Mar 10, 2021 4 min read

When I married into a family much better than I deserved, I said to my new mother-in-law: “If I ever complain, just slap me.”

Wisely, I never gave her reason. Complaining was programmed out of me long ago. Besides, all a mother-in-law really wants from an “outlaw,” as we refer to ourselves, is that he or she love her children and grandchildren – and behave accordingly.

And all we commoners want from our princes and princesses – or, the occasional duke and duchess – is that they be handsome and pretty and play their uber-privileged roles without undue scandal or, for Pete’s sake, whining.

Well. Somebody didn’t read her rule book closely.

Meghan Markle’s claim during Sunday night’s couple interview with Oprah Winfrey not to have known what she was getting into when she married Harry – you have to curtsy to his grandmother the Queen?! – was absurd. Does this Hollywood-raised actress not watch movies?

The two-hour interview, which I watched, has been thoroughly dissected. Suffice it to say that the most interesting aspect of the friendly chat was the fact that so many people – 17.1 million in the United States alone – tuned in. We say we don’t care about the royals, but it is clear that we do.

We say the monarchy is outdated – a grand taxpayer heist of bizarre mutual consent – but we follow the royals as though they might produce some noble fables we could live by, when all we get are adulterous affairs.

In one analysis, we could revel in Harry’s openness and call him a model for the new masculinity – a man’s man who can talk about his emotional struggles. I actually found Harry’s upper lip remarkably stiff as he briefly mentioned his father’s (temporary) refusal to take his telephone calls. (My father didn’t speak to me for a year and a half when, in college, I thought I might try socialism.) Harry also said he’d spend the rest of his life trying to heal his relationship with his father. What son doesn’t?

The big reveal, now a headline ricocheting around the globe, is that the House of Windsor is racist because some unnamed family member or members had wondered aloud what color the couple’s first baby might be. In case you did not know, Meghan is biracial, and the Windsors are the whitest family on Earth.

Since Harry refused to name who in his family had uttered this, we’re left to guess and assume the worst of everyone. If racism tainted the newlyweds’ hoped-for utopia, some of the blame surely belongs to the tabloids, which have been particularly vicious to the duchess. Harry’s concern that his wife might suffer a fate similar to his mother’s at the hands of paparazzi led him to do what any decent man would do – he whisked her away, first to Canada and then to the former colony that long ago defeated and then liberated itself from the very same monarchy.

For all of Harry’s chivalry, a better man might not have told Meghan about the mystery relative’s remark, knowing she would suffer the greater pain. And then to tell the most famous broadcaster in the world? Why even mention it? Well, that’s obvious in part: The no-longer-royal couple had to cough up some little hairball for the roughly $8 million that CBS paid to Winfrey’s production company for the interview.

Meghan struck me both as self-indulgent and the victim of a family still living in the 1850s. Renegades are welcome here, but not if they’re going to complain about the accommodations. Whatever the toils of living rich and royal, Meghan might have assumed that a $45 million wedding would come at some personal cost. Everyone who marries has to decide what sort of compromises to make for a spouse’s family’s ingrained habits and histories. The price the Windsors exact from their progeny must have felt medieval to a modern star like Meghan.

One can feel pity – or schadenfreude, if you prefer – for those who live royally. But it’s hard to feel sorry for the duke and duchess, especially if you happened to watch “60 Minutes” on CBS in the hour just before the interview. The lead story was about Americans living in tents and cars, barely surviving, after losing jobs as a result of the pandemic. COVID-19 continues to hit low-income workers hardest, making CBS’s indulgence of two spoiled royals a slap in the face – to all the wrong people.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for The Washington Post.