UK United Kingdom Royal Family / Royal Families Drama General Thread - formerly "Prince Harry and Meghan to step back as senior royals"

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced they will step back as "senior" royals and work to become financially independent.

In a statement, Prince Harry and Meghan also said they plan to split their time between the UK and North America.

The BBC understands no other royal - including the Queen or Prince William - was consulted before the statement and Buckingham Palace is "disappointed".

Senior royals are understood to be "hurt" by the announcement.

In their unexpected statement on Wednesday, also posted on their Instagram page, the couple said they made the decision "after many months of reflection and internal discussions".

"We intend to step back as 'senior' members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen."

They said they plan to balance their time between the UK and North America while "continuing to honour our duty to the Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages".

"This geographic balance will enable us to raise our son with an appreciation for the royal tradition into which he was born, while also providing our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity."

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said discussions with the duke and duchess on their decision to step back were "at an early stage", adding: "We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through."

The couple's announcement on Wednesday comes two months after the Duke of York withdrew from public life after a BBC interview about his ties to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in August.

Harry and Meghan to step back as senior royals

No other royals were consulted before the couple's announcement, the BBC understands.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[obsdj]

refreshingly unserious American who saw him as just a normal person and didn't have the faintest inkling of what the Royal family was.

Yeah, Chris Rock skewered her pretty hard in his most recent show about that act. Like, it’s the Royal Family, you’re seriously pretending you “didn’t know” all the ways they’re generationally terrible, really?

 

[whatever I feel like]

That is so fucking weird. A normal person would've just named her Elizabeth in honor of the great-grandmother and called her Ellie or Lilly at home. Markel is such a ghoul, there's nothing behind those eyes, just a pit that hungers for attention.

Archie doesn't have a real name either. They're a pair of retards.

 

[KiwiFuzz2]

Yeah, Chris Rock skewered her pretty hard in his most recent show about that act. Like, it’s the Royal Family, you’re seriously pretending you “didn’t know” all the ways they’re generationally terrible, really?

Especially for someone who is allegedly literate and semi-educated.

Powerlevel but I am literate and semi-educated and I went through a period of reading about the royals when I was in 6th grade and I determined at that tender age that these people are no better than ghetto trash and this opinion has never changed.

 

[Mayhem]

No one in the current British royal family is particularly cultured. The royals have a long history of being failures at school, which is why so many of them join the military if their parents push them to do anything at all. The royal men also have a long history of fucking actresses and empty-headed posh types. They are jocks who love horsey sports, skiing, gossip, and dog breeding, just like the vast majority of generationally wealthy people.

William did end up going to college, but not the traditional Cambridge or Oxford. His degree is in geography and, honestly, Kate did most of his work for him after she became his “tutor.” (I remember the same things being said about Kate before the wedding as are said about Meghan now.) Harry went straight into the military. Neither one of the princes are intellectual powerhouses; neither are their dad or any of their aunts or uncles. It would not take a lot to impress Harry.

 

[obsdj]

Especially for someone who is allegedly literate and semi-educated.

“Cultured.” Pretty telling that Harry hears a girl say, “I read books” (even stupid chick lit such as EPL) and he’s gobsmacked like, “A female? Reading? How refined. I must have her.” Wonder how he’d have reacted if he met a girl who could do math.

 

[DumbDude43]

i have a hard time believing that the royals are all dimwitted retards like you claim
like, this is still the family of queen victoria, who built the largest empire the world has ever seen. i don't see how her descendants could all be clueless clowns now?

 

[Stoneheart]

Neither one of the princes are intellectual powerhouses; neither are their dad or any of their aunts or uncles. It would not take a lot to impress Harry.

Well thats because their whole branch is only in power because the rightful king was to based for the UK establishment...

 

[Kosher Dill]

sounds like harry is at least 20 iq points below meghan

So we've gone beyond "doesn't know how he'd feel if he skipped breakfast" all the way to "forgot to eat breakfast and doesn't know why he's hungry now".

