4 months ago
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That rotten old egg-fart Tom Bower is at it again. For the most part, Bower just obsesses over all things Sussex, although he did reveal some interesting tea about the Princess of Wales a few months ago. In recent weeks, he’s tried to revive the “bullying investigation” into the Duchess of Sussex and he’s screeched hysterically about Harry’s official change of residence on some Travalyst filings. As one can imagine, Bower is literally frothing with rage over the Sussexes’ successful Nigerian tour. Sidenote: Bower is like every other royalist reporter, obsessed with endlessly repeating that Meghan has Nigerian DNA. It’s like an itch they have to scratch, they’ve gone on and on about it in nearly every article about the tour. Anyway, Bower has lost the plot – he’s very mad about the Nigerian tour but he’s not sure why he’s mad. Something about their titles or maybe Meghan’s clothes or how Meghan was a nobody before Harry (just a successful actress on a popular cable show, making a six-figure or seven-figure annual income).
Dressed like a Hollywood A-lister at the Oscars, Meghan Markle’s perma-smile throughout her three-day ‘royal tour’ in Nigeria said it all: ‘I’ve won.’ Sceptics might wonder whether this latest leg of Brand Sussex’s hectic campaign of self-promotion revolved around not only their own commercial interests, but at the British Royal Family. The duchess never let anyone forget just why her visit to Nigeria was special. Her mother’s forefather, she says, was a Nigerian taken as a slave to America, and a DNA test had concluded she was 43 per cent Nigerian. This, she told her hosts, is ‘my country’.
Of course, she understands that it is marriage to Prince Harry that has propelled an actress in a cable TV show, who was relatively unknown in the UK, to global fame. And rarely has any wife shown so much public adoration for a husband than Meghan over the last three days.
Amid all that relentless promotion of the Sussex brand and the Invictus Games, there was scant mention of Nigeria’s status as an important member of the Commonwealth – an organisation of 54 countries so cherished by the late Queen Elizabeth. Just six years ago, the Queen appointed Meghan as an ambassador to the Commonwealth. Later, she was elevated by Her Majesty to be vice president of the Commonwealth Trust. At the time, few could have imagined that Meghan and Harry would soon be denouncing members of their own family as racist in a television interview with Oprah Winfrey.
I’m not surprised that the Sussexes now seem to have retreated from their outrageous suggestion, made to Oprah, that Buckingham Palace had decided – before their son Archie was even born – to deny him a title and security protection because he is mixed race. For all the adulation they’ve received from crowds in Nigeria, I find it hard to shake off a sense of anger about their attacks on the Royal Family on television and in Spare, Harry’s best-selling memoir. The Sussexes seem oblivious to the enormous damage they have caused.
Meanwhile, King Charles is emerging slowly from his cancer treatment while the Princess of Wales continues to fight her own battle with the disease. As the Sussexes enjoy VIP luxury in Heathrow’s aptly named Windsor Lounge awaiting their onward flight to Los Angeles – no doubt scrolling through the glowing reports of their trip – perhaps they could ask themselves this: was it really too much, while on their visit to Nigeria, to send public good wishes to their stricken relatives?
I wonder whether, more privately, they might have the honesty to acknowledge that all this fame and status has its roots in the very institution that they have chosen to attack. I doubt it.
Curbing this graceless sabotage is King Charles’s responsibility. Only by stripping the Sussexes of their titles – their most obvious connection with true royalty – can the charade be terminated. And for the sake of the Royal Family, Charles should end the farce of Harry using the Commonwealth as a prop for Brand Sussex.
I laughed at “there was scant mention of Nigeria’s status as an important member of the Commonwealth.” The Sussexes weren’t there on behalf of the Windsors or the British commonwealth. The British media screamed, wailed and cried about it for days, that the Sussexes were “acting like royals” and that the trip was “like a royal tour,” even though the Sussexes did nothing on behalf of any British interests. Bower and his ilk cannot stand that a commonwealth country invited the Sussexes and treated the Sussexes like VIPs, simply because of the Invictus games and because the Sussexes are global philanthropists. If the Sussexes had talked about the commonwealth or made public comments wishing the king well, then Bower would have attacked them for that too – how dare they mention the king and commonwealth, this isn’t supposed to be a royal tour, etc.
“Only by stripping the Sussexes of their titles – their most obvious connection with true royalty” – this was published after Meghan was given the title of Nigerian princess, Ada Mazi of the Ancient Arochukwu Kingdom, by four Nigerian kings. Perhaps Bower does not believe that’s “true royalty.” I can guarantee that he does not.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
