What next for the Sussexes?

[Casuaala]

I thought yesterday couldn't have gone better, all things considered; there was the least amount of drama or negative coverage possible regarding the Sussexes.

I'd like to hope that this marks a fresh start. Harry's got all the recriminations off his chest. The Royal Family have maintained a dignified silence and hopefully the future is rosy. The Sussexes can have the life they want in the US, with a small presence in family events back here when appropriate. (I wouldn't be surprised however if Megan never makes it back on UK soil).

Harry. Philip never apologised or stopped his endless racist commentary. They took far too long to retire him.

Forgetting where you were when your great grandmother died isn’t some devious lie. His life was crazy and he was all over the place after his mother died. It doesn’t mean his recounting of racism is a lie. I get why some people want to present it that way though, as I’ve said.

Fine - so if either are true let it be a crisis

The whole point for some of us is that we'd rather know the truth, and unfortunately Harry's "curated memory" and constantly shifting stories don't make that easy

@Puzzledandpissedoff I respect your opinion on that. But you wouldn’t be the one letting that bomb off. It’s very easy to say how you would handle it but nobody passing judgement understands what it’s like to actually be them in that position. You’re asking a lot of people. My position is it’s meghans choice, she’s the POC in that situation and it’s her choice to handle it the way she feels comfortable and she didn’t want to name the individual. What I have an issue with is people who have a bigger problem with her decision on that, than the actual thing that happened. There aren’t multiple threads about the racism problem there, there’s multiple threads on how she handled the racism directed at her and most seek to minimise or even dismiss it all entirely.

@Whaeanui

She lied. He lied.
Being a POC doesn’t give you a free pass to lie.

Try to side track all you want, but it’s getting really boring

You clearly have not read the book.

The Fergie story for example, he says, wait that doesn't ring true, but that's the narrative I have been fed. He says this for every instance that did not actually take place. He then corrects what we were fed by the press about various situations etc.

Did he say on those examples you gave that they were flawed?

If not, they are true memories.

For example he clarifies for Diana's death, 'pa did say car crash...... in hospital with head injuries.......there were complications', - all true stories and were told to him. Then he asks, did he mention paparazzi and car chase, he says no, I don't think so. This is him clarifying the lack of proper remembrance on that part. These narratives (although true) were not conveyed to him that night, though they have been repeated so much you must almost feel they should have been said that night).

The book is very clear and has clear distinctions :

• Something took place for definite and is fact
• Something was reported over and over, but it's not clear that it actually took place
• Something is a lie that was twisted on events that took place (eg. bridesmaid dresses etc.)

Ahhh, just read the book.

Forgetting where you were when your great grandmother died isn’t some devious lie.

No - but it does cast doubt on all his memories and negates the whole point of the book as correcting history if his memory that unreliable.

His life was crazy and he was all over the place after his mother died. It doesn’t mean his recounting of racism is a lie.

I don't think his recounting of racism is necessarily a lie, who knows?

If it's true though, why are they now minimising it?

If it's not true, why didn't they correct the royal racist story instead of letting it run for months and months, and why didn't they correct Kerry Kennedy when she praised them for tackling institutional racism in the RF?

Then feel free not to engage if I bore you. I don’t think they lied. You do. I’m not going to stop staying my opinion just because it bores you.

There is this running narrative to discredit H&M as liars.

Meghan is a proven liar - she lied to the court. And she did that herself, there was no need for any “narrative” to be run there.

(And if you’ll lie about the big things, when you’re on oath and truth matters, imagine what else you might also lie about…)

Very much agree with much of that, Whaeanui, especially that the choice in how to handle their allegations is entirely theirs. However so are any consequences which follow from failing to be clear

I also thoroughly agree that it's important to be more concerned about actual offences rather than how they were told, and if there's ever any real clarity I'll be the first to criticise anyone shown to be racist
Unfortunately clarity's in rather short supply right now, and I honestly wish that could change

No - but it does cast doubt on all his memories and negates the whole point of the book as correcting history if his memory that unreliable.

I guess that’s where we disagree. Everyone on planet earth forgets or misremembers unimportant little things like this. I have never met anyone who doesn’t. My Dad thinks he was told his grandparents died in the Napier earthquake, I checked and they weren’t and aunts confirmed it and said Dad had it wrong. He says, gosh I could have sworn someone told me that. He thinks, somebody lied to me… I think, perhaps you filled in a blank about them based on your own curious mind or some incorrect part of family history. Discovered much later it was his great aunt who had died in the earthquake. I think this kind of thing is normal.
In terms of correcting lies, he was referring to media lies. For example, about his mothers ring which was never his.

