‘Courtiers’ 2

[RandomPenguinHouse]

The last thread filled up during a particularly chatty morning.

Very interesting..
MM dumping people yet again…
She really has form for this.
No wonder people are assuming Harry will be next.

interesting comment from the book (second hand from DM - fyi)

As one source put it: 'The way I see it, their view of not getting institutional support was that they were not getting permission to blow up the [royal] institution's relationships with the media.'

and on the Kate tears/Meghan tears issue raised in the OW interview, from another source:

The truth is that, after the dress fitting, Meghan had become obsessed with trying to persuade the palace press office to put something out denying the story.
However, they were equally adamant that it would be a serious mistake to start briefing about personal stories relating to differences between members of the Royal Family.
Not only did they not want to brief against other royals, but they feared it would create a precedent, making it harder in future for them to avoid commenting on personal tittle-tattle.
It would also fan the flames of the story, ensuring it continued to fill the pages of the newspapers for several days to come.

The RF does of course have to have a relationship with the press, and they work hard to maintain a relationship with them that promotes them - of course - but at the same time not "feed the beast". This goes back to M&H wanting to control the narrative to the nth degree and that sounds like the source of many of the clashes

Bit of a derail but an important point
Harry was a mental health champion for heads together- encouraging people to talk about mental health
He then publicly says he is ashamed to go to his family about his wife’s mental health !!

Whst message are you spreading Harry ?
Mental health is something to be ashamed of

His words are harmful - he shouldn’t be given any responsibility in this field after saying that ( just to try and twist a knife - despicable)

Was there another extract released yesterday? I forgot to get a Sunday Times.

Silver. not sure, just seems to be a rehash of some stuff in the DM

Not that I saw. It certainly wasn’t indicated on the front page.

The Mirror had extracts about Andrew - described in a post earlier in the thread

Yes. As I've already explained, I posted it to show how attitudes have changed.
I didn't expect anybody nowadays to pop up with the answer saying "It's obvious!".
Of course it's obvious; that was my point.
And it wasn't obvious up to the 80s, amazingly, when I was part of a project looking at attitudes to female surgeons.

The Mail has broadly the same extracts as the Times did, but with some additional paragraphs (the Times’ extracts were said to be edited - I suspect that’s part of the deal when a publisher agrees to serialise book extracts across different publications).

Anyway, it chimes very much with what I had thought might be going on behind the scenes - Meghan and Harry’s desire to wage a personal battle with the press and use the Palace Communications team as they later used Sunshine Sachs and people like Omid Scobie - to only run positive stories of their choice, battle with them on anything negative and get their own spin on things out there.

Given that a lot of the rumours and information press were reporting on turned out to be true (some examples - there was some kind of hoo-ha over the tiara Meghan wore, there was some kind of to-do at the bridesmaid’s fitting, the brothers really were falling out seriously, there really were problems within the Sussexes’ team) then starting a war with the press over reporting this kind of thing is obviously disastrous for the Palace’s press relationship as a whole, which is far bigger than just Meghan and Harry.

I also remain deeply unimpressed by their willingness to personally brief against private individuals with no press cover just to get their own side of the story across. I thought this was completely unfair when it happened via Omid Scobie in Finding Freedom, and now we hear again that when a staff member left they wanted to pre-emptively brief against them. Such an abuse of power and position. Says a lot.

This was always the thing that stuck out to me re: the interview.
How date you go on TV slagging off your family, accusing them of not helping your wife, and then in the next breath say you never raised it with your family as you were ashamed
While working with your brother on a mental health campaign.

Harry has a lot to answer for in all this.

Yes and now he’s Chief Impact Officer at Better Up! Not that he actually seems to do any work. It’s a joke.

I'm fascinated how gossip gets out without the gossiper being identified and dealt with.
The dress fitting in particular - who would have been present? M&C obv and assorted bridesmaids - I cant remember how many there were. Would they all have been at that fitting? A recipe for mayhem. So assorted mothers of bridesmaids. The dressmaker and presumably some of the junior assistants. The makers of royal wedding dresses operate under strict secrecy and I don't think they would have been the guilty party.
My guess is one of the bridesmaid mothers gossiped.
There was just a month between the birth of Prince Louis and the wedding so poor Catherine must have been very newly delivered and I should think the last thing she wanted to do was drag herself off to a dress fitting that was probably going on FOREVER. I expect her boobs were bursting and she was desperate to get back to the baby who was probably safely at home with the nanny. I would have been in tears too. It really wouldn't take much to make hormones and frost boil over.
Whoever gossiped was mean. And M seems to have been less than sympathetic. Did she ask C if she was OK? I doubt it.
Raising the whole thing again in the Oprah interview and then bringing up awaits Katie was plain spiteful imo which is never a good look.

Yes, the mental health story has never made sense.

Diana was able to see a psychologist when she was struggling with other bulimia. Charles apparently also saw a therapist for a long time during his marriage breakdown. Kate's brother had CBT for depression and Kate participated in some of his sessions. Princess Margaret and Sarah Ferguson also had therapy. So it's not a family where getting help is new or frowned upon.

