (despite the fact that the couple is doing a heavily publicised tell-all interview where it’s clear that many of the people who used to work for them will be criticised, and it looks very much like it’s the people who used to work for them who have gone to the press, in circumstances in which they would be regarded legally as whistleblowers, thus getting round the NDA issue). The Duchess must have had reasons for acting as she did - despite none of us having any idea of what actually happened the nanny was clearly incompetent (but it's the fact that they attacked her after the event when she had no way of defending herself that was criticised), one of the Duchess' staff had no relevant experience when she took the job - and so presumably deserved to be bullied? (but that's on the people who recruited her, and you still owe her a duty of care as her employer to get her up to speed with the role or help her find another position, intimidating her for being incompetent is never appropriate), it's the staff own fault for getting upset when they are told off, which probably never happened any way as all the many. many accounts from many different people are obviously all malicious, and they are clearly all incompetent, despite many of them having held down senior roles for many years, the heavily pregnant (remember, anything that happened when the Duchess of Sussex was pregnant is egregious), ill, and then post-partum sister-in-law was validly criticised for not giving Meghan more support in finding her way through the maze of Royal protocol, but then the one thing that it's been reported she actually did offer a view on (that children attendants at weddings wear tights) is her bullying the poor bride and her friend. The poor duke and duchess were repeatedly thrown under the bus by the Palace team to protect the favoured Cambridge couple - despite the fact it's now become blatantly obviously that the Palace completely shut down the highly damaging complaints that the Sussexes had bullied staff. The allegations have been rescinded by the staff involved (we are told - no-one has shown us where this has been reported. And newspaper reports are always credible when they favour the Sussexes, but always suspect when they don't, in any event). But everybody else involved in this story, all of of them are duplicitious bullies in any event. And so it goes, on and on and on.
It's exhausting. And it's the reason in the end why I realised that despite my initial hugely positive views of Meghan Markle and enthusiasm for her joining the Royal family, she is a human and prone to making mistakes just like the rest of us. Once I started realising that I was having to suspend any critical thinking and twist everything in the story to make her stay the goodie, no matter what, I realised I couldn't do it any more. I don't think she's a baddie, I think she's a person. Not a paragon, a person. But discussing the Sussexes actions with people who would argue that white is black before they would accept that they might have made any missteps, is exhausting.