*The book is very clear and has clear distinctions :

• Something took place for definite and is fact
• Something was reported over and over, but it's not clear that it actually took place
• Something is a lie that was twisted on events that took place (eg. bridesmaid dresses etc.)*

So looking at the examples I gave - being at school when the queen mother died, the flight instructor stalling the plane, and being descended from Henry VI: none of them is fact, none was reported over and over. So Harry must be telling lies twisted on events that took place I guess.

Thank you. Yes, it concerns me that the focus has been on how, if or why they told it rather than it happened and it was wrong, what does it say about them or us?

Forgetting where you were when your great grandmother died isn’t some devious lie.

But it's not something you really forget, especially when your grandmother was the Queen Mother. And it's not just forgetting, it's a whole vivid story of sitting in his study and picking up the phone to a courtier telling him, as opposed to his father telling him when they were together in another country.

I think the point is that his version feeds into his picture of himself as victim, and it's possibly for that reason that he hasn't bothered to check the facts. On the face of it, when you're talking about something that happened on 30th March when you were going to boarding school, you wouldn't take it for granted that it must have been in termtime.

Everyone on planet earth forgets or misremembers unimportant little things like this.

Of course. But I think most people, if they wanted to claim they were correcting history, would check they were getting it right. Otherwise it has no more value than whatever it is it's supposed to be correcting.

Exactly. Harry had absolutely no credibility whatsoever due to many varied recollections. I can't believe the whole Finding Freedom nonsense for starters. They didnt collude oh well actually they did but misremembered.

His jealousy and resentment is what propels him. He needs to learn to let it go, you'd think LA would be full of therapists who could help him.

For each flawed memory, he lets us know from the start : 'this is flawed, because it may have been fed to me by the rf, it's a running narrative. '

We all form memories that are subject to change. (We do not snapshot/record memories). Everyone does that. To pretend that anyone has a pure memory is bullshit. In fact, Harry has been more honest than most when it comes to memory.

As to the discussion about memory and place. Yes, it is absolutely possible to misremember place.

The biggest problem I think with the Oprah interview is that what Meghan described is clearly racism and yet now they seem to be trying to minimise it. I mean wtf is that about?

This is always a major problem for poc and those affected (usually by family links). They always have to be the ones walking on eggshells around racists.

H&M put out there the events that took place, it was recognised as racist. The palace doubled down with an aggressive statement to the world. Now, they have to softened the narrative to 'unconscious bias - they were not aware of what they were doing'. Instead of reflecting and changing, people become defensive when accused of racism.

Unfortunately, poc are not a majority here. The stranglehold is real. Look how long it took for the people to free themselves from apartheid in SA even though they are the majority. Our country proclaimed that we had no institutional racism, even though it was clear to see we do.

What next for the Sussexes?

I reckon they'll now focus on building their her brand. The recent announcement that Meghan has signed with some hot celeb talent agency is the first clue and there have also been big hints that she'll do a lifestyle blog like Goop, since that's been so successful and lucrative for Gwynnie 'This candle smells like my vagina' Paltrow.

The attacks on the RF won't be stopping due to any desire by them to rebuild bridges, in fact I reckon they will now ignore the RF, but because American appetite for their out of date royal tittle tattle has waned. That South Park parody was pretty brutal and I'm willing to bet that her indoors was furious about that and will do anything to avoid a repeat. Plus, they did Oprah, they did Netflix, Harry did his biography and while that sold a shit-load of copies, it also generated a lot of negative coverage.

So with new, glossy, 'rich mom vibe' Meghan having been launched and with the pressing need to make loadsa money now off (Forbes magazine estimates that they have $135 million worth of deals between them), I reckon we're about to be treated to a relaunch. From now it will be about them being power players, producers, content-generators, etc. Meghan will not go back to acting - her career was pretty much over when she met Harry and going back to acting would be a massive backward step for her at this point. She's always had her eye on larger prizes.

Camilla had hurt her back in the run up to the coronation, I suspect that she was in too much discomfort to stand or sit for any length of time.
I thought she looked uncomfortable several times during the ceremony.

Now, they have to softened the narrative to 'unconscious bias - they were not aware of what they were doing'.

They haven't softened the narrative, Harry denied an accusation that Meghan clearly made. It's not a good look imo to characterise what is clearly racism as unconscious bias, especially when the person alleging racism is a POC and the person minimising it is white with a history of racism himself.

And of course we don't know whether any of it is true or not, because we do know we can't rely on what they say.

They denied nothing

I didn't know she'd hurt her back, I was thinking her nerves had got the better of her.
I thought both of them looked exhausted and extreamely nervous on Saturday. They looked like they hadn't slept for a week.

Harry denied that Meghan had alleged racism against the RF when she did?

We all form memories that are subject to change. (We do not snapshot/record memories). Everyone does that. To pretend that anyone has a pure memory is bullshit

Once again absolutely true, but I'm afraid that to suggest that "there's just as much truth in what I remember and how I remember it as there is in so-called objective facts" is a step too far for me