There’s a hierarchy of the family

In the run-up to the Netflix series, ‘Harry and Meghan’, the channel has obviously produced a ‘revelatory’ trailer to lure in your average punter. Harry promises to tell us the ‘full truth’, suggesting that everything we’ve heard before has been a pack of lies. I am not an avid royal follower so I am not entirely sure what lies we have been told, but I suspect that millions of people are desperate for the Duke of Sussex to put the record straight. But one wonderful quote from the prince suggests that this might not be the revelatory experience the Great British Public has been waiting for. With a straight face, he says, “There’s a hierarchy of the family,” to which the only possible reply can be, ‘No shit, Sherlock!’

I mean, who knew that in a royal family there would be some kind of hierarchy, starting with, say, the Queen or the King, working its way down through Princes and Princesses, all the way down distant relatives with non-jobs. For instance, no one ever looked at the Duke of Kent and thought, “Hmm. He must be somewhere near the top of the pile,” when his most important job in life would be to talk to ball girls and ball boys at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, before presenting the trophy to the winning player? No one. Even those of us with little knowledge of how the royal family works had a reasonable idea that the Queen or her successor Charles were the hierarchy.

I reckon it’s a quote produced from nowhere to draw us into the show. What’s he going to say? That the public should vote on which royal we’d actually like to be in the throne? We could organise a TV series around that. How about ‘I’m A Royal, Get Me To The Throne’? Who wouldn’t want to see Sarah Ferguson and Prince Edward munching their way through sundry animal penises, testicles and anuses and then text in to decide who we want to be king or queen, until the next series when we can elect someone else?

My guess is that Harry wouldn’t win and his wife Meghan Markle wouldn’t either. I have, or perhaps had, far more sympathy towards Harry and Meghan because they seemed to be marginally more human and real than the other fairytale royals, albeit with a tendency to say and do stupid things that make no sense at all. Because when it all comes down to it, Harry is famous for being a royal and Meghan is famous for being a minor TV actor who just happened to fall in love with him. As with the rest of the royal family, there is no meritocracy on the simple grounds that few of them have any serious talent or ability. It is us, the lower orders, who sustain their fame and indeed their great wealth.

You’ve probably gathered that ‘Harry and Meghan’ will not be in my viewing list. Despite the fact I have gone to the trouble of blogging about them, I really don’t care much about them. I suspect, though, that I shall once again be in a small minority which isn’t interested, won’t watch the show or buy Harry’s book ‘Spare’. Basically, it’s a real life soap opera and I don’t watch any of them either.