I’m all for nuance but I take a different view entirely.
I think “intentionally and persistently cruel, malicious and duplicitous” is over-egging the pudding somewhat!
I don’t agree with everything they have done by any means, or how they have done it, but I don’t think H&M’s supposed crimes amount to anything near the hyperbolic description above.
I understand that initially it was disappointing for some loyal Royal supporters to see them go and over time that morphed in to resentment that “the UK obviously wasn’t good enough for M “ as some critics saw it.
I have lived abroad in quite a few different countries and I understand how difficult it is, especially when young dc come on the scene, and you are away from your mum and everything that is familiar. It also must have been difficult for an independent older bride with a job, to leave all autonomy behind. All while pregnancy hormones were raging. So I have some sympathy for M too; especially as she has said very little recently and is still being hammered by criticism.
I think the narrative against H&M has played in to the hands of BP who welcomed a distraction from AMW And it’s been repeatedly stoked and inflated by multi global media outlets for €€€€ and ££££££. It suits many people to keep this rhetoric churning.
(And why doesn’t AMW regularly attract this same level of negativity I wonder? Yes he has attracted a lot of criticism but not to the same level and yet his “crimes” are allegedly much worse. This simply doesn’t make sense by any objective measure. )
I also don’t see how people cannot grasp the racial undertones present in not all, but definitely some, of the negativity. It definitely ruffled some feathers that a mixed race woman , who was older, divorced and an American actress, was not suitably “humble” or “grateful” in some people’s eyes when joining a traditionally white ancient institution.
All these reports of her being a bully; they haven’t been proven and M seemed to work well on a collaborative show like Suits for many years. What if she is just difficult and exacting and people don’t like it? Even if she is terrifying; does that justify the hideous things repeatedly said about her in the press and on-line and her “mock” pregnancy and her parenting skills?
How would any of us like waking up to that barrage of nastiness every day?
There is also a definite double standard at play because being demanding is often seen as a good quality in a man.
On a simple human level , I also have some sympathy for Harry who impetuously and naively laid out all of his “sins” in a book, many of them committed when he was young, so that the press would leave him alone, only to find that they just repeat and amplify them year after year. Ker-ching!
And Harry badly over-estimated the love that his family had for him, as he assumed they would make a greater effort to keep him in the fold than they did. Very sad.
We also know from Patrick Jephson (and this has been confirmed by many press articles since) that the Palace previously paid for “strategic” PR help to rehabilitate Camilla which went a little too far and unfortunately led to other members of the RF, such as Diana, becoming collateral damage. There was a whole heap of gas-lighting and misogyny involved in that too when she was described as “mad” and basically described as a harlot while Charles who regularly bedded a variety of married women emerged as the respectable, sound, partner. So I am inclined to agree with Harry about being bull-dozed by certain spun stories.
And shoot me but I also don’t find it completely beyond the realms of credibility that William felt a bit threatened by the popularity of his younger brother and new wife when H&M were first married and how many younger, black and mixed race supporters they attracted.
It’s such a shame - again on a simply human level - that both brothers couldn’t work together and in many family feuds like this both sides are often at fault.
Also, outside of the protection of the Palace PR , with its substantial budget and considerable far-reaching influence, you have little chance of opposition. We know from Lownie that BP have endless resources, often use NDAs and other legal means to suppress stories or confer honours to maintain silence. They also employ former journalists and ministers who know things using a poacher turned gamekeeper approach to keep all the not so good stories about them quiet. We know this from the debacle surrounding AMW which has been covered up for years.
I am not saying that M&H haven’t made some dumb moves, but equally, returning to nuance, I don’t buy the rhetoric that everything KC & CC and W & C do is marvellous and saintly, whereas somehow H&M are bordering on evil! It’s ridiculous and I hope the debate returns to some level of objectivity soon, but I doubt it will because too much money is involved.
Imho, if I were Charles’s PR operative, I would advise him to sell off a spare privately- owned Caravaggio, or castle, quietly pay off H’s court fees, fund his lifestyle out of their vast private income, pretend to have a close relationship, and pierce the bubble that constantly over-inflates the “feud” story in the first place!
And the only reason they don’t do this I reckon is that flak for H&M is diverting people’s attention away from a great deal of focus on AMW and that is very useful to BP currently.