 

[Teghern]

i have a hard time believing that the royals are all dimwitted retards like you claim
like, this is still the family of queen victoria, who built the largest empire the world has ever seen. i don't see how her descendants could all be clueless clowns now?

We haven't had royals who actually do anything since James 2 tried and failed to bring back papism and got cucked by his own daughters, since then they've been carefully bred to weed out undesirable traits like knowing what a divine right is whilst retaining the predilections for buggery.
Just look at their cutsey round cheeks, wonky teeth, and silly ears. Pedigree dogs but people.

 

[Not A Bunny]

i have a hard time believing that the royals are all dimwitted retards like you claim
like, this is still the family of queen victoria, who built the largest empire the world has ever seen. i don't see how her descendants could all be clueless clowns now?

Hard times create strong people. Strong people create easy times. Easy times create weak people.

Weak people might create hard times, but honestly, what kind of "hard times" is the Royal Family in for? They have too much money and influence to have "hard times".

As fictional an account it is, I didn't like season five of The Crown, and I didn't bother with the sixth. Probably because it was because in seasons three and four, it started approaching that timeframe where the Royals stopped being more about world affairs and more about their tabloid lifestyles. That one scene where the Queen calls both Charles and Diana out for being extremely privileged and whiny? That was great stuff. But then the show became more and more about it, and it was like, oh, time marches on and the noble Queen just became a relic in the face of her family becoming tabloid fodder.

Someone in this thread earlier called me out for calling the RF "celebrities" and not "dignitaries" or something like that. Yeah, well, when most of my life's familiarity with them is based on Kardashian-type reporting about what they wear and who they're dating, why should I care about them being "dignitaries" if they can't even be bothered to communicate to the press that they're more than pseudo-aspirational figures that go into the military because they don't do well in school, get honorary promotions in the military (like Cammy and Katie) despite never having served in the military, and manufacture their images to look stable and relatable, despite the world knowing they're exactly not those things by dint of who they are and what comes out about them on the sly?

 

[teriyakiburns]

i have a hard time believing that the royals are all dimwitted retards like you claim

It's the men, mostly. The women tend to be pretty sharp, or at least politically savvy enough to know when to listen. The Windsor men all run to various levels of stubborn bull-headedness, which is only really reined in for the direct heir to the throne. All the rest are left with whatever nature gave them. They might perform well enough on their own merits, like Prince Edward, or they might turn in to a complete retard like Prince Andrew.

 

[Romulus augustulus]

i have a hard time believing that the royals are all dimwitted retards like you claim
like, this is still the family of queen victoria, who built the largest empire the world has ever seen. i don't see how her descendants could all be clueless clowns now?

bro Victoria wasn't that bright either. she let her mother and her first PM to walk all over her.

 

[AnOminous]

I think some of the media have never seen a child before.

I think they were grown in vats and never even were children.

 

[No. 7 cat]

i have a hard time believing that the royals are all dimwitted retards like you claim
like, this is still the family of queen victoria, who built the largest empire the world has ever seen. i don't see how her descendants could all be clueless clowns now?

Queen Victoria had little to no power compared to Parliament. The mercantile class who formed its core (allied with the landed class in the Lords) had been a far bigger factor in Empire than anything a monarch did or said. The last royal veto was in the reign of Queen Anne in the early 18th century and that was because the government, her alleged ministry, her supposed ministers, decided that a militia bill arming Scots might be unwise given disgruntlements there. Victoria's beloved Albert provided her with only intellectual wattage she really had to hand. If Britain still had an effective ruling class, royal dimwits wouldn't matter. Harry mightn't be uniquely dim, but he's married to an ill willed, cunning if lazy former actress and yacht girl who pushes him to do thing he doesn't have the nous to refuse.

