More News on Harry and Meghan

[Viviennemary]

Two little bits of news I read today. First the bells won't ring out at Westminster Abbey for Meghans birthday next month and she'll be devastated. No I don't think she'll even expect them to ring. And I had to smile at Bogart the dog was left behind in Canada because it didn't take to Harry. What else could she do. Hardly leave Harry behind. And it would have been a worry with a baby in the house too. She did the right thing here.

Yes nearly all the engagement interviews are pretty awful. I don't remember Edward and Sophie giving one. But I expect they did.

The shopping thing is batty.

As far as I can work out Meghan was upset that Kate didn’t offer her a lift to the shops, is that right?

@diddl

"I much prefer shopping on my own to going with someone else."

Well yes, sometimes I might want to ask a friend & sometimes not.

I can't get my head around wanting to do something but also having to ask someone else!

It can't be the case that you can never just take yourself shopping for fear of offending someone!

It's nuts to take offence over such a small incident.

Even more nuts to repeat it in a book years later.

Kate probably organises shopping trips as an escape from palace life. She's rarely papped while she shops and when she is, the photos seem to be staged. Why would she invite her brother's very gossipy girlfriend? Nothing she did on that trip would remain private. If Megan was as difficult as this book suggests, Kate was probably limiting her contact even at this early stage.

I'm sure that Meghan could have asked for a car at any time she wanted to go shopping and also had people around who would have taken her or gone with her too!
They need security with them all the time as it is! I hate shopping with other people and would have been happy to go on my own ; maybe Kate just didn't want someone with her that day? We all need ' me time' without other people about sometimes.
It's all just being drip fed so we can all say ' no wonder they went off' !
Maybe everyone had made a huge effort but they still felt it ' wasn't enough' so others just gave up? We all know people like that in life!

didl

I’m more responding to posters suggesting that it is unseemly for a ‘queen-in-waiting’ to give a lift to her brother’s girlfriend/fiancé. I mean, they are both human beings? Why does her ‘rank’ even matter? Short answer: it doesn’t and it shouldn’t, and reflects poorly on the Cambridges if that was their thinking (again, if true, it could be made up).

I'm not a ' huggy' ' kissy' person and I'm pleased that covid has made people more like me! I liked cuddling my own children when they were little , but anyone else and I tend to try and get out of it. I'd rather just shake hands!
I bet Kate is tactile with her own children and family but just not with people she doesn't know that well.
I don't see it as a snub but maybe I'm just strange!

I also wonder how Thomas and Doria felt when it was said in the engagement interview that the royal family was the family Meghan had never had. Then to go on and not meet the Groom before being requested to attend a significantly high profile British royal wedding.

He definitely did not help himself with staging photos of himself - although these reflect badly on him not Meghan. However to imply this single situation is the root cause to the breakdown of their relationship just comes across as a scapegoat to me. There must have been huge cracks before this.

"Even I'm with Meghan that Kate should have made an effort at least to begin with."

Do we know that she didn't?

I bet a Harry just came out with all these statements when they became engaged in order to make people feel a bit sorry for her! It's all back fired of course , but it was all about making her feel welcome and hinting how wonderful it would be for her being part of the 'firm' as she didn't have that much to do with her own family at the time.
Very naive behavior really!

@Viviennemary

Even I'm with Meghan that Kate should have made an effort at least to begin with. Both Camilla and Kate have a wide circle of friends and family. Meghan AFAIK didn't have anyone permanently based in the UK. But on the other hand Meghan made no effort to introduce Harry to her father and didn't even invite any of her family to the wedding apart from Doria. So she is hardly one to talk about including family. She seems to expect standards of behaviour from others but doesn't apply it to herself.

Before Megan closed down her blog and Instagram she took snaps of herself with all kinds of random Z listers. Lizzy Cundy and some of the Made in Chelsea people were her 'friends' until the engagement. She spent a day cycling in the country with Millie Mackintosh. It seems these 'friends' were dumped once she moved into Kensington Palace but she could have gone out with them had she wanted to. If you were Kate, would you introduce Megan to your brother, sister and close friends? It wouldn't be normal to do that in any family unless you were at a family event.

I have corrected my post saying I obviously made an assumption. No one else ever corrects anything on here even when questioned. So please stop being so rude.

What a ridiculous comment. I corrected an error I made just a few pages earlier about the Queen attending Princess Anne's second wedding, and apologised too. I think your bias is showing.

Imagine the pap shots!

I can well imagine that was exactly what Meghan was hoping for. Photos of her out with Kate a deux would have been a big story when she was a relatively new girlfriend.

"I’m more responding to posters suggesting that it is unseemly for a ‘queen-in-waiting’ to give a lift to her brother’s girlfriend/fiancé."

Ah.

Maybe that's the angle it's coming from.

Well, if it is it whooshed completely over my head-and quite a few others it seems!

If the shopping incident was only six months into the relationship, and we know that Harry and Meghan kept everything secret for a few months too, then surely Kate could have only met Meghan a couple of times at most at this point. They were not in the same position at all, she was Harry's new girlfriend. Not his wife (and even then, still not the same position).
Kate and William also have to protect themselves, not just worry about Harry.

Tbh even without the royal family situation, I wouldn't be too keen to go shopping with my husbands brothers new girlfriend only after a couple of times of meeting in a six month relationship. It takes a while for a new partner to integrate with a family. Can you imagine this as an AIBU thread? The person in MMs position would not come out of it very well.

