The Sussexes have barely landed at Birmingham but, as Samara Gill put it when she joined me for this episode of The Royalist, the victim narrative “has already arrived in the diplomatic bag.”
Gill (host of Triggered on Talk, and one of the funniest and sharpest new voices writing about the royals on Substack) joined me to dissect a People magazine story in which a friend of Meghan’s declared: “My biggest concern is the level of media attention she’ll face in the UK. I’m worried for her.”
I know, I know. NOTHING screams leave me alone like arriving in a gigantic private jet after a global media briefing campaign, does it!
“She hasn’t even unpacked her suitcase yet,” said. “The Sussexes are returning to Britain, but they haven’t left their emotional baggage behind. They’ve brought it with them.” Everything you read in People, she noted (adding a cheerful “allegedly”), comes “directly from the Sussex Spin Machine,” and this is “them trying to paint Meghan out as the victim yet again.”
Samara makes the case that there is a deliberate blurring of two entirely different things: “You’ve got unpleasant press coverage. That’s not actually the same thing as paparazzi intrusion... headlines are not actually a risk factor.”
Gill was blunt about Meghan’s standing: “Meghan is a celebrity. She’s a public figure. She’s put herself out there time and time again, and she’s profiteering from her face, her name, her children, and I think she’s fair game.”
We got into the deep history of the victimhood project, from Tom Bower’s anecdote about Meghan asking the Garter King of Arms, before she was even married, for a nightingale with its tongue cut out as her heraldic symbol, to the confiscated passport claim (Buckingham Palace sources were at the time clear that that was a lie.)