I can't resist adding my two penn'orth, if it's too long please scroll on to more exciting posts.
I am not a royalist but neither does the institution outrage me, I think having ceremonial heads of state means we can take a more lively critical view of politicians. The people of the UK could decide to abolish constitutional monarchy and have a different type of ceremonial head of state if they wanted. But while we have a royal family, they are not celebrities, or just wealthy people of interest, although these seem to be side effects, the Queen is the embodiment of the British state, our state.
She is entirely constrained, as are all the royals, by that contract. The deal is, as a Mirror journalist put it recently, they turn out in all weathers to visit factories in Yorkshire or meet flooded-out people in Wales and represent Britain by getting the best china out at state events and we, in our turn, let them live in the palaces and don’t have a revolution. The Queen gets to approve prime-ministers and laws are enacted on her behalf but like her head on the coins it is purely symbolic, she doesn’t have any actual personal say – these are duties and the hierarchies and protocols are all about the role of the royal family as symbolic of the British state and nothing to do with the dramas created by celebrities to publicise themselves.
The royal family are not – or should not be - required to be ‘relatable’ and they don’t get to define their own careers, or their relationship with the British people who fund them via the state. However, since Diana, there has been a creeping celebritisation of the royals, a personalisation of them which is part of a wider pattern, so they are caught between demands to be regal in the formal sense, to be above the hurly-burly, but also to be ‘authentic’ and have personal ‘journeys’ and to emote about it all and break down the barriers to their ‘private’ selves.
This is how the global celebrity economy works and it would be no surprise if a U.S. entertainment industry figure like Meghan Markle and many of her supporters would assume that the royal family live like a cross between media celebrities and the global wealthy / aristocracy, with the ability to monetise their lifestyles, no surprise either that younger royals would like that to be true. But other celebs are actually private citizens, no matter how famous, the royals are not. I have sympathy for the argument that it is a strange life, and if royal family members wanted to live a different life, either as quiet ‘non-working’ family members, sharing their parents’ money, or as genuine private citizens, that would have to be negotiated, we can’t force them to do it. But they can’t decide for themselves that they will be some kind of independent royals, overseas-based representatives of the British state. As royals, they can't operate like ‘personalities’, or entertainers, or campaigners, or influencers or inspirations or anything else and they shouldn’t be required to be like those figures.
Royal status is only about representing the British state while the institution lasts, that’s the deal. Two worlds colliding badly here.