IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT MEGHAN

Don't blame Meghan. The door was left wide open.

by Peter Montague-Roberts

After Meghan Markle's latest attack on the Royal Family, delivered during a lengthy interview with "oppressed billionaire" Oprah Winfrey, everybody is focusing on what a bitch Meghan is. Also Harry has been getting a lot of criticism for being so weak and allowing his wife to defecate all over his family. Both are clearly subprime characters, so no argument from me there. But in all this personalised drama and vituperation the bigger issue has been lost.

First of all, the British Royal Family is lucky. It could be a lot worse. Harry is only the second son (and there are doubts about that) and, as long as his older brother William and his children stay healthy, he won't even be needed to fill any position of real importance.

But, let's face it, the Royals have missed a bullet. They could have been facing the exact same shitshow with William if he had ended up marrying someone totally unsuited to the life of a Royal. The fortuitous fact is that he didn't. Instead he serendipitously married Kate Middleton who, so far, seems to have a temperament ideally suited to her role. But let's be clear here. That was just good luck, because the only hurdle that needs to be cleared to become a member of the Royal Family by marriage these days is to appeal to the sexual or romantic tastes of the Royal Princes or Princesses.

This principle in the future is sure to produce just as bad marriages, from the point of view of the monarchy, as this Meghan Markle disaster. It is not Meghan therefore who is the problem so much as the system of the Royal Family. 

In the past it is clear that there was some sort of veto on who could or could not marry into the Royal Family. This was held by senior members of the family, their top advisors, and even members of the British cabinet if we look at the 1936 Abdication Crisis. Something of the sort seems to have been in operation during Prince Charles's bachelor days. It appears he was steered away from all sorts of unsuitable matches until finally it was settled that he should marry Lady Diana Spencer.

Princess Di: failed quality control 

Of course, critics will point to that and say that was an even bigger disaster than Meghan. Of course it was, but that was more a case of the Royal Family trying to do the right thing—i.e. lining up someone from the correct background who should have known the rules—but still getting the worst possible result. The case of Meghan, by contrast, is the Royal Family doing the wrong thing, taking their hand off the tiller, leaving the door unbolted, and, predictably enough, getting exactly the wrong result.

There is an important difference between these two disasters. 

As for Kate, that is a case of the Royal Family also doing the wrong thing—i.e. letting Prince William marry whomsoever he wanted—but just getting lucky. 

However, it should be said that, even if the more senior members of the Royal Family and their advisors had had some sort of veto on William's choice, they would probably have approved of Kate anyway.

The same is unlikely to have been true of Meghan, a mixed race Hollywood divorcee who "been around the block quite a few times" and with the sort of SJW views that were guaranteed to cut up roughly with the ethos of Europe's most prestigious monarchy.

Her latest accusation that the Royal Family is "racist" was entirely predictable. Such a woman was a disaster waiting to happen, and one must suppose that given the chance, the Queen and even Prince Charles would have told Harry "no." The fact that Harry ended up marrying such poor Royal material proves they had no such power.

Meghan Markle: Zero quality control  

The solution to this problem, which extends far beyond Meghan, is clear. Any front line Royal, like the heirs to the throne—or anyone adjacent to them like Harry—should be required to get the approval for their intended spouses directly from the senior members of the Royal Family. If they are not happy with such an arrangement then they are totally free to follow their own hearts, but totally outside the Royal Family as absolute commoners with nothing in the way of titles, perks, privileges, and palaces.

In this way and in this way alone can a little quality control be brought back into the Royal Family. Sure, as the case of Lady Diana Spencer proves, this system is not foolproof. But just because quality control fails in some cases is no reason to abandon it in every case.

Such a system will also remind everyone that being a Royal is not just a luxurious paid-holiday at the taxpayers' expense, but also a position that requires an certain element of sacrifice for the good of the nation.