Charles financially supported the Sussexes until summer 2020

[SnottyLottie]

news.sky.com/story/duke-and-charles-paid-substantial-sum-to-harry-and-meghan-after-megxit-but-couple-paid-back-rent-for-frogmore-cottage-12340192

Prince Harry revealed in his Oprah interview that the Sussexes stopped receiving money from the royal family in the first quarter of 2020. However, newly published accounts reveal that Prince Charles continued to financially support the Sussexes until summer 2020.

I wonder if this is going to be a case of their truth or incorrect wording on Harry’s behalf. Interesting!

I also think along with self deprecation we expect a certain humility from the Royals in their public persona. It is a subtle mix which H and M did not get right.
Before the engagement, when I saw the little hints she was dropping on her social media, I thought she was playing with fire.

Interesting... however... I honestly do not think we are getting the 'real character' of any of the Royals, apart from perhaps Andrew. We have to remember that their appearances are so carefully curated by the mighty powerful PR machine, we know nothing!

Even with the Queen. Yes, we have this idea she's a hardworking elderly person who puts duty above everything, but she's never given an interview so what do we really know about her character? Zilch.
Ditto Kate. She is portrayed well, she comes across dutiful and nice but how can we know? We are given what the RF PR want us to know. Anything else is just assumption.

The only time we see the real royals is when there's the likes of the Sophie fake sheikh interview, ditto Sarah F (she likes a drink and a couple of ciggies!).

I'm amazed that people went off MM even at the engagement interview . I just thought she was American, an actress, different and they seemed happy, I saw no problem with her at all.

It seems the die was cast...

Interesting... however... I honestly do not think we are getting the 'real character' of any of the Royals, apart from perhaps Andrew. We have to remember that their appearances are so carefully curated by the mighty powerful PR machine, we know nothing!

But the Royal Family don't live in bubbles. There are plenty of stories swirling around about them, some more credible than others. i think it was Camilla who told of how William used to rant and rave at Charles until he would meekly give in. This was a story published by Robert Lacey. He also said that Harry had anger issues.

I've genuinely never heard anything bad about Kate and she seems well liked by all those who meet her.

Princess Anne has a reputation for not tolerating fools.

Meghan is difficult to get an understanding of. There are very mixed reports about her and I feel a lot comes down to perspective.

I watched the James Cordon interview and it seemed liked it was very carefully rehearsed but done so to try and give the impression that it wasn't rehearsed and was just spontaneous. I think people sense this discord between what they are being told and what they perceive and this is where they get this feeling of insincerity. For the Oprah interview, they may not have been given the questions beforehand, but like the Presidential debates, I did feel it had been practiced beforehand. I don't blame this for this. They would have been nuts to do these things without practicing, but it comes across. I didn't personally think Meghan or Harry was lying in the Oprah interview, but i think their perception of the truth may be different from, for example Charles', and i think this is what is causing problems because both sides feel they are right.

Sorry, final comment. The only thing I remember bout the engagement interview was Harry telling a story about how they were cooking a chicken, he then said something self-effacing like "Well, trying to cook a chicken" and Meghan gave him a really strange look. I think that kind of self-effacing humour is very popular in the UK especially among the upper class where it would been seen as unseemly to brag, but I can imagine it would be jarring to American ears and perhaps she wondered why he was putting himself down like that. Or perhaps I imagined the whole thing... Does anyone else remember that?

Umm... the RF do live in bubbles. Not sure how you can say otherwise CrazyCats
The RR make it up as they go along, so I take little notice of what they say. If a RR like Robert Lacey says something, I just take it with a pinch of salt. The likes of Ingrid Seward, Nicholas Witchell, Penny Junor... their job is to make something out of nothing because they do not have particular access to the Royals so they flower it up, or down, and talk like they are best buddies with the Royals when they're not!

On the engagement interview, the die might not have been cast for you CHiefInspector but it was for a lot of people. There were a heck of a lot of negative threads on here at the time, horrible thread titles, nasty posts about her, it was endless.

most of the vitriol seems to flow the other way, from MM defenders towards other posters

Really? Gosh, totally disagree on that. You obviously weren't around last year. I won't get into it again, but needless to say I (and others) were trolled in the most disgusting way and I've had it this year too. I had a spate of it back in the Spring... posters who NC'd to follow me round with insults, then NC back. Horrible stuff.

