More Archwell Podcasts

[susan12345678]

With another podcast set for release this week, The Sunday Times has a piece addressing Harry and Meghan's apparent strategy:

Courtiers are bemused by the Sussexes’ determination to rage against the past. As Davis observed of Meghan in her article: “She has taken a hardship and turned it into content.” A source who knows the Sussexes questions why Meghan “is constantly looking back at how awful it was to briefly be a royal. What does success look like, is it a number in the bank? Is it that they’ve killed off the monarchy?” Another Palace source says: “Ultimately they are bashing the institution that has put them in the position they’re in, the longevity of that strategy is not sustainable.”

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/harry-and-meghan-keep-bashing-the-monarchy-because-its-good-business-royals-believe-nq29p6g7z

I'm curious about their strategy, too. They seem to think that criticizing the royal makes them look better - it really doesn't. Instead, it just makes them look petty and increasingly irrelevant.

If Harry actually cared about the Queen, as he frequently claims to do in interviews, he'd have visited and he'd have pulled the plug on that interview or least ensured it was aired at another time

I very much doubt he was in a position to pull the interview once it was in the can. He was under the network's thumb and the network knew it was TV gold.

However if he did try to stop broadcast (and I'm sure we'd all have been told) it must have been a salutary lesson in how the world works to a man who'd never heard the word 'no' in his life.

I very much doubt he was in a position to pull the interview once it was in the can. He was under the network's thumb and the network knew it was TV gold.

I'm sure that a spokesperson for someone (can’t remember if it was the Sussexes or the Palace) said that the interview would have been pulled if PP had actually died, so
maybe they was some room for manoeuvre on the timing 🤷‍♀️

Actually don't bother to reply. Not to be dramatic but I honestly don't want to engage with you anymore.

An odd to thing to say - I have engaged with you directly once in this thread. Not to worry.

Interesting

Because the conjecture is that Meghan wrote this letter to her father knowing that he would release it. Foiled in her plan she asked her friends to speak to People magazine about the letter and lie about its contents to push Thomas to release it. Thomas, distraught at being misrepresented, released the letter to the DM.

I’ve gone back and had a look - is the appeal judgement saying that the relevance of who the sources were is immaterial to the case hence why they weren’t brought to court? I read regardless of what Thomas felt - the article about the letter’s contents from the sources was not very different from what actually in it and so the judge felt that Meghan’s case was settled as there was no reasonable excuse for them to publish.

Is this wrong? (I really want to know)

I very much doubt he was in a position to pull the interview once it was in the can. He was under the network's thumb and the network knew it was TV gold.

But it was only filmed 2 weeks before it was shown. Once he'd filmed it, he must have known he'd lose all control of it, so why not delay the filming of it all together. Maybe he wanted the dosh?

I thought it was just a straightforward copyright case. And they couldn't use public interest as a defence because it was really just about her feelings, and therefore a personal matter rather than a public one.
We know for a fact, not conjecture, that she wrote and used terminology in the belief that it would be leaked - that came out at the trial in the emails she'd written - but just because she expected it would, doesn't mean that she intended it would. Just that if it did, she intended it to show her in the best light possible.
Unfortunately, because she took it to trial, her language that she chose to use on the letter to "pull at the heartstrings", just made her sound manipulative when her reasoning was exposed.
She won the legal battle but lost the PR war.

If what Scobie says is true then it shows me that Harry and Meghan are still deeply focused on the past perceived injustices. Despite their shiny new life.

@SpinCityBlues

I've tried scanning it in. Hopefully that is a better image.

Or a link to the document? 🤷‍♀️

Document2022-09-07220524_2.pdf

Forget the link. Doesn't work. Sorry.

I think they have a massive problem with Harry's book. The Queen is very old and is not going to become more well. If the book contains the expected "truth bombs" (or as some would say, "accusations") and there is the same sort of timeline around publication with the Queen as with Oprah/Philip's death, there will be a storm. Of course they wouldn't have caused anything bad, but the optics would be horrible.

www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/09/boris-johnson-become-tories-meghan-markle

Yet another progressive liberal heavy weight publication seeing the situation for what it is.

Jesus Christ on a bike, I pray to God that one day nobody cares about Meghan Markle and her ginger puppet 🤣

I'm not much younger than them, and if the world don't forget about them soon, I'm probably going to spend the rest of my life hearing about it all. 🤯

I hope Charles revokes their titles to help ease this burden of theirs.

Thanks for explaining.

I agree that she wrote it expecting it would be exposed and this is what was argued by the DM in appeal. It’s a shame - none of this would have happened if he hadn’t shared the letter. (Regardless of what you think of her that is on him).

