Inappropriate photo op for William and catherine

[OneLilacHedgehog]

This was at an event this week. But the photo just made me gasp. It looks like the elderly woman is being used as a prop, rather than being treated in a dignified way.

Ok. Forgive me, I am just correcting your erroneous assumptions about the sedan chair event, which the local people do as a mark of respect.
Perhaps they didn't wish to offend their hosts by refusing.

🤣

OP - I think you could get a job on that horrible hate-site, Celebitchy! That’s exactly the sort of thing Kaiser does on there. She finds the most unflattering pics of W &C and claims they were scowling, or having tantrums, or that the people they were talking to hated them etc etc.

Surely, when you know you’re misrepresenting something, it takes away all the satisfaction?

It must have been stressful and overwhelming.

Yes, it's very interesting when you look at polls of royal popularity and approval, .... William and Catherine do well. William has a high score. Sedan chairs or not.
Perhaps it's the teeth.

Whatever they did, they did at the behest of the Jamaican government. Are you suggesting they went there and demanded to be carried on chairs by Blackstone people?

Are you bonkers? That’s really not how royal tours work….sorry.

Black people - ruddy autocorrect!

It wasn't in Jamaica. It was colonialist event after colonialist event. The optics were terrible.
Anyone with half a brain would negotiate what they do in countries they visit. If they really just say yes to everything suggested then they have zero political house.
I actually don't believe they just say yes to anything. I think they and none of their senior staff have the abilities to recognise the optics of that tour. Although they soon found out.

You’ll find it hard to dissuade this particular OP - she’s been played like a fiddle by HAM and is trotting out the usual rubbish.
The vast yes VAST majority of the UK were delighted that MM was to join the royal family and didn’t consider her race (small number of newspapers ran stories of her background but then they did with Diana and Kate).
Unfortunately she Markled us like she did with almost every relative and friend including the late Queen and her family.
Harry was played like a fiddle too and this continues.

Are you wanting to make the situation between supporting decent behaviour, ie William and Catherine, vs shady grifters, ie H&M, into a racial one OP in the style of the Oprah "interview"?

Because it seems to me that you do.

We don't dislike H&M because of any reason except their own duplicitous, treacherous and downright cruel behaviour.

Not a great idea to become queen if you are a very private person.

QE2 was a private person. Seemed to work out ok for her.

You see I think Catherine is just bland.

What, in your opinion, should she be doing in order to be not bland?

Not much of a choice really…the tour would have been organised by the government…..go along with it and apparently risk bad optics or refuse and offend the government and people???

Indeed. The key point being that in a Constitutional Monarchy, they go where the Foreign Office decide. The itinerary is set by the hosts.
In Tuvalu they carry guests in sedan chairs. It would have been very rude to refuse.

I think what you say you think is a bit bonkers, OP!

Agreed.
And anyone with half a brain would know this is how diplomacy works

@OneLilacHedgehog- out of interest, do you stand by your original hypothesis in your OP, or do you feel, in hindsight, the selection of the photograph and the attendant criticism by you was misjudged?.

@OlympicWomen and @jeffgoldblum

Absoluteky - but try telling this to the Sussex Club. The twisted mythology around this tour is an article of faith to them.

Aaarrrgghh - I used to teach history and critical thinking, with examples of the manipulation of images for propaganda - but I sometimes feel that my efforts were wasted.

So many people are happy to manipulate and to be manipulated.

I am not the Sussex club. Seriously childish to say this.

The reaction of the public when they meet Catherine begs to differ

Regardless of what you would prefer to be the case - the facts say different

Don't visit all the other threads on this board if you don't want to see more made up stuff. 😁

Quite. Critical thinking is very important, as you say.
I also think some people don't understand how a Constitutional Monarchy operates. If the UK government want the RF to go to Tuvalu, or Canada, or host Trump, or Zekensky, that's what they do. It's not some royal progress a la Louis XVI.

It was widely seen as a colonialist tour in mainstream media and social media.
You see the royals as mere puppets but we know they have a say. The tour was a tour of the commonwealth, it was not on the behest of the government, but on behalf of the queen to try and keep the commonwealth together. So optics was crucial and they made a mess of it.

And we know William has refused to go to countries the government wanted him to go to. So please do not pretend they are mere puppets.

No. They are not puppets, why would you interpret that in such a way? Parliament is Sovereign. They decide.
William has not refused to do a tour, as directed by the FO, because he understands what the monarchy does. He is not a fool.
The tour you referred to was not organised by the late Queen, because that is not how tours are organised.

Who cares whether she’s “loved like Diana was” (ugh…🙄) Shes doing an ace job, having had her character assassinated by the lovely Meghan, then subjected to a “Where’s Kate?” SM bullying campaign which H&M did nothing to deter, then getting cancer and being forced to announce it to us when she’d surely have preferred to tell her young children in her own time.

I think she’s been a trooper through a hellish time, mainly at the hands of her ghastly BIL& SIL.

Go, Catherine!

William and Catherine were carried in chairs in Tuvalu in 2012 - it's a local tradition and viewed as a great honour and bestowed with great local pride.

In Jamaica the Jamaican Military requested they ride in the jeep to inspect the troops as they (the Military) wished to recreate the event when the Queen & Prince Philip did it decades before - they had even restored the original jeep.

You may not trust the citizens and officials of these countries to make their own decisions and to have agency - but that's a you issue.

Do you have the same reaction when Harry & Meghan recreated the "balcony wave" scene from the Grand Pacific Hotel in Fiji - which the Queen and Philip did 65yrs earlier. Just as "colonial".

But I'd be interested to see you address the many questions about why you started this thread