And there was a lot of unpleasant posts right from when they got engaged. Yes, they were offensive. I would imagine deleted threads are up to a hundred or more, because of the vitriol.

CrazyCatsAndKittens

“Sorry, final comment. The only thing I remember bout the engagement interview was Harry telling a story about how they were cooking a chicken, he then said something self-effacing like "Well, trying to cook a chicken" and Meghan gave him a really strange look. I think that kind of self-effacing humour is very popular in the UK especially among the upper class where it would been seen as unseemly to brag, but I can imagine it would be jarring to American ears and perhaps she wondered why he was putting himself down like that. Or perhaps I imagined the whole thing... Does anyone else remember that?”

I remember that. Up until that interview I thought MM was as great - beautiful , smart etc but she just seemed so fake !
Afterwards of course , we had different versions of the situation including ( I think) that MM is vegan .
Incidentally I still think MM is beautiful and smart but I have a lot of negative views about her too.

Roussette, you missed the bit where Chief said

(I will say that lately, most of the vitriol seems to flow the other way, from MM defenders towards other posters.)

and I would agree with Chief on that. Not disputing prior year threads, btw, just the current situation

I didn't miss that and I disagree.

@SallyLockheart

This report on the Queens’s patronage has a different perspective

www.charitytimes.com/ct/comment-research-highlights-the-benefits-of-royal-patronage-to-charities%20.php

As always it’s good to have a range of sources and perspectives

And no hard figures on the alleged boost to funds as ever.

Quite surprised to see the Patron's lunch cited as an example.
It raised considerably less than it cost and the main beneficiary was Peter Phillips who trousered a cool £750K for organising it and who won the bid to do so in an uncontested tender.

The whole acting thing is very interesting. The skill of acting is presumably to be able to adapt to the role you are currently playing and use an appropriate skill set. Maybe M didn’t quite mange to do this and did not appreciate that what she was doing wasn’t working. It is probably a cultural thing too, but if you decide to make yourself part of another country’s culture, it is unrealistic to expect that you will be instantly accepted if you behave in a way that does not conform to that country’s cultural expectations. It takes time for change to be accepted and, although it is not fair to expect anyone to completely change the way they behave, it probably works best if you at least make a bit of an effort to fit in to begin with. Much has been made of the difference being due to a culture clash between the Americans and the British and a failure to understand that neither is necessarily better or worse, but different. I also think that some actors are what my husband calls “lost in showbiz” and truly believe that the world of acting is “reality”. Maybe M falls into this category 🤷‍♀️ I also agree with pp who said that M was behaving more like a “celeb”. As I said, it’s a very interesting area of discussion.

The Prince Harry fans I've encountered on this thread are incredibly rude

Nothing like a sweeping generalisation, is there?

I'm not rude. I am extremely careful what I post having been trolled and insulted in the past by 'detractors' and every single tiny thing picked up to pile on en masse. There was once 3 pages of laying into me for calling detractors 'anti'. Seriously, I am not joking, so I check and double check my posts to try and ensure accuracy, to look at my post and work out if anything can be picked up on in a negative way, and to also ensure I do not insult or upset anyone.

I wish all I have had to endure would be a comment to go and check google or whatever, that has been about 0.05% of what I've put up with.
Not from you. But in general from a selection of those who don't like M&H.
I hope you were talking in general too and not everyone on this thread who as you call it are 'Prince Harry fans'. (I don't actually think of myself as a 'fan' but there you go...)

I think at the height of the deletions period I saw a noisy collective of posters who were very much anti MM and some of which were in the group of name changers etc. At best some of their behaviour was childish, malicious and had more unpleasant aspects. There was and still is a relatively sized group of posters some of whom are fixed in their 'champion or critic' position and some of whom hold variable viewpoints depending on the context. These groupings generally imo try to hold interesting discussions with occasional friction, disagreement and dollops of humour. Then, from my reading, there is a smaller group who appear unwilling or unable to countenance any criticism of PH and MM and seem to tar anyone who does with being members of (or behaving like) the first group I mentioned. I personally don't think that approach increases the credibility of those (smaller number) of posters as their posts increasingly become predictable.

There have been interesting and insightful discussions on these threads, more often away from the "heat" surrounding the Principals but moving into wider discussions about the principles of a monarchy - evolution, restrictions, cultural shifts etc. I thought the discussion upthread about personas and actors was interesting and an example of that wider debate.