AIBU my new boyfriend-of-six-months brother's wife didn't invite me shopping

I bet Kate and William made an effort at first but when they realized it would never be enough for either of them they sort of backed off? I've done it myself to someone who just expected everything her way and never ever saw the other persons point of view or made allowances for them , it was always all about them and their needs and expectations. Very self centered attitude.
I've no idea if Meghan is like this but it would be easy to see how this could happen here too if she is this type of personality.
Whatever went on , obviously something broke down very quickly and the idea of the ' fab four' sharing their duties soured very quickly! It's sad the brothers have fallen out though!

I corrected an error I made just a few pages earlier about the Queen attending Princess Anne's second wedding, and apologised too

Missed that. Sorry.

We don't know that people didn't make an effort with H&M as a couple at first, then maybe they just didn't like her, or the way they behave together or whatever. Nobody really knows what went on behind the scenes and there were lots of stories about photo's being taken of children, snooping, leaked snippets to the press, rudeness to staff etc. None of this might be true, but some of it could be, who knows. If it were me and I knew some of this to be true, I'd be coldly polite and hold them at arm's length.
I just get the sense that some of the RF (W&K, Sophie, Anne) know more than we do from certain behaviours, comments and facial expressions.
As for the shopping thing - if true (who knows), the context could be anything from nipping out for sanpro and not wanting to ask a courtier, to buying a birthday gift, to only having 30min spare, to just wanting some alone time!
I thought we saw the two women together quite a bit at first - Wimbledon, that conference they all did, the first Christmas etc? Quite a stark contrast to that polo event where they seemed very disconnected from each other.

No one has mentioned that when MM came on the scene, Kate had two little dcs and then another one came along. Yes, she has domestic help but we know she is more hands on than the average royal mum. Also when my dcs were little, I had domestic help (lived abroad) and I was still busy and preoccupied with the dcs. I'm not sure I would have welcomed being expected to take a future SIL shopping.
Kate and William did have them at Anmer Hall. I hope the book can explain why they weren't asked back the next year.

So in these latest extracts courtiers are accused of racism, William is a snob (despite Carole Middleton being from a very normal background) and Kate is unwelcoming and unfriendly. Either H&M agree with the content of the book or they don't. If they don't they need to condemn the book and perhaps add this to their long list of things to take legal action against. If they do agree with it then I suspect they've burnt the last of their bridges.

I'm also incredulous about their response to Thomas Markle before the wedding which seemed to consist of sending him texts telling him what to do! Why the hell hadn't Harry met him? To plan a huge wedding and expect him to rock up a couple of days before and cope with the limelight when he was in poor health was ridiculous.

Finally this bit made me eye roll.... During his 10-year career in the military, outside the royal bubble, he had learnt not to make snap judgments about people based on their accent, education, ethnicity, class or profession. Is this the same Harry who called his colleagues raghead and paki?

Tell you what, I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the Cambridge household this weekend!

*It's nuts to take offence over such a small incident.

Even more nuts to repeat it in a book years later*

Having read the extracts in the Sunday Times today, it seems there's several small things that have rankled for ages, and now been brought up. There's a whole sidebar about the fact that Meghan was said to have been "demanding spray-bottle air fresheners" in St George's Chapel for the wedding, when the truth is they were "discreet Baies scented air diffusers provided by Diptyque" (with a picture of them!) similar to the candles Kate chose to scent Westminster Abbey, and approved by the palace.

My take away from that is that firstly, surely only Meghan herself would care that much about such a minor thing, and secondly it's interesting that the wording is that they were "provided by Diptyque" rather than bought by the bride and groom. Perhaps she was supposed to publicly mention them in return, which became impossible after the story, and so she's taking the opportunity now?

AIBU my new boyfriend-of-six-months brother's wife didn't invite me shopping

"I'm a Z list soap actress. Why isn't she being deferential to me?"

That's where Megan was coming from. She couldn't understand why boring Kate wouldn't want some of her fame and glamour!

Kate did make an effort. She invited her to Wimbledon twice and probably did other things we aren't aware of. Megan's definition of 'friendship' seems very casual and based on usefulness. She has dumped even high-profile friends like Jessica Mulroney. (And Harry started dumping lifelong friends after the engagement.) Megan must have thought that Kate would welcome a photo op. Royal sisters-in-law bond over a trip to John Lewis, that kind of thing.

At some point during the last 4 months, have you ever invented an errand that needed doing just so that you could sit in the car for a couple of hours and escape everyone at home?

I expect life at KP is a bit the same - lots of people around all the time, everyone noseying around for gossip- I wouldn’t want to take my DH’s brother’s new girlfriend on a shopping trip at the moment (if they lived with us and were covid-free, etc etc). Unless a specific request was made to Kate to include Meghan next time she went shopping, which Kate deliberately ignored, then I can’t see how Kate even knew Meghan wanted to go shopping.

Another bit that amused me: the Sussexes complain that the Palace told them they could only say "no Comment" but would bend the rules for others go higher rank. "Case in point: a spokesman went on the record in July 2019 to deny claims by a cosmetic clinic that Kate had had baby botox".

Case in point: the statement put out by Kensington Palace in July 2019 was in response to an instagram post by a Dr. Medi Spa clinic that strongly insinuated Kate was a client of theirs and had botox shots ("Our Kate loves a bit of baby botox"). The Palace said that the surgeon's claims were "categorically not true", and that "The Royal Family never endorse commercial activity". That's not the same as the claim made in the book.

Yeah they haven't actually denied she had Botox there!