 

[Dog-O-Tron 5000v5.0]

Neither one of the princes are intellectual powerhouses; neither are their dad or any of their aunts or uncles. It would not take a lot to impress Harry.

I dunno, Charles seems pretty educated and cultured. He is very into classics, like Greek and Roman literature, spends a lot of time studying horticulture and implementing it on his former estate. I don't politically agree with his hard-core environmentalism, but he seems honest and sincere on his beliefs in it and extremely knowledgeable. The town he designed, while not the kind of thing I would want to live in or seen mandated everywhere, is well thought out.

If The Crown has any hint of truth, his father was very intellectual as well. This probably stemmed from him not being brought up with a limited Royal education to be a head of state like Elizabeth, and perhaps he encouraged that for Charles.

 

[AssignedEva]

The idea of him thinking reading "Eat, Pray, Love" makes you cultured is so hilariously retarded. I can't decide if he's actually that thick or if he's trying to sounds like a relatable everyman. Taking it at its face though, it does sound like she'll eventually divorce him once his usefulness has run out.

There's definitely an element of that. For example the epigraph is a quote from William Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun - "The past is never dead. It’s not even past." However within the first few pages Harry addresses the quote - "When I discovered that quotation not long ago on BrainyQuote.com, I was thunderstruck. I thought, Who the fook is Faulkner? And how’s he related to us Windsors?". It's very obviously intended to be self deprecating and humanising, but is dubiously successful.

On the other hand even Diana acknowledged that Harry wasn't particularly bright. There was a bit of back-and-forth over sending him to Eton because there was a fear he'd be sidelined for being a thicko, but equally if they sent him to a posh-but-thick school the media might gossip he was too thick for Eton. It comes through a bit in the book, because some of the anecdotes do leave you feeling "why the fuck did you share this?".

I have trouble believing anything that Harry said in his book.

It's obviously incredibly biased. Camilla is portrayed as an archetypal evil stepmother (to the point where he gets hung up that she turned his childhood bedroom into her dressing room and implies she did this because she hates him). But I get the impression that every incident in the book has some grounding in truth, even if it didn't play out exactly the same and Harry imagined the motivations of the other people involved through the lens of his persecutory complex. There's so many weird little details that makes me sure it's not completely fabricated.

i have a hard time believing that the royals are all dimwitted retards like you claim
like, this is still the family of queen victoria, who built the largest empire the world has ever seen. i don't see how her descendants could all be clueless clowns now?

Prince Phillip caused a variety of minor diplomatic incidents by constantly making off colour jokes. Prince Andrew tried to refute allegations by going on TV to insist he "couldn't sweat" and was at a Pizza Express in Woking. Charles went on TV to talk through his marital breakdown and made himself horribly unsympathetic, and allegedly still lugs a teddy bear around with him. Harry wrote a book shitting all over the royal family and then complained it had damaged his relationship with his father and brother. These aren't the actions of intelligent people. They might know the difference between a cake fork and a pastry fork, or what order you should bow to people in based on aristocratic rank, or when the grouse season runs... but they're still growing up in a royal bubble, even if the later generations have supposedly modernised. The goodwill towards the royal family stems from Queen Elizabeth, who by all accounts was noticeably shrewd, studious and hard working (and had the benefit of decades of experience) - I doubt Rishi gets much out of his audiences with the King.

If things had been different and Diana was still around she'd probably have made sure to set Harry up with some harmless posh totty, but as it was he was left largely to his own devices as the spare - and so ended up getting ensnared by Meghan and exploding his family relationships, and now he's spinning his wheels humiliating himself with failed podcasts and a book where he talks though putting Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour cream on his frostbitten penis.

 

[Mayhem]

I dunno, Charles seems pretty educated and cultured. He is very into classics, like Greek and Roman literature, spends a lot of time studying horticulture and implementing it on his former estate. I don't politically agree with his hard-core environmentalism, but he seems honest and sincere on his beliefs in it and extremely knowledgeable. The town he designed, while not the kind of thing I would want to live in or seen mandated everywhere, is well thought out.

