PR disasters continued. Thread 6

[AtIusvue]

For all PR disasters of Meg and Papa Sussex

He didn’t though did he in reality- there were very different expectations for him. He had a purpose and a position to train for.

I would also argue that a) he chose a better wife and b) has much better PR than his brother.

I do sometimes wonder how William squares different aspects of his mother, especially with the benefit of hindsight and having his own children and seeing first hand how important stable parenting is for his children. Of course he adored her, and she was an adoring mother. But she also used him as an emotional prop, exposed him and Harry to her flirting with her lovers, going right back to trips down to Devon to see James Hewitt who she also engaged to give them riding lessons, I think they got to meet Will Carling and at the end there was what William has been quoted as describing the worst holiday of his life on Al Fayed's yacht with his mother getting involved with Dodi. It must have been hell. Of course the nature of her death and time will lend a tendency to remember the good times. But she wasn't a wonderful mother imo, and I was a huge Diana fan/sympathiser back then. Maybe that's all tucked away into a box he doesn't open, which is fair enough. The great thing is he appears to have taken away a determination that his own children would have a secure upbringing with close parents and I applaud him for that.

I do believe that Diana did Harry a disservice in insisting that he and William were raised the same. If indeed those reports are true. They were not and were never going to have the same life.

I suppose it comes down to how influential parents are on our lives one we each adulthood but if you look at the 4 children of the late Queen it is very apparent that similar parenting can give very different results. A very great deal is down to our character and how we deal with what life has thrown at us. Harry chose to write a book that was full of complaints about trivial things, numbers of sausages, size of bedrooms etc. It doesn't give the impression that he had moved past perceived childhood injustice to any great extent. Even the title Spare, shows that he really is stuck in the past and unwilling to move forward.

Hmm...

Well you tell us as you have gone to great lengths to do so 😂😂😂

If that bit about the birds tongue is true it really is indicative of a disturbed mind

But it should have been William that felt he got the bad hand. Harry got all the benefits with much less of the duty.

I think they should have been raised the same- the chances of William becoming King at a young age was small, so they should have been brought up as brothers. However their is an age gap between them, of course the elder boy would get more sausages.

Yes, all of these things. Plus I think William is significantly more intelligent than Harry (admittedly a low bar).

Plus the ability to take advice and follow guidelines - maybe innate (less ego than Harry), or maybe part of the Heir training from a young age. Either way, I feel like this is a type of wisdom.

I think wisdom is quite different from intelligence. You can act wisely even if your intelligence isn't that high. I would put most of the more respected members of the RF in that category. (Harry, unfortunately, seems to have neither.)

IMO this shows she was already setting up the victim narrative from the very start of the relationship.

I think you are characterising the difference in emotional maturity rather than intelligence.

Emotionally immature adults are reactive rather than responsive. Their sense of self / locus of control, is externalised in that they require validation from others to feel secure and at the same time also blame others for their bad feelings/behaviour.

They have no ability to self reflect to take accountability for the impact of their behaviour on others and then adapt and emotionally grow.

He’s stuck in the volatile toddler tantrum stage - locking horns, shaming, blaming, raging and flouncing - systematically eroding any semblance of nurturing, interpersonal relationships which are foundational for a sustainable internal emotional life.

I think he had some of these emotionally sustaining relationships in place before he met MM - with his brother, SIL, old friends, colleagues etc - there looked to be warmth, love, respect which got him through his emotionally traumatic and chaotic teens / twenties. But this emotional life line was cut off when he was systematically alienated from his friends and family and where he took on MM grievances. His words and actions stick to his cognitively dissonant script of victimhood but his body, his demeanour, how he physically holds himself tells the true story of his loss - not even sure if the penny has dropped and he is aware of it or not. I can imagine it must be heartbreaking for his father to watch.

I think MM is even less emotionally evolved than PH - I think she doesn’t have a heart or a soul that can be crushed - all of her relationships have been transactional in life. She’s happy to stand on anyone’s neck to get on - all of her ‘niceness’ is studied, contrived and calculating.

Hopefully William has been able to integrate the reality of his mother being a wonderful in many ways, but complex and flawed women and mother, who loved him dearly and who's lose was an absolute tragedy for him, but he cannot let it dominate his life.

You know like adults need to do about their parents.

Harry sadly is emotionally stunted. He may not be very bright but he also has poor/ no ability to self reflect and understand human complexity. It's all simplistic good/ bad dynamics with him. With him always in the Good category.

William also had the huge advantage of marrying a stable women who could model functional family relationships. While Harry...didn't.

Loving the pictures of wisteria ☺️

I like the sentence I saw earlier.

Just because you are famous doesn't mean you are good at something.

She’s more infamous than famous these days. No brand wants to be associated with her.

Her role in the BRF was always a stepping stone to catapult her to the top of A list Hollywood - her lifelong goal that never changed.

She arrived in the UK with full professional entourage to achieve this - she had Sushine Sachs, her US lawyers and her US agents all still employed and scoping out deals for her, even if this wasn’t overt - for instance saw Oprah pop up out of nowhere to come to the UK to chat to a D-list cable actress. To each of these professionals this partnership could be career defining for them and hugely lucrative given the unprecedented peak of interest and goodwill in the couple at that time - you can imagine them whispering the $$$$ available to MM in HW which she couldn’t actualise within the BRF - so she just had to manipulate PH with her manufactured grievances and promises of him being the global philanthropic hero so he was aggravated and activated enough to jump.