Harry (pre-Meghan) sought out help dealing with his grief at losing his mother, encouraged by William. He then started having regular therapy after met Meghan, at her suggestion. Harry, William and Kate all created Heads Together where they actively encourage people to seek out help for their mental health and yet Harry isn't able to help his own wife when she is struggling? He doesn't know where to turn? It's very strange.

The mental health of those whom they are selling stories about doesn't appear to count.

What evidence have you about William ?

I can quite believe the damage caused by someone in 2 years . I once had a boss for less than 18 months who criticised and bullied me so much I ended up unwell and on antidepressants and on the point of resigning !

No evidence William behaved obnoxiously throughout his life. Or Charles really.

And it’s known that the Duchess of Kent had in patient treatment following the loss of a baby .
I also recall that Margaret had inpatient treatment for MH problems..

Exactly, if your wife tells you she’s suicidal, and your response is not to tell anyone because you feel ashamed, how is that their fault? That’s on you Harry!

Surely he didn’t even need to go through his family, fronting the Heads together campaign, he would have had so many resources available to him, far more than the average person.

And yet he’s supposed to be an advocate? How can you advocate for the general public, when you can’t even help your own wife!

I don’t pay much attention to the he said, she said regarding H&M and the RF, but this is the one thing that makes me angry.

How dare he profit from anything to do with mental health, when he behaved like that

Also, Meghan was booked in at the Portland. An expensive maternity package for good reason. A quick call or text to her midwife or obstetrician would have been straightforward and confidential. No need to wait for the next check up.

Like it or not, they are doing it within their own family using their own inheritance, castles and paid staff so it is far less objectionable. She was an chancer with no independent wealth who rocked up and started behaving in an entitled, freeloading way. She should not have been given the impression that she had equal rights to born royals when she had contributed nothing.

Raising the whole thing again in the Oprah interview and then bringing up awaits Katie was plain spiteful imo which is never a good look.

There’s definitely an agenda when it comes to Kate.

Her saying in the Oprah interview about the bridesmaid dress incident that “I would have never wanted that to come out about [Kate] ever, even though it had happened. I protected that from ever being out in the world” was spectacularly ironic given she was indeed now bringing up the incident in front of the global media, when she knew her sister in law could never reply (and brilliantly worded, insinuating that it was something so serious that it needed to be “protected). The whole “Kate made me cry” story was also repeated in Meghan’s latest interview in The Cut magazine.

She brought up the “Waitey Katey” label in her Oprah interview as mentioned above and insinuated that that was the extent of the mistreatment Katherine received from the press, completely minimising all the harassment, abuse and inversions of privacy her sister in law did have to live through for 10 years.

She said that she wouldn’t let her children go to school in the UK because she is “a good and strong parent protecting her child” the week before the Cambridge children all started school in the UK.

In her first podcast she said “You can pretend to be the perfect version like a Stepford wife and still have the exact same outcome as someone who is being authentically truly themselves and wouldn’t you rather live with a version of yourself where you can look in the mirror at night?” - widely taken to be a reference to her sister in law.

In Finding Freedom Omid Scobie wrote that William and Kate’s domestic lifestyle
was one that the Sussexes had seen and decided they definitely didn’t want.

“Friends of Meghan” of made a public statement that Meghan didn’t want her children to grow up in an environment without hugs and laughter, like they were leaving, and that all the Royals, especially Kate, were so uptight.

The intense focus on who made who cry at the fitting has always been indicative to me of the relationship between Kate and Meghan being at the root of things. The story was leaked by who we don't know and Meghan was unable to get past it, to the point of bringing it up on an interview being shown world wide. Why was it such a big deal? Why was Meghan so angry (allegedly) that when Kate bought flowers as a peace offering, M wouldn't answer the door and the flowers went in the bin (allegedly) why did such a minor incident create so many waves? Meghan's focus on this tells me more about her personality than pretty much any other incident that has been related.

H's fragilities were well documented. If she had MH issues of her own then she should have left him alone because he was not mentally strong enough to take on her problems as well which is why he eventually cut ties and ran away with her to cope.
It comes back to the fact that she would not leave him alone because he was a rich prince and she needed that step up in life to fulfil her ambitions. The tree outside their house referenced in The Cut is the magic money tree of H and yes, it is joined at the base. 😉

Or rather, the trunk dramatically splits in two but is fully merged at the base. A lot in common downstairs but complete divergence as it grows.

What nonsense.

Yes the 350 million would be in the coffers . By what law does it have to be spent on the civil service ??

The costs of the UK monarchy are unjustifiable , esp now with the state of the uk finances , tumbling down the international rankings.

Some people point to Nordic monarchies . Well that would be a start . Costs of around 20 million and transparent financial and legal arrangements as opposed to the UK's 350 million, deciding your own tax status ( or none) and paying off sex offenders? Hmm

I don't follow all these gossipy posts about H and M but re mental health you'd do well to remember that Charles has spent his life briefing against Diana ( she was 'unstable ') and William has joined him. His own mother ...