[imagesource: Phil Harris / Getty]

The scandal referred to above is not Prince Andrew’s very well-documented ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

That’s apparently last year’s news, as the world picks apart the details of Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah.

Quick summary – the Royal Family are in the midst of a PR crisis, and Piers Morgan frothed so hard at the mouth after being ghosted by Meghan that he’s now left his job on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

You’ve probably read more on the Royal Family in the last three days than you would ideally like to in a lifetime, but there’s at least one more article that deserves your attention.

The Guardian’s Marina Hyde is revered for her sharp tongue and stinging critiques, and this time she’s turned her attention towards Meghan and Harry versus ‘The Institution’.

‘The Firm’, ‘The Institution’, ‘The Royal Family’ – we’ve broken down what each of those means.

As Marina points out, nobody “really cares about the HRHs doing their dull ribbon-cutting duties. It’s the drama, and the villains, that we’re after.”

Let’s pick out some of the sharper barbs:

…it feels a little late for the royals to be taking an interest in genetics. A child being a quarter African American is somewhat less of a talking point than one side of that child’s family having repeatedly bred with its cousins for half the 19th and 20th centuries…

My own long-held belief is that a sense of great drama is what people truly want from the royal family…They say they want fist-gnawingly dull copy about how the Queen is wearing a brooch she wore on her honeymoon to this or that engagement, and what that might mean…

But what they really want is high drama, pure mess, grotesque villains and a side to take.

It’s why there are thousands of ‘royal sources’ quoted by the tabloids, spilling dirt that does or doesn’t exist, instead of another story about what Kate wore to the opening of some or other charity, which somehow qualifies as work.

Although there are no shortages or those stories, either.

Don’t get me started on the ‘royal commentators’.

More from Marina:

I’m sure it’s unfortunate being “cut off financially” in your mid-30s, in a way that forces you to leave a taxpayer-funded house to purchase a $14.5m (£10.4m) Californian mansion. But it feels even more so when Buckingham Palace advertises jobs at below the living wage…

Whenever the tasks of royal servants are itemised, I can only imagine them being listened to by a fictional police officer from a specialist unit, probably played by Sarah Lancashire.

“And you say your job involved squeezing toothpaste on your master’s toothbrush … ? OK. And what would happen if you put the toothpaste on wrong? … Right. I see. And you’re saying you had to hold the specimen bottle when he gave a urine sample? No, it’s all right, love. I know it’s hard. Let’s take a break, get you a cup of tea.”

The squeezing of the toothpaste was apparently a real part of the job, as was holding the bottle for Prince Charles as he pissed into it.

Definitely not a family out of touch with the real world at all.

Ultimately, it’s not hard to see why the reaction to the Oprah interview is largely divided by age:

Early polling suggests sympathy for the Palace and the Sussexes is split deeply on generational lines – which is a problem if you’re in charge of something that has to get handed down the generations.

It is increasingly clear that the Queen has constructed a monarchy which only works with her specific, unreplicable personage at the helm.

Perhaps when the Queen passes on, the Royal Family will undergo a modernisation, although with Charles waiting in the wings, perhaps not.

Either way, the point stands that what many of the British taxpayers really want is drama and scandal in return for putting up with the monarchy.

You may as well get something out of it other than the world’s most expensive ribbon-cutters.

[source:guardian]