HMQs death will be a much more emotionally seismic event for many people compared to PP.

I really don’t think PH could launch it (because that is what it would involve a huge month long PR / media book tour….) a year either side without causing deep offence to many people royalists or republicans.

Obviously no one can predict her demise - but she is very and increasingly frail - surely he wouldn’t dare?

It’s a shame - none of this would have happened if he hadn’t shared the letter. (Regardless of what you think of her that is on him)

wasn’t the letter shared by her friends to People Magazine first? Or have I got that wrong?

None of this would have happened if Harry had gone to meet him anytime before the wedding. He just wanted to be paid some attention.

I agree that she wrote it expecting it would be exposed and this is what was argued by the DM in appeal. It’s a shame - none of this would have happened if he hadn’t shared the letter. (Regardless of what you think of her that is on him).

If she was expecting it would be exposed why not do away with the letter altogether and go and see him privately then none of this would have happened. As PP have said TM had that letter for six months, it was her friends that exposed it first to a magazine. I'm not sure anyone was aware of its existence prior to that.

TM has made some money off the back of his daughter/PH in the same way MM&PH are making money off the back his family. What's good for the goose etc.

As you say, they would be very unwise indeed to risk it without good distance either side and potentially, that could put publication years in the future. In the meantime, any grievances they wish to air will go further back in the mists of time and relevance. Also, they are currently effectively cut off from anything new to add. If I were Charles/William, it would stay that way, without a seismic shift in attitude and full reconciliation.

I have to say one thing I never understood was why Meghan completely cut off her father so early on.

It seemed they had a very good relationship well into adulthood, she spoke very fondly of him on her blog only a year or two before meeting Harry. And then it deteriorated so quickly over something that seemed relatively trivial - basically some corny but harmless set up paparazzi shots. Surely if you'd previously had a great relationship with your dad your reaction would be to go and see him, try to support him and resolve the issues - not just cut him out of your life.

Obviously subsequently the relationship has deteriorated significantly, but even so it just seems tremendously callous that she's effectively cut him dead - not even making contact when he's had life threatening health problems - over the crime of being a bit of an embarrassment and a bit indiscreet.

Also pretty rich considering the dirty laundry that MM and her husband are regularly airing in public.

None of this would have happened if Harry had gone to meet him anytime before the wedding. He just wanted to be paid some attention

Maybe, but there's no way of knowing whether Meghan even wanted Harry to visit, at least until she'd got the ring on her finger

Quite apart from any possible feelings that he "didn't match the image", we've already seen that she's keen on creating a persona for herself - and what would have happened if Thomas had dropped anecdotes which didn't suit?

I've thought this from the very start.

I think it's because his face didn't fit the image she now wanted to portray.

She was embarrassed of him, didn't want the world's media to film him walking her down the aisle.

So she used one error of judgment of his, to cut him off.

Look at her wedding guests, the Clooney's, Oprah et al.

Doria fitted that image, a mother who didn't really raise her, didn't pay for her education, but her face fitted the brand.

The BBC joining in the conversation today:

”Marking a first day at school has become a royal rite of passage.
Earlier, a single photographer and one TV camera filmed the Cambridge family as they arrived at Lambrook. The footage was then shared across a number of media organisations.
Limiting the number of cameras and journalists is a way of protecting the children from the public glare. The hope is that a managed glimpse into life at Lambrook will afford the family some privacy at school from now on.
It was very different when William started school.
In the late-80s and mid-90s, he faced a barrage of cameras as he started nursery and then school, always accompanied by his mother and often his father. To cries of "William" or "Diana" those nervous, first steps into school were a major media event.
When he started Eton in 1995, cameras were even allowed to follow him as he walked to his first lesson. Such access just would not happen now. These milestones are still recorded but royal children are no longer as exposed on these significant days.
Prince William's sister-in-law, the Duchess of Sussex, recently discussed her concerns about her son Archie attending school in the UK during an interview with US magazine The Cut.
Meghan said she would not have been able to pick up Archie from school in the UK "without it being a royal photo call with a press pen of 40 people snapping pictures" and said that was something she had a problem with.
The Editors' Code of Practice, which sets out rules newspapers and magazines regulated by IPSO have agreed to follow, prevents photographing children at school”.

This was the most read article on the BBC website today, though I expect that’s mostly for the video of the children.

@DFOD you're right too about the Queen I think. My grandmother was a child but remembered wondering why grownups were crying when Victoria died. She was an infinitely more remote figure to almost everyone, who didn't do cute things like have tea with Paddington. No one knows how they are going to feel but I think it will feel odd even for the republicans.