What is Megan Markle Owe the Media?

British tabloids are crazy. They are crazy because Meghan and Harry have set strict limits around the birth of their child: they will not tell the public all the details of the birth, and they will certainly not pose on the steps of the hospital as Kate did in 2013, 2015 and 2018, when she left Lindo Wing with William. Instead, they will produce their own photos and share them later.

This news has been badly received. "Keeping the nation in the dark on the details, even after birth, is a bad look for the royal couple," wrote Sun according to a roundup in the New York Times this week. "The public has the right to know the lives of those who are largely financed by their taxes. You can accept that or be private citizens. Not both.

The royals and the British press have long had a close but dysfunctional relationship – a relationship that oscillates between respect and vitriol, access and repulsion. But with the arrival of Meghan Markle, this relationship is tense. Although the British press covered the wedding with enthusiasm and enthusiasm, the tabloids also provided a megaphone to all of Meghan's hideous parents, and their cover was often poorly defended against racism. It's no wonder Harry and Meghan want to set limits.

But for the royals, who fundamentally depend on the media for the survival of their throne – there is no king without someone considering him a king – borders are anything but impossible. They have always been.

Even in the glory days of divine right – when the public considered the God-appointed monarch, someone whose contact could heal the sick – the royal family always kept an eye on their perception. The legal guard chain of the English throne, in particular, has been less stable than suggested by the magnets sold to tourists at the Buckingham Palace Gift Shop; Historically, a wildly unpopular king has always risked rebellion on the part of the landed nobility, who, with enough muscle, could pick up a person legitimate enough to play the throne game. Likewise, the intimate questions of the monarch's body were a matter of state importance; historically, the Minister of the Interior and other officials witnessed the birth of new heirs, legacy of the "global warming scandal" of the 17th century, when Stuarts' rivals suggested that the son James II was actually a suitor, smuggled into the room reheating the pan to ensure the estate.

In the United Kingdom, the power of the Crown weakens over the centuries, so that in the 19th century, the country became a constitutional monarchy and Queen Victoria finds herself uninformal. control. To protect the crown, she and her husband, Prince Albert, dedicated the royal family as a symbol, the right-middle-clbad heart of the great British nation, spreading the image through the booming press of the 39; era. This carefully crafted paradigm has occasionally been successful – Victoria's son, his son Prince, the Wallis Simpson debacle and the friendliness of the couple with the Nazis – but he has essentially dominated the book of monarchy for two centuries. Even after the frolics and grudges of the '80s and' 90s nearly decimated decades of neat branding, the Windsors managed to get back to that basic model.

Yet this strategy relies on the media to spread the primordial image. . Victoria and Albert have cleverly shaped their image: the reason we describe Victoria as the imperial grandmother dressed in a cap wearing a cap, is that she spread that look by embracing the photography. (Historian Lucy Worsley hypothesized that she might have opted for giant dresses to avoid wearing a corset, so as not to irritate an abdominal hernia at delivery.) [19659006] Christmas radio address which has been gradually transformed into a television address; that's why the royals have enthusiastically embraced social media. Buckingham Palace (Queen's staff), Clarence House (Prince Charles's staff) and Kensington Palace (who manages the Cambridges and, until recently, Harry and Meghan also) have all adopted Instagram and Twitter well before Meghan.

Do not forget this Twitter video, posted by Kensington Palace, where Harry and Queen Elizabeth had fun playing with the Obamas to promote Invictus games?

Like so many other celebrities, the Windsors understood the opportunity offered by social media to suppress the press and, as much as possible , to create their own story. Think about how often Kate took the official photos of her children that were distributed to newspapers around the world. This is a public image that rivals Beyoncé's.

But unlike the Carter family, members of the royal family fundamentally need the media to retain their remaining power and ensure the longevity of their throne. Monarchy is a fiction that continues to exist under certain conditions; it's a business that requires payment. Without the media, members of the royal family are only random rich, born into an outdated hereditary power system. A deceased royal title may be worthy of a signature in Vogue but it does not give you much real power on the world stage.

So, for Harry and Megan, the wedding was a whirlwind, but it was also an easy part: generating a huge benevolence and a positive and triumphant scenario for the family. But the narrative logic of the tabloids requires drama, and after the triumph comes the fall. Therefore, Harry and Meghan will spend the rest of their lives calculating how much access is good access. if the pieces they distribute will appease the media or simply incite them to dig, dig and dig.