Can I just say? It’s remarkable – in a bad way – how the royals have twisted the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s words and their pain into something else entirely. Harry and Meghan are clearly tired of the bulls–t they’ve had to endure for the past year and when they simply say “yes, it’s been really difficult,” the Windsors then attack them for not keeping a stiff upper lip AND they gaslight the Sussexes as “fragile.” Prince William seems to be leading the gaslighting effort, and William wants people to know that he feels “compassion” for the Sussexes:

Prince William and Prince Harry have spoken to each other privately after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex bared their souls in an emotional ITV interview. Royal aides are said to have ‘concern’ about Harry and Meghan’s struggles, with William believed to be ‘worried’ about his brother who he feels is in a ‘fragile place’.

Last night, a source close to William told the Times: ‘It would be very difficult for anybody to watch that and not feel compassion for them. Whatever is going on is taking a personal toll on them. That, of course, would cause concern.’

It has also emerged that William and Harry have spoken to each other privately following the documentary, although it is not clear if William saw it in advance. Describing how William felt at seeing his younger brother clearly upset in the programme, a senior royal source said: ‘He is concerned, as anyone would be watching the documentary.’

Insiders told the BBC that William was ‘worried’ about his brother, hopes he is ‘all right’, and thinks the suggestion that Harry and Meghan want a six-week break from royal duties is probably a ‘good thing’ as they are in ‘a fragile place’. But royal sources scotched talk of William being ‘furious’ about the timing of the programme, which ITV began trailing toward the end of his own successful tour of Pakistan with his wife Kate.

One said: ‘Actually I just think there is a really deep sadness there. Things will never be the same again, clearly. ‘People will debate what he [Harry] said about their relationship, although the truth is, as he said, that they are on different paths and don’t see as much of each other as they used to. But that doesn’t stop [him] being concerned about his brother. I think it would be difficult for anyone to see a member of their family talking like that on camera.’

No one the Mail spoke to yesterday could confirm whether William saw the documentary in advance. A source in the Royal Household suggested the future king had been forced to sit at home and watch it on Sunday night along with the rest of the nation.

[From The Daily Mail]

The TL; DR version: William is sad that *someone* made his brother sad but oh well, William will be king and Harry won’t, cry about that, Ginger. That’s basically what it is. The fact that William is completely abdicating his partial responsibility for what HE has put his brother and sister-in-law through is unsurprising, but his insistence on gaslighting them publicly about all of this still shocks me. I am but a mere peasant American looking in on all of this, but it definitely feels like… William, the Queen, and the Prince of Wales are the ones mishandling all of this. But the royal reporters keep insisting that Harry and Meghan are the ones doing EVERYTHING wrong. There’s a real lack of self-awareness all around, basically.

Also: there’s always an undercurrent to all of the reporting about Meghan in the British tabloids, that she’s too “foreign,” too much of an “outsider.” It’s the strain of anti-Americanism, sure, but mostly it’s just otherizing a biracial woman The undercurrent takes many forms. Today’s form is to make a big deal about how Meghan is… still an American citizen. And she’ll likely be a dual citizen whenever her British citizenship comes through. People think Archie is a dual citizen too. The subtext is that IF everyone succeeds in bullying Meghan out of the UK, she can “just go back home” to America. That’s basically it.

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