As the gospel choir sang and holy water was sprinkled, an intricate knot tightened on the 21-month-old’s ties to the British Royal Family. And that, frankly, is astonishing. For one can wish this tiny little girl all the best in life, but still wonder about the righteous dissembling and connivances of her parents.
A princess? Is there some mistake here?
For since they fled to America to escape the deprivations of royal life back in 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have given every impression of a couple who utterly loathe the concept of monarchy, along with the Royal Family and nearly everyone in it.
According to their oft-told account; as an institution it is racist, as a historical construct it is indefensible and as a crucible of family life it failed so very badly on every count that, while in its clutches, Meghan contemplated committing suicide when pregnant with her first. And that is just awful.
You’d think they would want nothing to do with the rotten scoundrel Windsors and their mad, bad evil ways, right? Wrong. Very wrong.
READ MORE: So IS Lilibet a Princess? Will she and Archie be HRH?
When you boil down the royal oil, when you crack open the ermine crust and finally get to the golden gravy that lies beneath, what you discover is that Harry and Meghan actually want everything to do with royalty after all. Everything! But especially the prestige, the cachet and most of all the scrumptious titles, for themselves and for their children too.
If the pair of them had any moral fibre or decency we would not be at this hypocritical juncture – for surely the christening of their young children provides a perfect parting of the ways.
Refusing to use or glorify in royal titles for Archie and Lilibet would have mothballed the monarchy in their troubled lives in one sweeping, admirable gesture.
The Sussexes could have said goodbye forever to the boiled beef and custard sludge of a British life they clearly found hateful. They could have freed themselves from the stifling tradition and embarrassing privilege, and instead fully embraced the glittering meritocracy of America.
That would have been bold, progressive and non-elitist, which is exactly what this pair always claim to be, against all evidence to the contrary.
Instead the reality is that they want to cling onto the titles and the prestige the way a limpet clings onto the teak hull of a royal yacht; the way a leech fixes onto a thumping, pumping royal vein and sticks its fangs in for the long haul. They will stick to and they will suck on these Windsor connections, because it suits them financially and it suits them socially –and frankly, without them what have they got? She’s a television actress, he’s a walking ragbag of fashionable neuroses with a mind that we now learn has been ‘windscreen wiped clean’ by cannabis and hallucogenic drugs