This was always her goal.

Surely even you know that you cant compare two images taken on different days as sunlight will be different and affects the image. Or that an image close up vs further away can distort how you perceive it

So funny! You either know wisteria or you don’t. Would you also suggest that sunlight and depth of field would mean you can’t identify the difference between a photo of a rosebud and one of a rose in bloom? 🤣

I agree with most of what you say here.
Interesting though, that a similar dynamic happens within the pro/ anti camps e.g. either demonising or sanctifying H&M.
I have to remind myself regularly that both H&M are complex, nuanced people, with good and bad parts. That we don’t really know them, much as we’d like to think we do.
There does seem to be a very calculating side to MM in particular but I like to think there’s a good side too, and that she’s trying her best in a hostile world, wrestling with insecurities like the rest of us.

Of course it’s far more entertaining to see them in black and white terms as Pantomime villains - it turns it into fascinating car crash/ soap opera that’s hard to look away from! But the reality is more boring, I suspect.

Or maybe they were taken at different times of year, might that be an explanation?

I think William is much more clear headed about his mother and her good and bad points. For example it was clear that he absolutely hated that holiday in the Med with Dodi Al Fayed - all carried out in the glare of the press. William is seen hiding his face and looking mortified while Diana posed for the paps. I'm not sure why Diana did it as I'm sure that Dodi could have taken her and the boys to a remote and secluded place. At the time I thought Diana was contrasting her new, glamorous, jet-set lifestyle with the "dull, fuddy-duddy" RF who at the same time were at Balmoral in the rain. But it was obvious that William hated being on display as the photos show he kept his hand over his face and looked unhappy for most of the trip

William also gave an interview to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Diana's death. In contrast to Harry who has a "saint/angel" view of Diana - William sees her much more as a real person. He talked about that she would have been a "nightmare grandmother" - loving and fun but often turning up to create mayhem before leaving the mess for someone else to clean up...

In the programme, William also imagines what his mother may have been like as a grandmother to George and Charlotte, and says that her sense of fun would have caused chaos in the house. The Duke reveals: “She'd be a nightmare grandmother, absolute nightmare. She'd love the children to bits, but she'd be an absolute nightmare. She'd come and go and she'd come in probably at bath time, cause an amazing amount of scene, bubbles everywhere, bathwater all over the place and - and then leave.”
https://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2017072440836/prince-william-diana-documentary-talks-charlotte-and-george/

Some people criticise the Middletons but they certainly provided a stable family life to William and seem to be involved grandparents. Plus none of them blab to the press .

The US media are really sticking it to them !!

If you read Lainey Gossip you would think their downfall was purely due to the British media, same with their fans who always claim the British media have it in for them because they are ‘racisr’, but it’s actually playground stuff compared to the US media.

IMO this shows she was already setting up the victim narrative from the very start of the relationship.

I don't think she set up a victim narrative when she arrived in the UK. I think she's ALWAYS had a victim narrative and she's ALWAYS had a chip on her shoulder - just like Harry, although he festers in his and she hates hers and is desperate to get rid of it. He's always belonged and she's desperate to belong. Neither is happy because neither has made it to the other side. That's why Meghan is utterly inauthentic, and Harry is utterly miserable.

From being the poor(er) kid in the all-girl California private school (these are a thing unto themselves) with divorced parents one of whom wasn't white; to being the youngest step-sibling of older parents; to having an absent-for-a-while mother and being a daughter who lived with her dad; to never making it in professional circles but still citing a 6 week college internship in her resume in her mid-40s; to never making it as a model beyond the odd shoot here and there from which she had to thieve shoes and clothes and go straight out to party because she'd had professional make-up done which couldn't go to waste; to bit part roles in Hallmark movies and cable TV soaps; to having to undergo cosmetic surgery on her nose and breasts and teeth; to being rebuffed by big American brands and only able to land a campaign with Canada's answer to Debenhams; to eventually hitting the "big-time" as a supporting actress on Suits for a total of single-digit minutes on screen in not-every-episode.... This is someone who's been rejected a lot, who always thought she deserved more than she had, who's always been jealous of the popular girls, who's learned that to get what she wants life has to be a series of transactions. It all makes for a very easy narrative of it always being someone else's fault that you didn't get where you want to be, a tale she can spin that nobody can call her out on. And if they ever do, she cuts them loose and moves on. OF COURSE she walks away from zooms when she feels offended. OF COURSE she won't let Harry steal her limelight. OF COURSE she must control the narrative at all times. OF COURSE she will go on the warpath if ever anyone threatens her reach or achievements. OF COURSE she believes in her endeavours when the whole world is telling her they're average-to-crap. OF COURSE nobody else knows what's right for her because the best thing that's ever happened to her - marrying Harry - happened under her own steam (with the help of Markus Anderson). God the narc high she must have felt in those months around the wedding and Megxit must have been quite the thing. She'll be chasing that for the rest of her life.

Those are the gardenia leaves, they don’t have stems like other flowers and the blooms are relatively fragile, once cut they brown very quickly.

Thanks for the thread @AtIusvue, ive only just found you all!