Long time lurker here. (This is long. Sorry!)
I have been reading the comments about MM and Harry with interest. I agree with a lot of what has been said. I particularly agree that their biggest problem (referred to above) is that there has been such incessant negative press about them that, unfortunately, lots of it has stuck.
Even on this thread, which is so supportive of the couple and critical of the press approach towards them, there is talk of MM wanting to be in control and it being suggested that she is responsible for Harry becoming distanced from the RF. We do not have a clue about that, and it just reflects the line we have all constantly been fed that she is power and fame hungry, is a control freak, and wants to distance Harry from William and Kate. It is all her fault. The stories are relentless and so it seeps through. None of us have the first idea about how decisions have been made and by whom or what she is actually like. They have certainly made some mistakes. But ultimately, Harry is a grown man, with agency. The idea that he is some wimpy guy who trails along after MM helplessly, unable to stop her, while she rides rough shod over all those around her, ruining the RF as she goes, is ridiculous. And sexist.
As for the RF providing MM with support, clearly it hasn’t been enough, or she would not have felt the need to say that no one is asking how she is. For Harry to be so incandescent with rage suggests that he feels very let down, and presumably also by his own family.
For my own part, if the Queen can have a totally inappropriate and tone deaf photo opportunity with a grinning Andrew beside her to try to deflect from reports about his friendship with a sex trafficking convicted paedophile, the RF can bloody well provide clear and unequivocal support in the press to a new mum who is clearly at breaking point. The RF could stop this or at least take some of the heat out. That Prince Andrew moment shows that it is bullshit to suggest that the RF never respond to press reports.
I am also really troubled by the idea that straight up racism by the press (which is what it is) should be ignored, and that MM should just put her head down and get on with it and that we’d all be so impressed with that approach. It needs to be called out. The rank hypocrisy of the press’ position that the couple can be patrons of mental health charities but are not allowed to talk about their own mental health is startling and very, very sad.