If The Crown has any hint of truth, his father was very intellectual as well. This probably stemmed from him not being brought up with a limited Royal education to be a head of state like Elizabeth, and perhaps he encouraged that for Charles.

I’ve always thought Charles is one of those people, like his mother, who knows a lot about his autistic special interests but not much else. In his case, his autistic special interest has long been his private mansion and his garden. Rumor has long been that he was always loath to leave the house and loved it more than he ever loved Diana or his children. He admitted that he didn’t like school much, but did walk away with a degree from Cambridge. It’s also likely he had “help” like his son did.

Philip always gets downplayed, but he grew up poor and isolated for a royal and felt he had to prove himself. It didn’t help that most of his family was deposed from Greece and had to flee to other countries for protection. He loved military life, though, and was apparently well-liked and respected by his fellow officers. He was reluctant to give that up to become a working royal, especially one who was expected to be subservient to his wife.

 

[Phalanges Mycologist]

This probably stemmed from him not being brought up with a limited Royal education to be a head of state like Elizabeth, and perhaps he encouraged that for Charles.

I've heard on the rumour mill that Charles is quietly someone who enjoys woodwork as a hobby, nothing major but like box making, and he's surprisingly knowledgeable at Green Woodworking an woodland crafts in general but that might also stem from his love of forestry.

I've worked on a few projects he's been involved in funding through a charity or privately and he always insists on the techniques used are as traditional as possible for the project, so I'd give that rumour some more legs than I normally wood.

 

[Procopius]

The royal men also have a long history of fucking actresses

i have a hard time believing that the royals are all dimwitted retards like you claim

Here's a bizarre couple of stories from the 1930s of Jessie Matthews' experiences with the then heir and spare. Not a lot of intellect on show.

at the age of 20, [Jessie] Matthews took London by storm, starring in Charles B. Cochran's lavish revue, One Dam Thing After Another.

The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, attended the opening night, and was so captivated by her that he leapt to his feet in the stage box, shouting 'Bravo! Bravo!'

He reported her 'devastating' physical attractions to his brother, Prince George, later the Duke of Kent. George went to see for himself and agreed.

The princes ordered the 12th Earl of Airlie, father of the late Sir Angus Ogilvy, and his brother, the Hon. Bruce Ogilvy, to invite Matthews and another member of the cast, Sheilah Graham - later F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'beloved infidel' and a formidable Hollywood gossip columnist known to some stars as 'Miss Poison Pen' - to supper at the Berkeley.

The object was to inquire discreetly if Matthews was willing to dine a deux first with the Prince of Wales, and then with his brother.

'Jessie,' Miss Graham told me years later, 'coming from a Cockney family in Soho, was under the impression that a royal command could not be refused. So she said "yes", without having any idea what she was agreeing to.'

The first dinner, alone with the Prince of Wales, took place at York House, St James's Palace, with the servants banished and HRH serving the star himself. She was surprised by this, then astonished to find herself shortly afterwards in bed with the heir to the throne, an episode that was over almost before it began, as the Prince, in his pre-Wallis Simpson days, was a disastrously incompetent lover.

With extreme apprehension, Matthews returned to York House for dinner with Prince George, who ate nothing, appeared to be very much the worse for drink and possibly drugs, showed a bizarre fascination with the texture of her evening dress, and finally slumped unconscious over the coffee and liqueurs.

Ringing the bell, she informed the footman: 'His Royal Highness appears to be unwell. Would you bring my wrap and arrange for a car to take me home?'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-445576/Jessie-Matthews-The-Diva-Debauchery.html

Although Scotty Bowers devoted a whole chapter to Edward which might explain his performance.

Eddy was good. Really good. He sucked me off like a pro. ... his preference was definitely for the boys

 

[Cheesegirl78]

Thank God Edward abdicated.