Feeling sorry for the Duchess of Sussex

[8AndGreat]

It must be so surreal for her to be caught in everything that is happening at the moment. I know H&M are controversial to say the least but they came here to do a feel good tour and are now caught up in everything that's going on. If I were Meghan, I'd travel back to the US to be with my dc and leave Harry with trusted family and aids. It was odd that the Sussexes said they'd both travel to Balmoral and the media now say that King Charles said that Meghan wouldn't be welcome. I can understand why as only close family attendee's Balmoral.

To sum it up, I feel sorry for both Harry and Meghan, I think they are out of their depth. Their autobiography will be interesting.

It's pretty gross that Andrew is still a welcome and valued member of the family, and Harry isn't, when all Harry's done is choose to live his own life, and made a few comments about the toxic system they exist in, and specific incidents he was hurt by.

Charles slagged off the Queen massively and said she was a bad mother but we're all apparently just ignoring that.

But then there are plenty of Mumsnetters who defend Andrew to the death, so clearly some people have very different moral standards to me.

What other word would you use to describe people calling Meghan a "whore"?

I don't know, and I'm just playing devil's advocate.

Senior royals movements were announced via the BBC, and they (team HandM) may have felt pressured in to announcing something, as questions were being asked on the live coverage "no word yet from the Duke of Sussex who is in Windsor" "It's unclear if the Duke of Sussex will travel to Balmoral"

So a catch 22 maybe for the PR team, and they put a message out.

At the end of the day, he was or was becoming The Kings son in those hours and his grandmother was passing away who he was close to and she did love him very much and him her, so the pressure was definitely on him.

@StolenWillowTree It's nothing to do with your morals. If Meghan had been a Kate 2.0 none of this would be happening. Absolutely none of it.

She's a grown woman, not a naive young girl like Diana was.

Diana was a grown woman and a mother when she made a televised interview slating the royal family.

She also had the benefit of understanding the culture of the RF and had a very priviliged upbringing.

Since Harry didn't travel with the others, in some way I can't see that it would have mattered if Meghan had made the journey with him.

That said, he's also an adult & sometimes we do have to do these things without our spouse.

Absolutely no one defends Andrew on MN. He is definitely not a welcome and valued member of the royal family. Where do get all this from? it's just bullshit.

Agreed. British people seem more shocked and offended by this than by racist behaviour from the royal family, disgusting behaviour of the press, and their own misogyny/racism.

I’ve never seen a single post on MN defending Andrew. I’ve seen quite a few asking hyperbolic posters to stick to the facts. As it is he’s a disgrace and embarrassment to the monarchy and the rest of us. I strongly believe he’ll be properly exiled after the Quen’s funeral.

Exactly.
I get William going due to his place in the line of succession but I don’t feel H had more reason to be there than the other dgcs. I wonder if they asked him to come so he couldn’t complain about being left out. He barely stayed. He couldn’t spare a few hours to offer comfort to his father.

@StolenWillowTree Andrew is not a valued member of his family. He’s totally screwed now his mum isn’t there to save him.

More significantly perhaps: Andrew's out and about with the royal family at Balmoral looking at flowers and cards at the gates. Cosying up to the Phillips, Tindall and Wessex families. Live now on BBC News.

Fuck his life.

What other word would you use to describe people calling Meghan a "whore"?

Deeply unpleasant and insulting and anyone who says it should be banned. Any chance of you addressing my other point, or does hate only go one way?

I agree with this.

The way some of you are going on, you'd think it was the DoS who was the nonce, not randy Andy.

No, but think about how many posts are bashing Megan vs Andrew. And how loud the British media are about bashing Megan and not Andrew. Tell you a lot about the British public, hate a woman who didn't even do anything more than a peadophile.

You are lying. You are absolutely, flat out lying.

There have been numerous Andrew threads that contained comments defending him, claiming he'd done nothing wrong, claiming the photos of him with his arm around Virginia were photoshopped, tons of "innocent until proven guilty!!!", and some truly disgusting posts outright calling Virginia a liar, a gold-digger, a whore, saying "I don't believe Virginia, I think she's a liar and she's making it all up for attention", posts saying "teenage girls know exactly what they're up to when they chase wealthy men", plenty of victim-blaming comments along the lines of "why didn't she just leave", comments saying Virginia is smiling in the photo so was clearly happy to be there and consenting to everything.

There are screencaps of these posts on Twitter and archived threads on Reddit.

Surely Harry was in Germany by then so he was bound to have arrived later than the others.

As it was, none of them arrived at Balmoral until after the Queen had died, so it was no different for Harry than for William.

Its the constant pushing of the narrative that all this is being done to them, that they are victims and seeing persecution in every circumstance - not to mention several downright lies - that has made them unpopular.

@Miajk You put it much more eloquently than I did!

Well up to Thursday he was just one of the Queen's GC, one of the ones who wasn't the heir so when the Queen was declining he wasn't the son of the King. The King has an heir and the heir has an heir, Harry isn't central to anything. There's nothing wrong with that by the way, I'm never going to be Queen and I don't think you are either and we cope. I guess it is hard to be so close to the top position and get to an age where your relevance is just going to go down and down as your brother produces more children but he's had time to adjust.

Then you obviously have never clicked on the Andrew threads.

My sympathies lie with all of the members of the Royal Family who desperately tried to make it to Balmoral in time and didn't, in particular Edward and Andrew. Their siblings made it to their mother's final moments and they didn't. That's got to feel particularly hard. Regardless of what you think of Andrew, I would imagine no matter how awful a human being you are, most people feel the loss of their mother deeply.

I also feel for Sophie, who seemed unusually close to her MIL. She's lost a mum-like figure.

I also feel sympathies for the blood relatives who were close to the Queen, but presumably weren't allowed to try the mercy dash. This includes Beatrice and Eugenie. The Royal family is not particularly small, and as with any family, you simply cannot have every relative gather round in someone's dying moments - you have to draw the line somewhere.

I don't really have any thoughts on Meghan. I don't think she had a strong enough or long enough relationship with the Queen to feel her passing deeply. Harry, I do feel sorry for. I don't approve of his behaviour in recent years, but he's a man who has lost the only member of his family he seemed to really care about. That's got to feel lonely.

Grief is an absolute beast. I can't imagine how it feels to have people videoing and photographing you on one of the darkest days of your life.

I think they're long past trying to appease Harry and his wife. It seems to me that he came up on his own steam, without coordinating with the rest of the family.

Absolutely. Almost 30 pages of hate, full of baseless assumptions when she hasn’t even said anything. Meanwhile Andrew has had no such raking over the coals. Disgusting that Mumsnet is letting this continue.